It has been a great year for reading and I want to share here a list of the books that have really stood out for me this year.
* Always Will Be by Mykaela Saunders
This collection of short stories is inventive, and I read it in April when I desperately needed hope. It is speculative and there is so much packed into this collection. I have loved everything I have encountered by Saunders so far and I also recommend This All Come Back Now which is an anthology (or mix tape) of First Nations speculative fiction. I still remember being so excited when this book arrived in the post.
* Hospital by Sanya Rushdi (translated by Arunava Sinha)
I read this in March. At that point it had been listed for the Stella Prize. It also went on to be listed for the Miles Franklin. A prize is neither here nor there but I am so glad that this book was noted, that it may have reached readers it wouldn’t have reached otherwise.
This novel is semi-autobiographical and it is about a woman during her third episode of psychosis and the subsequent hospitalisation. It is a book that throws up many questions about mental health and the experience of illness, the othering of people who are unwell. Stylistically, this is a brilliant book and the prose is simple and will play on the mind long after this small book is finished.
* A Bookshop in Algiers by Kaouther Adimi (translated by Chris Andrews)
I read this book in April. I try to frequently look up the translators I love to see what new books they have translated. It was by googling the recent titles translated by Andrews that I came across this book.
This is a history of a bookshop but in parallel with the history of Algeria itself. It starts early in the 20th century and Albert Camus appears in this book.
Considering how tiny this book, it is extraordinary in how it covers almost a hundred years of time. As I was reading this book, I was also thinking about Gaza and the legacy of colonisation, that there is a long tail and perhaps that tail is there forever.
* The Meursault Investigation by Kamel Daoud (translated by John Cullen).
I have long loved Albert Camus and The Outsideris one of my favourite books. It has been one of my favourites for over two decades.
The Meursault Investigation is a response to The Outsider from the brother of the Arab that Meursault kills. This book plays on my mind because this is a year that has seen the graphic, violent and documented killing of Arabs, and I was wondering at what point does the world actually extend the same empathy, respect and dignity to all human beings.
I would have loved reading The Meursault Investigation in any year but it was a thought-provoking book to read in particular in this year. I would recommend complementing a reading of The Outsider with this novel by Kamel Daoud. On a technical level, it is difficult to pull off a novel-length monologue and Daoud does this and when I next read this novel, I will be trying to figure out how it’s done.
* Enter Ghost by Isabella Hammad
I don’t want to put a little sticker to designate one book “the book of the year” but this is the book that’s played on my mind the longest, that has impacted me the most in this year that Palestine and Gaza were very much on the mind.
This book would not leave my mind to the point that even as I was writing, I was making notes, and I kept revisiting those notes, trying to figure out how I was going to write about this book.
Eventually it came together in my essay The Ghost of 48 as a conversation with the film The Zone of Interest and the subject of trauma and haunting.
Hammad has also released a tiny book called Recognising the Stranger this year. It is based on a speech that she gave last year just before the violence started in October, 2023.
* Diving, Falling by Kylie Mirmohamadi
I helped launch this book in Melbourne. It is the debut novel of Mirmohamadi and I read it in a day and quietly made my notes that would be the basis of my speech at the launch that happened in September this year.
There are three factors that particularly stand out about this novel.
Firstly, there are the dynamics and motivations of these characters. It is a novel that raises questions about ethics and behaviour as it explores the ripple effects of choices (or compulsions?) of characters.
Secondly, I deeply admire the sentences that appear in Diving, Falling, and they are the same sentences that appear in all of Mirmohamadi’s work. She is a writer who has immersed herself in language and rhythm, and when I first read, I was marvelling at her sentences.
Thirdly, this is a book with undercurrents. The water imagery is there in the title but it’s also right through the novel. There is a layered turbulence beneath a surface that appears so very still.
* Reservoir Bitches by Dahlia de la Cerda (translated by Julia Sanches and Heather Cleary)
What an edgy and compulsive book! This is a very recent read and I was struck by the voice in every single one of these stories.
There’s such energy in these stories and they link to show a world.
This book packs a punch and there is humour and life and something deeply brazen about the styling.
Since I finished reading, it is a book I’ve recommended to a number of people. It reminded me of how great it is to find a book that is immersive and can be devoured in a day.
Also, there was a small vampire cameo in one story but for the most part, it’s the world of realism. I suspect that the author has been inspired to some degree by the films of Quentin Tarantino.
* Thirst by Marina Yuszczuk (translated by Heather Cleary)
I love a vampire book because I consider vampire fiction to be a microcosm within literature. The minute a vampire appears in a book, there are going to be questions about mortality and morality, and often there is a brooding quality that seems to be specific to vampire books.
Thirst opens in a cemetery, and it is about the arrival of a vampire in Buenos Aires in the 19thcentury and then continues into the present day. Even compared to other books featuring vampires, there is so much about death and dying and illness and pain.
What is interesting about the vampire in Thirst is that she is an old-school vampire. Since Anne Rice, vampires have become more human-like and they think about their motivations and the life they’re leading, but in Thirst, the vampire is a monster.
During a session at the OzAsia festival, the writer Bora Chung made a comment about defining what is human. She said that the minute we begin to define what is human, we begin to exclude. As a parallel, perhaps by defining the monster, we can also define what it means to be human.
I am so glad that I discovered this book at the local library and I’m even more glad that it now appears to be in every single bookshop.
Other notable books this year:
* rock flight by Hasib Hourani
* Woman at Point Zero by Nawal El Saadawi (translated by Sherif Hetata)
* Paradise Estate by Max Easton
* Audrey’s Gone Awol by Annie de Monchaux
I am also slowly reading Women in Love by DH Lawrence and making many notes. I read a few pages at a time and then put this down and let it play on my mind for a long, long time. It has been months like this and this is a book to savour. I first read this book about ten years ago and it was tough to get through but maybe it needs to be read in an unhurried manner.
Yumna Kassab 
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