BIG Bookshelf

Fiction

The Dream Count – Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie stands out as one of the most powerful contemporary voices, whose oeuvre blends the personal with the political. Adichie’s writing invites reflection on some of the most urgent issues of our time. Half of a Yellow Sun (2006)is a gripping novel that portrays the Nigerian-Biafran War through intimate and intersecting lives. It offers an essential reminder of the fragility of social order, and how colonial legacies continue to shape national destinies. In Americanah (2013) Adichie explores racism, painting a vivid portrait of young, middle-class Nigerian migrants navigating race in both the United States and the UK. The novel is profound and humorous, offering a sharp yet tender portrayal of how migration moulds the lives and bodies of those who migrate.

Her latest book, The Dream Count recalls the small gestures and attitudes that became part of our everyday life during the pandemic. As we begin the summer, it’s a timely reflection on the value of freedom and human connection.

Adichie will be in Brussels this autumn. Bozar will host an interview with her on 6 October.

Recommended by Elisa Díaz Gras

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Time Shelter (Времеубежище) – Georgi Gospodinov

A mysterious man named Gaustine opens a ‘clinic for the past’ that offers a unique treatment for Alzheimer’s sufferers: each floor, room and space recreates a decade from the 20th century to transport patients back in time. As the rooms become more convincing and reassuring, increasing numbers of healthy people begin seeking out the clinic as a ‘time shelter’, to escape the horrors of the present, which leads to unexpected consequences.

Awarded the Strega European Prize in 2021 and the International Booker Prize in 2023, Gospodinov explores the complexity of memory, identity and European history, highlighting the dangers of nostalgia. Anchored in historical and contemporary Bulgarian and Balkan events, the author creates a story that feels relevant and accessible to anyone.

Recommended by Valeria Santi

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Babel – R.F. Kuang

Following an outbreak of cholera in 1830s Canton (modern day Guangzhou, southern China), the orphaned Robin Swift is taken from his home by a mysterious man to London. In the ensuing years, he is forced into a strict language learning regime by his new ‘father’, before then being enrolled into the translation department at Oxford University. But when strangers begin to cross his path, what seemed like a miraculous piece of good fortune, slowly turns into both a physical prison and an ethical dilemma for Robin. Forced to renounce his Cantonese identity at the height of the opium wars, he discovers the real reason why the British Empire is desperate for translators.

This is an excellent summer read for fans of historical fiction, since there is a lot to learn about the perspectives of the British Empire from a Cantonese point of view, as described by a Chinese-American author. The novel won the Nebula Award for Best Novel, and was both a Blackwell’s Book of the Year and a New York Times bestseller.

Recommended by Matthew Wilson

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Precipice – Robert Harris

Britain is on the brink of being sucked into war in Europe. The prime minister, struggling with a fractious cabinet, finds solace in an extra-marital affair with a woman less than half his age. He writes to her obsessively, sharing diplomatic dispatches and state secrets, flouting rules he has put in place for national security. So far, so normal, but this is the summer of 1914, and the PM is H.H. Asquith. The most remarkable facet of this book is that the love letters by Asquith are real, wholly unembellished and are sequestered in Oxford’s Bodleian Library.

Harris weaves history and fiction together to remind us that political leaders are only ever human, with all the frailty that presupposes, but their decisions can be life and death for the rest of us. He also teases out the threads of the sea change in social attitudes that the war eventually releases: women’s suffrage and increased rights, the demise of aristocracy’s stranglehold on power and the continued rise of the media as a political force. Plus ça change.

Recommended by Alison Howson

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If Russia Wins: A Scenario – Carlo Masala, translated by Olivier Mannoni

I was drawn to reading this book because it starts with the war in Ukraine, as the author weaves a fictional scenario of a Russian victory after many years of fighting. Russia, now led by Putin's successor, invades a Russian-speaking Latvian town (Narva) overnight, testing the political unity of NATO members at a time of fragility. The Russian leader’s personality is intriguing: in the vein of Gorbachev, he creates confusion. What is Russia without Putin? A potential ally or a structural adversary? Masala, a university professor and military expert, confronts us with a question that directly concerns the present: in such a scenario, would the NATO allies take the risk of reacting, as Article 5 requires, despite the tragic spiral that such action would engender? The virtue of this book is that, wrapped in a fictional story set in March 2028, it poses all the strategic questions we should be asking ourselves right now as the war continues to rage.

