Rewrite and translate this title The best books of 2024 to Japanese between 50 and 60 characters. Do not include any introductory or extra text; return only the title in Japanese.

INTERMEZZO, SALLY ROONEY

Sally Rooney’s highly-anticipated fourth novel follows brothers Peter and Ivan as they attempt to navigate life in the wake of their father’s death. Peter, 32, is a charming human rights lawyer; Ivan, 22, a socially awkward chess prodigy. Both are embroiled in slightly messy, complicated relationships (this is Sally Rooney, after all). Peter is in love with two women: Naomi, a 23-year-old student and sometime OnlyFans model, and Sylvia, his ex-girlfriend. Ivan, meanwhile, finds himself falling for 36-year-old Margaret after meeting her at a chess tournament, much to Peter’s dismay. Conflict and hurt ensue.

Some critics might argue that Rooney is a one-trick pony, essentially writing the same book again and again, her characters all left-wing intellectuals with communication issues who end up finding solace from the hellishness of late-stage capitalism in love. Maybe there’s a grain of truth in that. But who cares if she harps on the same strings when she gives us books as affecting as Intermezzo? (SS)

EVENINGS AND WEEKENDS, OÍSIN MCKENNA

Much of Oísin McKenna’s debut novel Evenings and Weekends takes place over the course of one sweltering June weekend, centring on a gaggle of young adults who are all busy falling in and out of love. There’s Maggie, who is pregnant but reluctant to exchange the colour and chaos of London for a pedestrian life in the suburbs with her boyfriend Ed. Ed, meanwhile, is also unsure if settling into a heteronormative, monogamous relationship with Maggie is what he truly wants either. Then there’s Phil, who loves Keith, who loves Louis, who might love Phil. And Phil’s mother Rosaleen, who urgently needs to tell Phil some news which could turn his life upside down. Equal parts moving, equal parts gripping, Evenings and Weekends is undoubtedly one of the best new books to come out of 2024, and McKenna an author to watch in 2025 and beyond. (SS)

PRIVATE RITES, JULIA ARMFIELD

Private Rites, Julia Armfield’s sophomore novel, paints a stark vision of the apocalypse. In Armfield’s dystopian Britain, the rain never stops: pelicans fly overhead, trains are replaced by ferries, houses are routinely swallowed up by the water. Some, in desperation, have taken up arcane rituals and religions once more. It is against this backdrop that estranged sisters Isla, Irene, and Agnes are forced into contact with one another again following their Lear-like father’s death. The novel follows the three women as they reckon with their grief while simultaneously attempting to navigate the world ending around them. (SS)

THE COIN, YASMIN ZAHER

Yasmin Zaher’s The Coin follows an unnamed narrator who has moved from Palestine to New York and now works as a teacher at an all-boys school in Manhattan. She doesn’t find the city glamorous at all – by contrast, she’s disgusted by how dirty everything is and becomes pathologically obsessed with keeping herself clean. When she’s not teaching or having an hours-long bath, she oscillates between Sasha, her Russian boyfriend, and a mysterious man called Trenchcoat who enlists her as an accomplice in a sketchy Birkin bag reselling scheme. With echoes of Ottessa Mosfegh and Elif Batuman, The Coin is a sharp, darkly comic debut which deftly explores both the grubbiness of capitalism and the loneliness of statelessness. (SS)

PIGLET, LOTTIE HAZELL

Lottie Hazell’s debut follows the eponymous Piglet, a 30-something cookbook editor, as she gears up to marry her fiancé, Kit. It soon becomes apparent that there’s a small (but stark) class divide between the pair: Piglet’s parents are the type to spend a Sunday evening enjoying a bowl of Vienetta on the sofa; Kit’s the type to discuss recent art exhibitions over a roast rib of beef. Piglet is aware of the disparity – in fact, her future in-laws’ wealth is part of the reason she was attracted to Kit in the first place. But when Kit confesses to a betrayal that puts their future nuptials in jeopardy, Piglet is forced to reckon with just how far she will go in her pursuit of status. (SS)

ALL FOURS, MIRANDA JULY 

I’ve said it before and I will say it again, I genuinely believe Miranda July should be given a Pulitzer or a Nobel Prize for this novel. It is a masterpiece. The narrator, a multidisciplinary artist, leaves her husband and young child in Los Angeles for a cross-country road trip. Veering off-course (in all possible ways), she is drawn into a very different kind of journey. Like July’s debut novel, The First Bad Man (2015), All Fours is a very unhinged, potent, sexy, funny and profound book. In all seriousness, it’s liable to change your brain chemistry and/or capsize your life (in a good way). (ED)

