Holiday books: Fiction

The Promise
By Damon Galgut. (Europa Editions, $25.)

The title of this powerful, emotionally charged novel — winner of this year's Booker Prize — refers to a pledge made by Rachel Swart, the matriarch of a white South African family, to bequeath a house on her farm to loyal Black servant Salome. But when Rachel dies, so too does Salome's hope of claiming her inheritance. Galgut charts the wayward progress and mixed fortunes of Rachel's racist husband, Manie, and their three children — feckless Anton, faithless Astrid and guilt-ridden Amor — through subsequent decades, while simultaneously depicting a nation undergoing tumultuous change.

Radiant Fugitives
By Nawaaz Ahmed. (Counterpoint, $27.)

This hugely accomplished debut expertly traces the fault lines within a Muslim Indian family. After being cast off by her father, Seema has made a new life for herself in the West. In her last weeks of pregnancy she is reunited at her home in San Francisco with her devoutly religious sister Tahera and their terminally ill mother, Nafeesa. But can they heal old wounds? Ahmed aims high and explores politics, race and his characters' fates through an extraordinary narrative voice — that of Seema's newborn (and at times unborn) son.

Mrs. March
By Virginia Feito. (Liveright, $26.)

Spanish-born Feito's eponymous heroine exerts a strong hold on the reader. Mrs. March leads a charmed life on Manhattan's Upper East Side. But when she suspects that she was the inspiration for her author husband's latest protagonist — "a weak, plain, detestable, pathetic, unloved, unlovable wretch" — her safe world collapses. Soon she believes he is even capable of murder. With echoes of those doyennes of suspense Patricia Highsmith and Daphne du Maurier, this is a darkly comic portrait of a woman spiraling out of control.

China Room
By Sunjeev Sahota. (Viking, $27.)

Sahota's bravura third novel is made up of two neatly interwoven narratives set 70 years apart. In one strand, Mehar, a young bride, conducts an illicit romance with her husband's brother on a farm in rural Punjab in 1929. In the other, Mehar's great-grandson travels to the same location where he battles addiction and becomes curious about his relative's tragic history. An intense and moving depiction of endurance and defiance through the generations.

Open Water
By Caleb Azumah Nelson. (Black Cat, $16.)

Two young Black British people meet, then fall passionately for each other. "What is better than believing you are heading towards love?" asks Azumah Nelson. Gradually, however, their relationship is tested by outside forces. The simple framework of this debut belies the riches within. The characters — he a photographer, she a dancer — are unnamed yet fully knowable, the prose is lush and rhythmic, and the bold use of second-person narration ensures that the situations and emotions are nothing less than intimate and intense.

The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois
By Honorée Fanonne Jeffers. (Harper, $28.99.)

Weighing in at almost 800 pages and spanning two centuries, Jeffers' first novel is a sprawling, ambitious affair. It is also an epic masterpiece. At its beating heart is Ailey Pearl Garfield, a young African American woman who, after growing up and coming of age in Georgia, decides to trawl through her family's checkered history to learn what befell her ancestors in the Deep South. Multigenerational, multivoiced, and filled with darkness and light, this is a remarkable feat of storytelling.

Great Circle
By Maggie Shipstead. (Knopf, $28.95.)

Shipstead's immersive third novel braids together the life stories of two memorable women. "Born to be a wanderer," Marian Graves grows up to become a pioneering aviator but disappears in Antarctica in 1950 in an ill-fated attempt to circle the globe. In 2014, disgraced Hollywood star Hadley Baxter seeks to restore her dignity and revive her career by playing Marian in a movie. The book's scope, detail and single-minded heroines allow it to truly soar.

Klara and the Sun
By Kazuo Ishiguro. (Knopf, $28.)

Ishiguro's first novel since being awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature is narrated by an android — an "Artificial Friend." Klara draws nourishment from the sun and in turn provides strength and comfort for Josie, a teenager suffering from what could be a life-threatening illness. The more time Klara spends with her ailing companion, the more she learns about the frailty of life, the nature of love and what it takes to be human. Ishiguro's brave new world and the inhabitants within it cast a mesmerizing spell.

Oh William!
By Elizabeth Strout. (Random House, $27.)

Successful sixty-something writer Lucy Barton agrees to accompany her ex-husband William on a trip to Maine to meet the half-sister he never knew he had. But in doing so she ends up on a journey of discovery of her own, one that sees her reflecting on the highs and lows (or "Difficulties") of her decades-long relationship, together with the current state of her life. Strout's third outing for her much-loved creation is a bittersweet delight.

The Committed
By Viet Thanh Nguyen. (Grove Press, $27.)

Starting where his Pulitzer Prize-winning debut "The Sympathizer" left off, Nguyen's sequel follows his unnamed double agent — "a man of two faces" — out of Vietnam and into Paris in 1981. There he deals drugs and settles scores for Chinese gangsters, loses himself in philosophical debates with his "aunt" and other intellectuals, and communes with ghosts from his past — all while dreading an impending showdown with his former handler, Man. An existential thriller packed with mayhem, absurdity and big ideas.

A Line to Kill
By Anthony Horowitz. (Harper, $27.99.)

Ex-Detective Inspector Daniel Hawthorne and his sidekick, writer Anthony Horowitz, return for a third case, this time on the tiny island of Alderney in the English Channel — a place where there has never been a murder. That track record is ruined when the wealthy sponsor of a literary festival there meets a violent end. Soon the crime-solving duo are unearthing clues and sifting secrets and grudges of the islanders and the visiting authors. Funny, fiendish and thrilling, this mystery proves that Horowitz is king of the contemporary whodunit.

Crossroads
By Jonathan Franzen. (FSG, $30.)

The first volume in a proposed trilogy, "Crossroads" is one of those books Franzen is so good at: an involving and enthralling family saga. This one revolves around the Hildebrandts in small-town Illinois in the early 1970s. Pastor Russ and his unhappy wife, Marion, harbor secret desires, hidden agendas and unprocessed pain in their disintegrating marriage. Meanwhile, their children take drastic steps to go their own way. The flawed characters and high-stakes plotlines make for superlative drama. Roll on the next installment.