100 Literary Favourites of 2012

NOVELS
1. The Liars’ Gospel (Viking, 2012) / Naomi Alderman
2. Carry the One (Simon & Schuster, 2012) / Carol Anshaw
3. Ancient Light (Viking/Alfred A. Knopf, 2012) / John Banville
4. Beautiful Lies (Harvill Secker, 2012) / Clare Clark
5. The Missing Shade of Blue (Abacus, 2012) / Jennie Erdal
6. The Round House (Harper, 2012) / Louise Erdrich
7. A Possible Life (Hutchinson/Henry Holt, 2012) / Sebastian Faulks
8. Broken Harbor (Viking, 2012) / Tana French
9. A Perfectly Good Man (Fourth Estate, 2012) / Patrick Gale
10. The Lighthouse Road (Unbridled Books, 2012) / Peter Geye

11. Arcadia (Voice/Hyperion, 2012) / Lauren Groff
12. Alone in the Classroom (MacLehose Press, 2012) / Elizabeth Hay
13. Scenes from Early Life (Fourth Estate, 2012) / Philip Hensher
14. In the Orchard, the Swallows (Faber & Faber, 2012) / Peter Hobbs
15. The Orphan Master’s Son (Random House, 2012) / Adam Johnson
16. The Uninvited Guests (Harper/Chatto & Windus, 2012) / Sadie Jones
17. Some Kind of Fairy Tale (Gollancz/Doubleday, 2012) / Graham Joyce
18. The Daughters of Mars (Sceptre, 2012) / Thomas Keneally
19. Flight Behavior (Harper/HarperCollins/Faber & Faber, 2012) / Barbara Kingsolver
20. Gone to the Forest (Free Press, 2012) / Katie Kitamura

21. Swimming Home (And Other Stories/Faber & Faber/Bloomsbury USA, 2012) / Deborah Levy
22. The Cutting Season (Harper/Serpent’s Tail, 2012) / Attica Locke
23. Under the Same Stars (Simon & Schuster, 2012) / Tim Lott
24. The Guardians (Farrar, Straus & Giroux/Granta Books, 2012) / Sarah Manguso
25. Bring Up the Bodies (Fourth Estate/Henry Holt, 2012) / Hilary Mantel
26. The Girl Who Fell From the Sky (published as Trapeze in the US) (Other Press/Little, Brown, 2012) / Simon Mawer
27. The Heart Broke In (Canongate, 2012) / James Meek
28. The Life of Objects (Alfred A. Knopf, 2012) / Susanna Moore
29. John Saturnall’s Feast (Bloomsbury, 2012) / Lawrence Norfolk
30. The Healing (Nan A. Talese/Knopf Doubleday, 2012) / Jonathan Odell

31. The Light of Amsterdam (Bloomsbury, 2012) / David Park
32. The Cove (Canongate Books/Ecco, 2012) / Ron Rash
33. Hawthorn & Child (Granta Books, 2012) / Keith Ridgway
34. Prosperous Friends (Grove Press/Atlantic Monthly Press, 2012) / Christine Schutt
35. The Forgetting Tree (St. Martin’s Press, 2012) / Tatjana Soli
36. At Last (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 212) / Edward St. Aubyn
37. Secondhand Daylight (Corsair, 2012) / D.J. Taylor
38. The Cleaner of Chartres (Viking, 2012) / Salley Vickers
39. Beautiful Ruins (Harper/HarperCollins, 2012) / Jess Walter

TRANSLATED FICTION
1. Léon & Louise (trans. from the German by John Brownjohn) (Haus Publishing, 2012) / Alex Capus
2. Where I Left My Soul (trans. from the French by Geoffrey Strachan) (MacLehose Press, 2012) / Jérôme Ferrari
3. The Fall of the Stone City (trans. from the French by John Hodgson) (Canongate Books, 2012) / Ismail Kadare
4. The Hunger Angel (trans. from the German by Philip Boehm) (Metropolitan Books/Henry Holt/Portobello Books, 2012) / Herta Müller
5. Three Strong Women (trans. from the French, Trois femmes puissantes, by John Fletcher) (MacLehose Press, 2012) / Marie NDiaye
6. Traveler of the Century (trans. from the Spanish, El Viajero Del Siglo, by Nick Caistor & Lorenza Garcia) (Farrar, Straus & Giroux/Pushkin Press, 2012) / Andrés Neuman
7. Silent House (trans. from the Turkish by Robert Finn) (Alfred A. Knopf/Faber & Faber, 2012) / Orhan Pamuk
8. Raised from the Ground (trans. from the Portuguese by Margaret Jull Costa) (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012) / José Saramago
9. We’re Flying: Stories (trans. from the German by Michael Hofmann) (Other Press, 2012) / Peter Stamm
10. The Bathing Women (trans. from the Chinese by Hongling Zhang & Jason Sommer) (Blue Door, 2013) / Tie Ning