DIDION AND BABITZ, LILI ANOLIK

Lili Anolik’s dual biography of Joan Didion and Eve Babitz is a compelling read full of literary gossip and scurrilous asides. By her own admission, Anolik is more forgiving of Babitz, and Didion lovers might feel scandalised by her characterisation of the renowned American writer. Personally, I’m happy for biographers to stop feigning perfect objectivity (which is such an affectation after all) and, in this sense, Anolik becomes as biased and unreliable a narrator as the fascinating self-mythologising memoirists she’s writing about. For me, this only adds to the immense readability of Didion and Babitz. 

Like all good biographies, it really anchors us in time and place. Anolik paints a vivid portrait of the highlife (and lowlife) of Los Angeles in the 60s and 70s, tracing the fraught and vaguely symbiotic relationship between these two opaque and intriguing literary legends as they move between scenes and navigate success, failure, friendship and enmity. (ED)

FISH OUT OF WATER, CLAIRE-LOUISE BENNETT

Claire-Louise Bennett is my most cherished literary discovery of recent years. Her collection of stories Pond (2015) and her debut novel Checkout 19 (2021) were so astounding to me, they expanded my concept of what both genres could encompass and where they could take you as a reader. The way she moved between different tenses and used repetition, her ability to evoke the nuances of her internal self and all the idiosyncrasies of the inner voice so vividly.

This latest work, a short story called A Fish Out of Water (published by JOAN Publishing) is a perfect gem of a short story. At its heart, this tale recalls the narrator’s encounter with a work of art – a surreal landscape by Dorothea Tanning – that left her reeling. It’s about the mysterious new information and revelations that can be unlocked within us when we come face to face with artwork that seems to anticipate us. I’ve made it sound very conceptual and cerebral but it’s not like that, it’s not dry. It’s a precious and captivating story I know I’ll return to many many times. (ED)

GOODLORD, ELLA FREARS

What begins as an email to her lettings agent unravels into an unhinged email; an epic, poetic soliloquy addressed to an unseen and unresponding recipient. As the narrator moves between anger, confession and bright, brittle passive aggression, the story of her life unfolds in waves of disclosure – tales about passivity, consent, coming of age, and trying to live on a low income in a spiralling rental economy. Ella Frears is a poet and this, her debut novel, is touched by poetry. Sometimes harrowing and other times hilarious, her prose is always immaculate. I sincerely recommend this book with all my heart. (ED)

WHERE WE COME FROM: RAP, HOME & HOPE IN MODERN BRITAIN, ANIEFIOK EKPOUDOM

Having spent the best part of two years exploring the nooks and crannies of the UK’s rap lineage, south London journalist Aniefiok ‘Neef’ Ekpoudom’s Where We Come From is a touching social history of the genre. It unearths new and unexpected narratives – for example, foregrounding the rise of boundary-pushing Welsh rap group Asteroid Boys against the rich history of Caribbean immigration into Cardiff’s Tiger Bay – but it is in Neef’s eye for the human stories at their core that the book really shines. Moments like Northern grime pioneer Espa walking out of his 9-5 at Apple to pursue an uncertain career in music, or the sudden passing of south London storyteller Cadet are powerfully emotive and have stuck with me the whole year. (SPM)

WILD HOUSES, COLIN BARRETT

A witty and entertaining crime caper with a real pathos underlying it, Wild Houses revolves around the  bungled abduction of a teenage boy, the latest stage of a long-running feud between small-time drug dealers in County Mayo, Ireland. Barrett — who has previously published two short stories collections — is a sharp prose stylist and Wild Houses is a delight to read as much for the richness of the language as the plotting and characterisation (although it is definitely a page turner). It would appear that rumours of the death of the young male novelist have been greatly exaggerated! (JG)

