Braithwaite’s Cursed Daughters is about intergenerational trauma and female kinship. The Falodun family have been cursed for generations, since an ancestor’s affair with a married man provoked the vengeful wife to declare that the woman and her female descendants would never prosper in love: “men will be like water in their palms.”   Setting her story between 1994 and the present day, Braithwaite braids together the fates of three women bound by the curse. A young woman must shake off a family curse, and widely held belief that she is the reincarnation of her dead cousin in this wickedly funny, brilliantly perceptive … Continue reading Abandoned by fathers, betrayed by lovers

Kiran Desai’s The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny is shortlisted for the Booker Prize. Her previous novels Hullaballoo in the Guava Orchard (1998), set in India of her childhood- born in Delhi, The Inheritance of Loss which won the 2006 Booker Prize.  This tale is about Sonia Shah and Sunny Bhatia, whose once-wealthy families connected through their grandparents, are part of the first generation of young Indians to experience migration, travel and life outside a rigid hierarchy, caught in between tradition and modernity, between pleasing parents and pleasing themselves. They fall in love, but are soon parted by self-doubt, pride … Continue reading Life outside a rigid hierarchy, amid tradition and modernity

The emotional story of an intense friendship between the narrator and his close childhood friend, Fanny, who suffers from profound psychological disorders. A Leopard-Skin Hat may be the French writer Anne Serre’s most moving novel. Anne Serre is a Prix Goncourt winner who has published 17 novels in French, as postmodern sensuous fairy tale. A feminist fantasy, where women satisfy their sexual needs free from society’s ignominy. The first to be translated into English by Mark Hutchinson, 1992’s The Governesses. Hailed in Le Point as a ‘masterpiece of simplicity, emotion and elegance, with a series of short scenes painting the … Continue reading Hope and despair

Tanja and Jerome are navigating a long-distance relationship in a world of constant communication and emotional hyper-reflection. Whether they are texting one another trip updates from midday raves or debating the best trainers in the own-brand aisle of Decathlon, every gesture is controlled and self-aware. This is love in the therapeutic age. Both conform to the archetype: Tanja is a Berlin-based writer whose first book sits somewhere at the intersection of virtual reality and gay romance. “People who didn’t like it came across as cringingly proud of their dislike of a book that meant something to others, “ writes Randt, … Continue reading Love in the Therapeutic age