{"id":954,"date":"2026-07-02T15:57:08","date_gmt":"2026-07-02T15:57:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/2026\/07\/02\/your-summer-fiction-reading-list-five-of-the-best-reads-of-2026-so-far-according-to-our-experts\/"},"modified":"2026-07-02T15:57:08","modified_gmt":"2026-07-02T15:57:08","slug":"your-summer-fiction-reading-list-five-of-the-best-reads-of-2026-so-far-according-to-our-experts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/2026\/07\/02\/your-summer-fiction-reading-list-five-of-the-best-reads-of-2026-so-far-according-to-our-experts\/","title":{"rendered":"Your summer fiction reading list: five of the best reads of 2026 so far, according to our experts"},"content":{"rendered":"

The best summer companion is a good book. This year has already given us some truly brilliant ones making it really hard to whittle down the best. But no matter what your tastes are, we have you covered. These novels range from historical fiction to gripping crime drama. From 1800s Ireland, to 1930s Taiwan, to post revolution Iran, this international selection will take you to all sorts of places without ever having to leave your own home.<\/em> <\/p>\n

1. Land<\/a> by Maggie O’Farrell<\/h2>\n

Maggie O\u2019Farrell\u2019s exquisite new novel, Land, is a haunting tale of loss, endurance and renewal. Spanning generations and continents, O\u2019Farrell traces the fragile threads that connect people and place. Moving between intimacy and sweeping historical change, the novel reveals the land itself as a living archive of rupture, survival and belonging.<\/p>\n

Land begins in 1860s Ireland, on an unnamed \u201cwindswept tongue of land\u201d that branches out in the roiling, icy currents of the Atlantic. As a scholar of Ireland\u2019s Great Famine, An Gorta M\u00f3r<\/em>, I am aware of how devastating the 1840s were. One million lives were lost to starvation and disease and two million people emigrated in the immediate aftermath.<\/p>\n

This is the context for O\u2019Farrell\u2019s novel: the land was changed utterly. A whole way of life was eroded, and Land imagines what it must have been like to walk among the ruins, to see an agrarian culture collapse, and, for those left behind, to forge a future from remnants.<\/p>\n

David Nally, Professor of Historical Geography in the Department of Geography<\/em><\/p>\n

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\n Land by Maggie O’Farrell is a haunting tale set in post-famine Ireland about history, map-making and memory<\/a>
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2. Taiwan Travelogue<\/a> by Yang Shuang-zi, translated by Lin King<\/h2>\n

Set in 1930s Taiwan under Japanese colonial rule, this exquisitely layered novel follows Japanese writer Aoyama Chizuko and her Taiwanese interpreter \u00d4ng Tshian-ho’h through a culinary and emotional landscape seeded with deliberate breadcrumbs: details that only reveal their full significance upon return visits to the book.<\/p>\n

Taiwan Travelogue\u2019s meta-fictional architecture is quietly audacious. Yang frames the narrative through a fictional author, a fictional translator and their respective silences, making the unreliable narrator not merely a device but a structural argument about whose knowledge counts and whose remains obstructed.<\/p>\n

What makes the book genuinely pleasurable, however, is its treatment of intimacy between the two women. The queer undertow is rendered through the minute economies of shared meals and unfinished sentences, through which Yang smuggles the most profound questions about desire, friendship and colonial entitlement into the everyday.<\/p>\n

Eva Cheuk-Yin Li is a lecturer in screen industries<\/em><\/p>\n

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\n Taiwan Travelogue wins 2026 International Booker \u2013 a deftly translated tale of food, love and history<\/a>
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3. John of John<\/a> by Stuart Douglas<\/h2>\n

John of John is about the secrets and lies that fester under an oppressive atmosphere that is thick with damp and shame.<\/p>\n

Fifty pages into Douglas Stuart\u2019s atmospheric third novel you can almost feel the cold, damp air of the fictional Hebridean village of Falabay, and come to recognise its brooding and eccentric inhabitants like old friends and neighbours. Through a microcosm of everyday island life, Stuart demonstrates his finely honed skill in exploring the fundamental tensions of the human condition that have preoccupied men and women for centuries.<\/p>\n

An omniscient narrator presides over John of John as we follow John-Calum Macleod \u2013 Cal \u2013 returning home to the Isle of Harris after student life in Edinburgh. Recently graduated from art school, Cal has been studying fashion and textiles, in an echo of the author\u2019s own history.<\/p>\n

