This past month, a variety of avid readers and prominent writers, including John Lanchester and Patmeena Sabit, delved into captivating stories and shared their literary discoveries for March.
John Lanchester offered a glimpse into his reading habits, noting that he often reserves contemporary fiction for the period after he finishes writing his own novels. This March, he particularly enjoyed several titles across different genres. His British fiction picks included Alexander Starritt’s Drayton and Mackenzie, a compelling narrative about the interplay of friendship and business, and Tom Crewe’s The New Life, which vividly portrays gay life in the 1890s.
From the European fiction scene, Lanchester highlighted Christian Kracht’s Eurotrash, describing it as an amusing novel about an unconventional road trip with a eccentric parent. He also found Vincenzo Latronico’s Perfection to be a stark and insightful exploration of the challenging realities faced by digital nomads. Finally, Olga Tokarczuk’s Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead captivated him as an unclassifiable yet utterly riveting mystery.