BBC Best Fiction 2024

An unforgettably rich and vivid historical novel set in eighteenth-century India, London, and Paris, about a young man’s dream of leaving a mark on the world.Abbas is just seventeen years old when he leaves his family to serve in the court of Tipu Sultan, the beleaguered ruler of Mysore. An inspired wood-carver, Abbas is apprenticed to a master toy maker in order to build a massive tiger automaton, a gift to celebrate the return of the sultan's sons from British captivity. Working alongside the legendary French clock maker Monsieur du Leze, Abbas hones his craft, learns to read French, and then meets Jehanne, the daughter of one of du Leze’s fellow expatriates. When du Leze is finally permitted to return home to Paris, he begs Abbas to accompany him. But by the time Abbas travels to Europe, the palace has been looted by British forces, and the tiger automaton disappears. To prove himself and make a livelihood in Paris—with Jehanne at his side—Abbas must retrieve the tiger from an estate in the English countryside, where it is displayed in a collection of plundered Moorish and Oriental art.A hero’s quest, a love story, a novel that traces the bloody legacy of colonialism across two continents and fifty years, Loot is a dazzling, wildly inventive, and irresistible feat of storytelling from an Indian American writer at the height of her powers.

When the enslaved Jim overhears that he is about to be sold to a man in New Orleans, separated from his wife and daughter forever, he decides to hide on nearby Jackson Island until he can formulate a plan. Meanwhile, Huck Finn has faked his own death to escape his violent father, recently returned to town. As all readers of American literature know, thus begins the dangerous and transcendent journey by raft down the Mississippi River toward the elusive and too-often-unreliable promise of the Free States and beyond.While many narrative set pieces of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn remain in place (floods and storms, stumbling across both unexpected death and unexpected treasure in the myriad stopping points along the river’s banks, encountering the scam artists posing as the Duke and Dauphin…), Jim’s agency, intelligence and compassion are shown in a radically new light.A brilliant, action-packed reimagining of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, both harrowing and ferociously funny, told from the enslaved Jim's point of view.

Hera is in her mid-twenties, which seems young to everyone except people in their mid-twenties.Since leaving school, she has been trying to kick and scream into existence a life she cares about, but with little success so far.Until she meets Arthur.He works with her, he is older than her, he is also married. But in her soulless office—the large cold room she feels destined to spend her life in—he is a source of much-needed sustenance.And though Hera has previously dated women, she soon falls headlong into a workplace romance that will quickly consume her life.Laugh-out-loud funny, deeply moving and whip smart, Green Dot is a story about the terrible allure of wanting something that promises nothing and the winding, torturous, often hilarious journey we take in deciding who we are and who we want to be.EndorsementsA best book of 2024 in Stylist, Daily Mail, The I, Irish Times, Sunday Times and Red."One of the best books you will read all year" — Elizabeth Day"Incredibly funny. Every sentence sparkles" — Caitlin Moran"Imagine the intensity of Annie Ernaux's Simple Passion written with the lightness of Bridget Jones's Diary and the irreverence of Fleabag" — The Sunday Times"One of the most entertaining reads we've had in a long time" — Stylist"This year's Sorrow and Bliss. Hilarious and heartbreaking" — Daily Mail"So droll, bawdy, sexy, hilarious and good fun, everything you read thereafter seems dull in comparison" — The I"The debut of the year" — The I"A hilarious novel about falling in love with someone you really shouldn't ... I raced through it with increasing delight" — Daily Mail"Witty as Fleabag, psychologically insightful as Sally Rooney" — Lucie Whitehouse"If you liked Fleabag you will love Green Dot" — Pandora Sykes"It's positively indecent that a book this funny should also be so moving and wise and well-observed" — Rebecca Wait"Gutting, funny, smart, smart, smart. Madeleine Gray is a hilarious, humane, and highly perceptive writer" — Claire Lombardo"Sentence by sentence perfection. Razor sharp, hilarious, clever, and devastatingly honest" — Louise O'Neill"A novel everyone will be talking about" — Grazia"Full of incredibly sharp sentences and darkly comic moments" — BBC Culture