RECOGNISING THE STRANGER, ISABELLA HAMMAD

Without a doubt the most powerful book I have read this year, Recognising the Stranger is formed of two parts: an essay which Hammad (the author of two novels, The Parisian and Enter Ghost) delivered as a lecture at Columbia University September 2023, and an afterword which reflects on the genocide on Gaza. Because the lecture was written immediately before October 7th, it is a haunting historical snapchat of a Palestine which was already in a state of crisis, the violence against Palestinians escalating with no resolution in sight and more children being killed by Israel than any other year since records began. A work of literary criticism as much as political polemic, Recognising the Stranger explores the Palestinian struggle through the lens of Greek tragedy and writers like Edward Said, Ghassan Khanafani and Jean Genet. The afterword, which covers Gaza, is devastating, but so sharp, clear-eyed and insightful that I’d urge anyone to read it. (JG)

SHE’S ALWAYS HUNGRY, ELIZA CLARK

As someone who tore through Penance – Eliza Clark’s second novel, published last year – I was not disappointed by She’s Always Hungry. Ranging in genre from sci-fi horror to dystopian fiction to poignant coming-of-age drama (and the rest!), Clark’s first short story collection has everything I love about her writing: it’s funny, scary, sharp in its social critique and formally experimental in the most enjoyable way possible. (JG)

POOR ARTISTS, GABRIELLE DE LA PUENTE AND ZARINA MUHAMMAD

Poor Artists, the debut non-fiction book by the White Pube duo, is something I’d recommend both to people know who about the art world and people who, like me, have only the vaguest understanding of it (if any at all). I learned so much about how the mechanics of the industry operates, as well as the specific ways that artists are impacted by the same social problems — like the housing crisis, for example — which affect almost all of us. But what I liked most about it is how de la Puente and Muhammad have continually found fun, innovative and surprising ways to get their points across — why write a dry opinion piece about exploitative practices when you can instead have your protagonist chased through a series of galleries by a horde of zombies? (JG)

CREATION LAKE, RACHEL KUSHNER

Creation Lake wins my coveted award for the most despicable fictional protagonist of the year: it follows Sadi, a private sector spy who has been sent to infiltrate an environmental activist group in the south of France which may or may not be planning to sabotage a multimillion pound new infrastructure project. She is relentlessly arrogant, boastful, cynical and amoral (bordering on downright evil), and actually a lot of fun to spend 300 pages with. Creation Lake has all the pleasures of a pacy spy thriller — there are plenty of twists and turns — but it is also seriously concerned with questions of human nature and the state of civilisation today. (JG)

INTERMEZZO, SALLY ROONEY

Sally Rooney’s highly-anticipated fourth novel follows brothers Peter and Ivan as they attempt to navigate life in the wake of their father’s death. Peter, 32, is a charming human rights lawyer; Ivan, 22, a socially awkward chess prodigy. Both are embroiled in slightly messy, complicated relationships (this is Sally Rooney, after all). Peter is in love with two women: Naomi, a 23-year-old student and sometime OnlyFans model, and Sylvia, his ex-girlfriend. Ivan, meanwhile, finds himself falling for 36-year-old Margaret after meeting her at a chess tournament, much to Peter’s dismay. Conflict and hurt ensue.

Some critics might argue that Rooney is a one-trick pony, essentially writing the same book again and again, her characters all left-wing intellectuals with communication issues who end up finding solace from the hellishness of late-stage capitalism in love. Maybe there’s a grain of truth in that. But who cares if she harps on the same strings when she gives us books as affecting as Intermezzo? (SS)

EVENINGS AND WEEKENDS, OÍSIN MCKENNA

Much of Oísin McKenna’s debut novel Evenings and Weekends takes place over the course of one sweltering June weekend, centring on a gaggle of young adults who are all busy falling in and out of love. There’s Maggie, who is pregnant but reluctant to exchange the colour and chaos of London for a pedestrian life in the suburbs with her boyfriend Ed. Ed, meanwhile, is also unsure if settling into a heteronormative, monogamous relationship with Maggie is what he truly wants either. Then there’s Phil, who loves Keith, who loves Louis, who might love Phil. And Phil’s mother Rosaleen, who urgently needs to tell Phil some news which could turn his life upside down. Equal parts moving, equal parts gripping, Evenings and Weekends is undoubtedly one of the best new books to come out of 2024, and McKenna an author to watch in 2025 and beyond. (SS)