Recommended by Margaux Cassan

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Non-Fiction

Sovietistan – Erika Fatland

After less than three decades of autonomy, all five ‘Stans’ are still searching for their own identities, caught between East and West, old and new. Situated at the heart of Asia, these five countries are surrounded by major powers like Russia and China and restless neighbours, such as Iran and Afghanistan. Fatland, a Norwegian anthropologist, playfully captures the tensions of the region.

Reminiscent of Anthony Bourdain, Fatland’s travel diary is part hard-hitting journalism, part history lesson penned in quick-witted prose. She takes the reader on a journey across the route of the old Silk Road. In her reportage, Fatland threads her sense of adventure through detailed research and geopolitical analysis in a captivating narrative that explores the modern societies of the Stans, their ancient and modern history and the culture of lands that remain largely unknown to many Westerners. Her trip certainly sparked my own curiosity to book a trip further afield, trading Barcelona for Bishkek.

Recommended by Kate O'Riordan

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Divided: Why We're Living in an Age of Walls – Tim Marshall

Tim Marshall, a former diplomatic editor for Sky News, has written a string of bestsellers about the impact geography has on international politics in recent years. This book asks why, despite this being an age of globalization and instant communication, more walls and fences keep going up around the world. Old conflicts, fear and the desire for security continue to keep people apart, resulting in the creation of both physical and psychological barriers. Marshall mixes clear historical explanations with anecdotes from his own travels and experience as a journalist, which makes the book feel vivid and accessible rather than overly academic. I would recommend this book to anyone interested in understanding modern global issues, from shifting borders to debates over identity and nationalism. It offers a perspective on why building a shared global identity is still so difficult.

Recommended by Lea Casucci

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Chip War – Chris Miller

Miller, a historian with extensive expertise in international relations, uncovers the technical evolution of the microchip and its growing complexity, revealing how delicate its tiny components have become, how expensive they are to design and produce, how critical they are for the most basic things in our lives and, ultimately, how interdependent the world is.

Combining analytical rigor with extensive archival research and more than a hundred interviews with semiconductor experts from all domains, Miller does not treat US dominance of the chip industry as inevitable but sees it as the result of a combination of self-propelling forces and incentives. No country controls the full supply chain; design, fabrication, lithography and materials are distributed across the US, Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, China and the Netherlands. Fragmentation has enabled extraordinary efficiency, but also vulnerability. As geopolitical tensions rise, these supply chains become potential chokepoints, making chips not only economic assets but strategic liabilities.

Recommended by Leonardo Sala

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One Day I Will Write About This Place – Binyavanga Wainaina

In this extraordinary memoir, Wainaina recounts his childhood in a middle-class Kenyan family and his search for a literary voice as a young man. A self-described daydreamer, Wainaina sketches his world in vivid detail. As his reputation grows, he partakes in the international literary circuit, casting his ironic gaze on the ‘donor community’, manned by worried officials anxious of meeting targets and bound by impact assessments and tedious box-ticking.

The ‘place’ of the title is less a fixed geography than a shifting emotional and cultural landscape shaped by family, memory, language and layered codes. The text is peppered with Gikuyu and Kiswahili as the author grapples with a sense of belonging and Kenya’s colonial legacy, his own lived experience often jarring with the Kenya of popular imagination. Politics and power are always simmering in the background.

Best known for his satirical essay How to Write About Africa, Wainaina is acutely aware of the stereotypes dominating Western narratives. In this memoir, he turns a lens back on them, offering something richer in return.

Recommended by Paul Nolan

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