Still reeling from the chaos of their wedding, Evelyn and Richard arrive on a tiny Greek island for their honeymoon. It’s the end of the season and a storm is imminent. Determined to make the best of it, they check into the sun-soaked doors of the Villa Rosa. Already feeling insecure after seeing the “beautiful people,” the seemingly endless number of young models and musicians lounging along the Mediterranean, Evelyn is wary of the hotel’s owner, Isabella, who seems to only have eyes for Richard.Isabella ostensibly disapproves of every request Evelyn makes, seemingly annoyed at the fact that they are there at all. Isabella is also preoccupied with her chance to enthrall the only other guests—an American producer named Marcus and his partner Debbie—with the story of “the sleepwalkers,” a couple who had stayed at the hotel recently and drowned.Everyone seems to want to talk about the sleepwalkers, save for Hamza, a young Turkish man Evelyn had seen with some “beautiful people,” as well as the “dapper little man”—the strange yet fashionable owner of the island’s lone antiques and gift shop she sees everywhere.But what at first seemed eccentric, decorative, or simply ridiculous, becomes a living nightmare. Evelyn and Richard are separated the night of the storm and forced to face dark truths, but it’s their confessions around the origins of their relationship and the years leading up to their marriage that might save them.Exhilarating, suspenseful, and also very funny, The Sleepwalkers asks urgent questions about relationships, sexuality, and the darkest elements of contemporary society—where our most terrible secrets are hidden in plain sight.Patricia Highsmith meets White Lotus in this surprising and suspenseful modern gothic story following a couple running from both secretive pasts and very present dangers while honeymooning on a Greek island.EndorsementsFrom “one of the UK’s most interesting authors” — Kirkus Reviews

Obiefuna has always been the black sheep of his family—sensitive where his father, Anozie, is pragmatic, a dancer where his brother, Ekene, is a natural athlete. But when an intimate connection blossoms between Obiefuna and a boy from a nearby village, happiness is fleeting once his father catches them together and banishes him to boarding school.Obiefuna finds and hides who he truly is as he navigates his new school’s strict hierarchy and unpredictable violence. Back home, his mother Uzoamaka must contend with the absence of her beloved son, her husband’s cryptic reasons for sending him away, and the hard truths that they’ve all been hiding from. As Nigeria teeters on the brink of criminalizing same-sex relationships, Obiefuna’s life, or the life he wants to live, becomes even further out of reach and more dangerous than ever before.Told from the alternating perspectives of Obiefuna and Uzoamaka, Blessings is an elegant and exquisitely moving story that asks how to live freely in a country that forbids one’s truest self, and the love that can flourish in spite of it all.Moonlight meets Purple Hibiscus in this gay coming-of-age novel from an astonishing young talent, set in post-military Nigeria and culminating in the Same-Sex Marriage Prohibition Act of 2014.

An autobiographical novel from Édouard Louis about social class, transformation, and the perils of leaving the past behind.One question took center stage in my life: it focused all my thoughts and occupied every moment I was alone — how could I get this revenge, by what means? I tried everything.Édouard Louis longs for a life beyond the poverty, discrimination, and violence in his working-class hometown — so he sets out for school in Amiens, and, later, university in Paris. He sheds the provincial “Eddy” for an elegant new name, determined to eradicate every aspect of his past. He reads incessantly; he dines with aristocrats; he spends nights with millionaires and drug-dealers alike. Everything he does is motivated by a single desire: to become someone else. At once harrowing and profound, Change is not just a personal odyssey, a story of dreams and of “the beautiful violence of being torn away,” but a profound portrait of a society divided by class, power, and inequality.

“How ought one to live?” This is the question that obsesses London-based publisher Ayush, driving him to question every act of consumption. He embarks on a radical experiment in his own life and in the lives of those connected to him: his practical, economist husband, their twins, and even the authors he edits and publishes. One of those authors, a mysterious M. N. Opie, writes a story about a young academic involved in a car accident that causes her life to veer in an unexpected direction. Another author, an economist, describes how the gift of a cow to an impoverished family on the West Bengal–Bangladesh border sets them on a startling path to tragedy.Together, these connected narratives raise the question: How free are we really to make our own choices? In a scathing, compassionate quarrel with the world, Neel Mukherjee confronts our fundamental assumptions about economics, race, appropriation, and the tangled ethics of contemporary life.

There’s a fine line between bending the truth and telling bald-faced lies, and Javier Perez is willing to cross it.Javier Perez is a hustler from a family of hustlers. He learns from an early age how to play the game to his own advantage, how his background—murdered drug dealer dad, single cash-strapped mom, best friend serving time for gang activity—becomes a key to doors he didn’t even know existed. This kind of story, molded in the right way, is just what college-admissions committees are looking for, and a full academic scholarship to a prestigious university brings Javi one step closer to his dream of becoming a famous writer.As a college student, Javi embellishes his life story until there’s not even a kernel of truth left. The only real connection to his past is the occasional letter he trades with his childhood best friend, Gio, who doesn’t seem to care about Javi’s newfound awareness of white privilege or the school-to-prison pipeline. Soon after graduating, a viral essay transforms Javi from a writer on the rise to a journalist at a legendary magazine where the editors applaud his “unique perspective.” But Gio more than anyone knows who Javi really is, and sees through his game. Once he’s released from prison and Javi offers to cut him in on the deal, will he play along with Javi’s charade, or will it all come crumbling down?