PRIVATE RITES, JULIA ARMFIELD

Private Rites, Julia Armfield’s sophomore novel, paints a stark vision of the apocalypse. In Armfield’s dystopian Britain, the rain never stops: pelicans fly overhead, trains are replaced by ferries, houses are routinely swallowed up by the water. Some, in desperation, have taken up arcane rituals and religions once more. It is against this backdrop that estranged sisters Isla, Irene, and Agnes are forced into contact with one another again following their Lear-like father’s death. The novel follows the three women as they reckon with their grief while simultaneously attempting to navigate the world ending around them. (SS)

THE COIN, YASMIN ZAHER

Yasmin Zaher’s The Coin follows an unnamed narrator who has moved from Palestine to New York and now works as a teacher at an all-boys school in Manhattan. She doesn’t find the city glamorous at all – by contrast, she’s disgusted by how dirty everything is and becomes pathologically obsessed with keeping herself clean. When she’s not teaching or having an hours-long bath, she oscillates between Sasha, her Russian boyfriend, and a mysterious man called Trenchcoat who enlists her as an accomplice in a sketchy Birkin bag reselling scheme. With echoes of Ottessa Mosfegh and Elif Batuman, The Coin is a sharp, darkly comic debut which deftly explores both the grubbiness of capitalism and the loneliness of statelessness. (SS)

PIGLET, LOTTIE HAZELL

Lottie Hazell’s debut follows the eponymous Piglet, a 30-something cookbook editor, as she gears up to marry her fiancé, Kit. It soon becomes apparent that there’s a small (but stark) class divide between the pair: Piglet’s parents are the type to spend a Sunday evening enjoying a bowl of Vienetta on the sofa; Kit’s the type to discuss recent art exhibitions over a roast rib of beef. Piglet is aware of the disparity – in fact, her future in-laws’ wealth is part of the reason she was attracted to Kit in the first place. But when Kit confesses to a betrayal that puts their future nuptials in jeopardy, Piglet is forced to reckon with just how far she will go in her pursuit of status. (SS)

ALL FOURS, MIRANDA JULY 

I’ve said it before and I will say it again, I genuinely believe Miranda July should be given a Pulitzer or a Nobel Prize for this novel. It is a masterpiece. The narrator, a multidisciplinary artist, leaves her husband and young child in Los Angeles for a cross-country road trip. Veering off-course (in all possible ways), she is drawn into a very different kind of journey. Like July’s debut novel, The First Bad Man (2015), All Fours is a very unhinged, potent, sexy, funny and profound book. In all seriousness, it’s liable to change your brain chemistry and/or capsize your life (in a good way). (ED)

DIDION AND BABITZ, LILI ANOLIK

Lili Anolik’s dual biography of Joan Didion and Eve Babitz is a compelling read full of literary gossip and scurrilous asides. By her own admission, Anolik is more forgiving of Babitz, and Didion lovers might feel scandalised by her characterisation of the renowned American writer. Personally, I’m happy for biographers to stop feigning perfect objectivity (which is such an affectation after all) and, in this sense, Anolik becomes as biased and unreliable a narrator as the fascinating self-mythologising memoirists she’s writing about. For me, this only adds to the immense readability of Didion and Babitz. 

Like all good biographies, it really anchors us in time and place. Anolik paints a vivid portrait of the highlife (and lowlife) of Los Angeles in the 60s and 70s, tracing the fraught and vaguely symbiotic relationship between these two opaque and intriguing literary legends as they move between scenes and navigate success, failure, friendship and enmity. (ED)

FISH OUT OF WATER, CLAIRE-LOUISE BENNETT

Claire-Louise Bennett is my most cherished literary discovery of recent years. Her collection of stories Pond (2015) and her debut novel Checkout 19 (2021) were so astounding to me, they expanded my concept of what both genres could encompass and where they could take you as a reader. The way she moved between different tenses and used repetition, her ability to evoke the nuances of her internal self and all the idiosyncrasies of the inner voice so vividly.