The drama and (sometimes verging on implausible) twists of this novel make it feel like a soap opera, in the traditional sense of the term: small, interconnected characters and high melodrama, with domestic spaces as scenes of desire, revelation and unpredictability.<\/p>\n

But this is not a criticism. Stuart\u2019s lyrical prose and atmospheric narrative elevate the genre \u2013 reimagining the domestic and familial tropes by focusing on the unrequited affections of the men in the story.<\/p>\n

Stevie Marsden is a lecturer in publishing<\/em><\/p>\n

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\n John of John: weaving an island tale of secrets that lie beneath repression and shame<\/a>
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4. Cathedrals<\/a> by Claudia Pi\u00f1eiro, translated by Frances Riddle<\/h2>\n

Cathedrals is the latest work by Argentinian crime writer Claudia Pi\u00f1eiro. Here, the crime is the murder and dismemberment of 17-year-old Ana Sard\u00e1 30 years ago. Yet, as ever in Pi\u00f1eiro\u2019s work, nothing is quite what it seems.<\/p>\n

Each section is written from the perspective of a key character, and the truth emerges gradually as the stories intertwine. The first section is narrated by L\u00eda, Ana\u2019s middle sister. Cathedrals opens with L\u00eda\u2019s loss of faith, confirmed 30 years earlier at Ana\u2019s funeral. This sets up a core premise of the book: how can a barbaric act that takes a human life ever be rationalised as \u201cGod\u2019s will\u201d?<\/p>\n

Cathedrals is crime fiction with social comment. The characters\u2019 experiences are connected to the sociopolitical context in Argentina: the dictatorship is still fresh, and society has not broken free of its restrictions. Poverty is rising, and religious doctrine is a powerful means of keeping women in set roles, because in the Bible: \u201c[N]o one cares about heroines, they care about mothers and wives.\u201d Those who think for themselves or break with expectations are ostracised.<\/p>\n

With her characteristic edge-of-the-seat storytelling, Pi\u00f1eiro exposes not only the monsters we live among, but also the society that produces them.<\/p>\n

Helen Vassallo is an associate professor of French and translation<\/em><\/p>\n

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\n Cathedrals by Claudia Pi\u00f1eiro is a gripping Argentinian crime story about gender violence and the weaponisation of religion<\/a>
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5. Women Without Men<\/a> by Shahrnush Parsipur, translated by Faridoun Farrokh<\/h2>\n

Published in 1989, Women Without Men was banned almost immediately and Shahrnush Parsipur was imprisoned twice for writing openly about women\u2019s sexuality and autonomy \u2013 an act of artistic courage the Islamic Republic deemed intolerable. Despite the regime\u2019s attempts to erase it, the novella endured. It moved through underground networks and crossed borders with quiet determination. <\/p>\n

Women Without Men follows five women who flee violent marriages, stifling social expectations, and political chaos. Together, they build a sanctuary in a garden outside Iran\u2019s capital, Tehran. The women\u2019s retreat is not an escape, but a feminist rupture that marks a refusal to live within a world that insists on defining them. It is a choice to build, however precariously, a space where those rules collapse.<\/p>\n

Through mysticism and magical realism, the women\u2019s transformations gain political force. Each metamorphosis becomes an act of resistance: women reclaiming autonomy, dignity and possibility in a society intent on erasing them. <\/p>\n

Parsipur\u2019s novella exposed the brutality of Iranian patriarchy with rare clarity. It did so long before global audiences recognised that violence. The novella\u2019s first English-language publication operates as a bridge between past and present. It makes visible how the structures that constrained women\u2019s lives in the 1950s continue to shape Iran\u2019s political realities today.<\/p>\n

Hind Elhinnawy is senior lecturer in social science<\/em><\/p>\n

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\n Women Without Men: the feminist book that Iran\u2019s regime has failed to silence since the 80s<\/a>
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This article features references to books that have been included for editorial reasons, and may contain links to bookshop.org; if you click on one of the links and go on to buy something, The Conversation UK may earn a commission.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The best summer companion is a good book. This year has already given us some truly brilliant ones making it really hard to whittle down the best. But no matter what your tastes are, we have you covered. These novels range from historical fiction to gripping crime drama. From 1800s Ireland, to 1930s Taiwan, to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-954","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/954","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=954"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/954\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=954"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=954"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=954"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}