The best translated fiction – review roundup

Glorious People by Sasha Salzmann, Your Utopia by Bora Chung, The Time of Cherries by Montserrat Roig and Her Side of the Story by Alba de Céspedes

Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar review – an antihero in search of meaning

The Iranian-American poet’s debut novel tells the tale of a bereaved writer – but struggles with too much angst

Appreciation by Liam Pieper review – a tart satire of cancel culture and the art world

This comedy centred on an artist who loses everything after a drug-fuelled rant about Aussie myth-making is let down by its narcissistic protagonist

Liu Cixin: ‘I’m often asked – there’s science fiction in China?’

Author of sci-fi epic The Three-Body Problem – newly serialised by Netflix – on ‘the greatest uncertainty facing humanity’ and how finding a secret copy of a Jules Verne novel inspired his career

Choice by Neel Mukherjee review – parables for our times

A bleak, brilliant moral maze of a novel about ethical dilemmas, from global poverty to the climate crisis

Practice by Rosalind Brown review – tea, yoga and sonnets

The minutiae of a day in the life of a mostly happy student are brilliantly conveyed in this wryly comic debut

Thanks for Having Me by Emma Darragh review – why would a mother leave her daughter?

This debut novel tries to grapple with motherly abandonment over three generations of women in one family, but it feels underdeveloped

Headshot by Rita Bullwinkel review – tale of teenage girl boxers scores a knockout

The US author’s impressive first novel, a forceful and involving tale of eight young female fighters, punches above its weight

Wandering Stars by Tommy Orange review – tapestry of colonial trauma is harrowing yet healing

Survivors’ stories provide gritty testament to the moral confusion of life in the aftermath of atrocity in the Pulitzer-nominated Native American’s eye-opening second novel

Before the Queen Falls Asleep by Huzama Habayeb review – a memory palace built in exile

The Palestinian author’s second novel in translation is an affecting portrait of one displaced family’s inescapable relationship with the past

In brief: The Divorcées; Romantic Comedy; Unearthing – review

Soon-to-be ex-wives kill time in Reno in an evocative period tale; a TV writer ponders beauty and attraction in a nuanced romance; and a woman uncovers her family history through gardening with her mother

Shōgun: why the English samurai’s life and legacy still grip Japan 400 years on

Epic new TV adaptation of the 1975 novel reignites interest in the exploits of the Kent sailor William Adams

Memory Piece by Lisa Ko review – anxiety hums off the page in dystopian New York story

Three girlhood friends grow into the worlds of art, tech and activism and on towards a divisive, fascist-run nightmare in the American writer’s ambitious follow-up to The Leavers

Caledonian Road by Andrew O’Hagan review – the Dickens of our post-Brexit pandemic age

A north London man of letters slides down the social ladder in the novelist’s pitch-perfect tragicomedy of manners whose cast list connects the capital’s many worlds, from a hip-hop-loving hacker to a wealthy activist

Mat Osman: ‘I wanted to write about a dirty, dangerous, working-class London’

The Suede bassist and author on writing without a safety net, terrifying himself for his next novel and which of the Thursday Murder Club books – by his brother Richard – he likes best