May 2021. London.Campbell Flynn — art historian and celebrity intellectual — is entering the empire of middle age. Fuelled by an appetite for admiration and the finer things, controversy and novelty, he doesn't take people half as seriously as they take themselves, which will prove to be his first huge mistake.The second is Milo Manghasa, his beguiling and provocative student. Milo inhabits a more precarious world, has experiences and ideas which excite his teacher. He also has a plan.Over the course of an incendiary year, a web of crimes, secrets and scandals will be revealed, and Campbell Flynn may not be able to protect himself from the shattering exposure of all his privilege really involves. But then, when his life came tumbling down, it would occur in public.An irresistible, unputdownable, state-of-the-nation novel — the story of one man's epic fall from grace.Endorsements"A brilliant state-of-the-nation novel that pulls down the facades of high society, and knocks over the 'good liberal' house-of-cards. O'Hagan is not only a peerless chronicler of our times, but has other gifts — of generosity, humour and tenderness — which make this novel an utter joy to read." — Monica Ali

As Ballina in the west of Ireland prepares for its biggest weekend of the year, the simmering feud between small-time dealer Cillian English and County Mayo's fraternal enforcers, Gabe and Sketch Ferdia, spills over into violence and an ugly ultimatum. When the reclusive Dev answers his door on Friday night, he finds Doll—Cillian's bruised, sullen, teenage brother—in the clutches of Gabe and Sketch. Jostled by his nefarious cousins, goaded by his dead mother's dog, and struck by spinning lights, Dev is unwillingly drawn headlong into the Ferdias' revenge fantasy.Meanwhile, seventeen-year-old Nicky can't shake the feeling that something bad has happened to her boyfriend Doll. Hungover, reeling from a fractious Friday night, and plagued by ghosts of her own, Nicky sets out on a feverish mission to save Doll, even as she questions her future in Ballina.A darkly funny and deeply moving debut novel about crimes of desperation, dreams abandoned, and small-town secrets that won’t stay buried.

I heard you laughing from time to time and you stayed lying there on the flattened hay, and after you left, your body's imprint was left behind, and I rested my hand on the dry blades of grass that were still slightly warm and I wanted to carry on feeling you forever, really I did, but everything changed when you began to speak to me, on 7 July to be precise.In the tempestuous summer of 2005, on a day that is as hot as the inside of a bovine, a 14-year-old farmer's daughter makes friends with the local veterinarian who looks after her father's cows. He has reached 'the biblical age of seven times seven' and is trying to escape trauma, while she is trying to escape into a world of fantasy. Their obsessive reliance on each other's stories builds into a terrifying trap, with a confession at the heart of it that threatens to rip their small Dutch community apart.

Oyeyemi treats you to a kaleidoscopic weekend in Prague, as dazzling as it is effortlessly unique. Get lost in the story like you would an unfamiliar city and let it reward you with moments of philosophical clarity, wheelbarrow rides, raw emotion and raw onions.It is a story about the lies behind the lies we tell and a city as a living thing, sustained by the lives of its inhabitants. Suffused with warmth and joy, Parasol Against the Axe is a love letter to Prague, and to the art of storytelling.This novel is a holiday, an adventure, a marvel and a guide.Endorsements"A writer of sentences so elegant that they gleam." — Ali Smith"Entirely original." — Stylist"Oyeyemi has mastered the art of bold, expansive storytelling." — Irenosen Okojie"A writer we should be delirious to have as a contemporary." — IndependentThe new novel from the Goldsmiths Prize-shortlisted author Helen Oyeyemi.

It’s March of 2019, and twenty-eight-year-old Jules Gold—anxious, artistically frustrated, and internet-obsessed—has been living alone in the apartment she once shared with the man she thought she’d marry when her younger sister Poppy comes to crash. Indefinitely. Poppy is a year out from a suicide attempt only Jules knows about, and as she searches for work and meaning in Brooklyn, Jules spends her days hate-scrolling the feeds of Mormon mommy bloggers and waiting for life to happen.Then the hives that’ve plagued Poppy since childhood flare up. Jules’s uterus turns against her. Poppy brings home a maladjusted rescue dog named Amy Klobuchar. The girls’ mother—a newly devout Messianic Jew—starts falling for the same deep-state conspiracy theories as Jules’s online mommies. A trip home to Florida ends in disaster. Amy Klobuchar may or may not have rabies. And Jules struggles halfheartedly to scrape her way to the source of her ennui, slowly and cruelly coming to blame Poppy for her own insufficiencies as a friend, a writer, and a sister. As the year shambles on and a new decade looms near, Jules and Poppy—comrades, competitors, permanent fixtures in each other’s lives—must ask themselves what they want their futures to look like, and whether they’ll spend them together or apart.Deadpan, dark, and brutally funny, Worry is a sharp portrait of two sisters enduring a dread-filled American moment from a nervy new voice in contemporary fiction.Frances Ha meets No One Is Talking About This in a debut that follows two twenty-something siblings-turned-roommates navigating an absurd world about to suffer great change—a Seinfeldian novel of existentialism and sisterhood.