The Photographer at Sixteen by George Szirtes review – a brilliant, scrupulous portrait

For the first time in prose, the poet writes about his mother, a survivor of the Holocaust

Humble Pi by Matt Parker review – a comedy of maths errors

Impossible footballs, skyscrapers that shake, the next Y2K-style bug – when maths goes wrong

Hark by Sam Lipsyte review – a hilarious lament for our times

A standup comic peddles fake spiritualism to tech executives in this sharply comical novel from the author of The Ask

El Norte review: an epic and timely history of Hispanic North America

Carrie Gibson has written an exhaustive corrective to historians who seek to whitewash a story of settlement and conflict

Women of Westminster by Rachel Reeves review – the MPs who changed politics

It is 100 years since Nancy Astor took her seat in the Commons. Has life improved for female MPs?

Lost Children Archive by Valeria Luiselli review – border crossings

A New York family takes a road trip south, in this rigorous and beguiling novel about child migrants on the US-Mexico border that has been longlisted for the Women’s prize

‘Cherry’ Ingram by Naoko Abe review – an obsession with Japan’s blossoms

Visions of modern Japan and an evocative historical journey – the story of an Englishman’s horticultural devotion

Number One Chinese Restaurant by Lillian Li review – a confident debut

Longlisted for the Women’s prize, this intergenerational saga set in a US Chinese restaurant is full of insight into immigrant families’ lives

A Line in the River by Jamal Mahjoub review – Khartoum, city of memory

The novelist rediscovers the city where he grew up in a wonderfully subtle exploration of place, identity and memory

The Old Drift by Namwali Serpell review – genre-blending Zambian debut

This ambitious first novel has the chutzpah to work on a vast canvas, extending from colonial times to Afrofuturism

Horizon by Barry Lopez review – magnificent on the natural world, and furious too

The long-awaited follow-up to the classic Arctic Dreams is a deeply wounded book about ‘the throttled Earth’

I Will Never See the World Again by Ahmet Altan review – writing behind bars

The imprisoned Turkish novelist has produced a wonderful memoir about his arrest, captivity and his urge to create

The Burning by Laura Bates review – a tale of two witch-hunts

Past and present are interwoven in this powerful young adult novel by the founder of the Everyday Sexism project

Beautiful Revolutionary by Laura Elizabeth Woollett review – inside a cult

This Australian debut novel, based on the apocalyptic religious cult that culminated in the Jonestown massacre, is supple and punchy, with a hysterical edge

The Awfully Big Adventure by Paul Morley review – how (not) to think about Michael Jackson

This flashy cultural deconstruction of the pop star reads oddly in the wake of the documentary Leaving Neverland