This latest work, a short story called A Fish Out of Water (published by JOAN Publishing) is a perfect gem of a short story. At its heart, this tale recalls the narrator’s encounter with a work of art – a surreal landscape by Dorothea Tanning – that left her reeling. It’s about the mysterious new information and revelations that can be unlocked within us when we come face to face with artwork that seems to anticipate us. I’ve made it sound very conceptual and cerebral but it’s not like that, it’s not dry. It’s a precious and captivating story I know I’ll return to many many times. (ED)

GOODLORD, ELLA FREARS

What begins as an email to her lettings agent unravels into an unhinged email; an epic, poetic soliloquy addressed to an unseen and unresponding recipient. As the narrator moves between anger, confession and bright, brittle passive aggression, the story of her life unfolds in waves of disclosure – tales about passivity, consent, coming of age, and trying to live on a low income in a spiralling rental economy. Ella Frears is a poet and this, her debut novel, is touched by poetry. Sometimes harrowing and other times hilarious, her prose is always immaculate. I sincerely recommend this book with all my heart. (ED)

WHERE WE COME FROM: RAP, HOME & HOPE IN MODERN BRITAIN, ANIEFIOK EKPOUDOM

Having spent the best part of two years exploring the nooks and crannies of the UK’s rap lineage, south London journalist Aniefiok ‘Neef’ Ekpoudom’s Where We Come From is a touching social history of the genre. It unearths new and unexpected narratives – for example, foregrounding the rise of boundary-pushing Welsh rap group Asteroid Boys against the rich history of Caribbean immigration into Cardiff’s Tiger Bay – but it is in Neef’s eye for the human stories at their core that the book really shines. Moments like Northern grime pioneer Espa walking out of his 9-5 at Apple to pursue an uncertain career in music, or the sudden passing of south London storyteller Cadet are powerfully emotive and have stuck with me the whole year. (SPM)

WILD HOUSES, COLIN BARRETT

A witty and entertaining crime caper with a real pathos underlying it, Wild Houses revolves around the  bungled abduction of a teenage boy, the latest stage of a long-running feud between small-time drug dealers in County Mayo, Ireland. Barrett — who has previously published two short stories collections — is a sharp prose stylist and Wild Houses is a delight to read as much for the richness of the language as the plotting and characterisation (although it is definitely a page turner). It would appear that rumours of the death of the young male novelist have been greatly exaggerated! (JG)

RECOGNISING THE STRANGER, ISABELLA HAMMAD

Without a doubt the most powerful book I have read this year, Recognising the Stranger is formed of two parts: an essay which Hammad (the author of two novels, The Parisian and Enter Ghost) delivered as a lecture at Columbia University September 2023, and an afterword which reflects on the genocide on Gaza. Because the lecture was written immediately before October 7th, it is a haunting historical snapchat of a Palestine which was already in a state of crisis, the violence against Palestinians escalating with no resolution in sight and more children being killed by Israel than any other year since records began. A work of literary criticism as much as political polemic, Recognising the Stranger explores the Palestinian struggle through the lens of Greek tragedy and writers like Edward Said, Ghassan Khanafani and Jean Genet. The afterword, which covers Gaza, is devastating, but so sharp, clear-eyed and insightful that I’d urge anyone to read it. (JG)

SHE’S ALWAYS HUNGRY, ELIZA CLARK

As someone who tore through Penance – Eliza Clark’s second novel, published last year – I was not disappointed by She’s Always Hungry. Ranging in genre from sci-fi horror to dystopian fiction to poignant coming-of-age drama (and the rest!), Clark’s first short story collection has everything I love about her writing: it’s funny, scary, sharp in its social critique and formally experimental in the most enjoyable way possible. (JG)

POOR ARTISTS, GABRIELLE DE LA PUENTE AND ZARINA MUHAMMAD

Poor Artists, the debut non-fiction book by the White Pube duo, is something I’d recommend both to people know who about the art world and people who, like me, have only the vaguest understanding of it (if any at all). I learned so much about how the mechanics of the industry operates, as well as the specific ways that artists are impacted by the same social problems — like the housing crisis, for example — which affect almost all of us. But what I liked most about it is how de la Puente and Muhammad have continually found fun, innovative and surprising ways to get their points across — why write a dry opinion piece about exploitative practices when you can instead have your protagonist chased through a series of galleries by a horde of zombies? (JG)

CREATION LAKE, RACHEL KUSHNER

Creation Lake wins my coveted award for the most despicable fictional protagonist of the year: it follows Sadi, a private sector spy who has been sent to infiltrate an environmental activist group in the south of France which may or may not be planning to sabotage a multimillion pound new infrastructure project. She is relentlessly arrogant, boastful, cynical and amoral (bordering on downright evil), and actually a lot of fun to spend 300 pages with. Creation Lake has all the pleasures of a pacy spy thriller — there are plenty of twists and turns — but it is also seriously concerned with questions of human nature and the state of civilisation today. (JG)