11. Dublinesque (trans. from the Spanish by Rosalind Harvey & Anne McLean) (Harvill Secker, 2012) / Enrique Vila-Matas

FIRST NOVELS
1. What Happened to Sophie Wilder (Tin House Press, 2012) / Christopher R. Beha
2. A Land More Kind Than Home (Doubleday/William Morrow/HarperCollins, 2012) / Wiley Cash
3. You Came Back (Grand Central Publishing, 2012) / Christopher Coake
4. The Orchardist (Harper/Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2012) / Amanda Coplin
5. Summer (Abacus, 2012) / Tom Darling
6. The Starboard Sea (St. Martin’s Press, 2012) / Amber Dermont
7. If This Is Home (Picador, 2012) / Stuart Evers
8. Absolution (Atlantic Books, 2012) / Patrick Flanery
9. Too Bright to Hear Too Loud to See (Soho Press, 2012) / Juliann Garey
10. The Whipping Club (T.S. Poetry Press, 2012) / Deborah Henry

11. The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry (Doubleday/Random House, 2012) / Rachel Joyce
12. An Unexpected Guest (Little, Brown, 2012) / Anne Korkeakivi
13. The Headmaster’s Wager (Fourth Estate/Hogarth, 2012) / Vincent Lam
14. The Land of Decoration (Henry Holt/Chatto & Windus, 2012) / Grace McCleen
15. The Lighthouse (Salt Publishing, 2012) / Alison Moore
16. The Spider King’s Daughter (Faber & Faber, 2012) / Chibundu Onuzo
17. In the Shadow of the Banyan (Simon & Schuster, 2012) / Vaddey Ratner
18. Seating Arrangements (Alfred A. Knopf, 2012) / Maggie Shipstead
19. The Light Between Oceans (Doubleday/Scribner, 2012) / M.L. Stedman
20. Narcopolis (Faber & Faber, 2012) / Jeet Thayil

STORIES
1. Stay Awake (Ballantine Books, 2012) / Dan Chaon
2. Tea at the Midland and Other Stories (Comma Press, 2012) / David Constantine
3. This Is How You Lose Her (Riverhead Books, 2012) / Junot Diaz
4. What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank (Alfred A. Knopf/Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2012) / Nathan Englander
5. Married Love and Other Stories (Jonathan Cape/Harper Perennial, 2012) / Tessa Hadley
6. Suddenly, a Knock on the Door (trans. from the Hebrew by Sondra Silverston, Miriam Shlensinger & Nathan Englander) (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2012) / Etgar Keret
7. Birds of a Lesser Paradise (Scribner, 2012) / Megan Mayhew Bergman
8. Dear Life (Chatto & Windus/Alfred A. Knopf, 2012) / Alice Munro
9. Shout Her Lovely Name (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012) / Natalie Serber
10. Battleborn (Riverhead, 2012) / Claire Vaye Watkins

POETRY
1. Bewilderment: New Poems & Translations (University of Chicago Press, 2012) / David Ferry
2. Place: New Poems (Ecco Press/Carcanet Press, 2012) / Jorie Graham
3. The Overhaul (Picador, 2012) / Kathleen Jamie
4. Sky Thick With Fireflies (Salmon Publishing, 2012) / Ethna McKiernan
5. Songs and Sonnets (Enitharmon Press, 2012) / Paul Muldoon
6. Stag’s Leap (Alfred A. Knopf, 2012) / Sharon Olds
7. A Thousand Mornings (Penguin Press, 2012) / Mary Oliver
8. Nonsense (Faber & Faber, 2012) / Christopher Reid
9. Night of the Republic (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012) / Alan Shapiro
10. Thrall (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012) / Natasha Trethewey

NONFICTION
1. Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe, 1944-56 (Doubleday/Allen Lane, 2012) / Anne Applebaum
2. Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity (Random House/Portobello Books, 2012) / Katherine Boo
3. Patrick Leigh Fermor: An Adventure (John Murray, 2012) / Artemis Cooper
4. Midnight in Peking: How the Murder of a Young Englishwoman Haunted the Last Days of Old China (Penguin, 2012) / Paul French
5. Portrait of a Novel: Henry James and the Making of an American Masterpiece (Liveright/W.W. Norton, 2012) / Michael Gorra
6. What Light Can Do: Essays on Art, Imagination, and the Natural World (Ecco, 2012) / Robert Haas
7. Titian: His Life (Harper, 2012) / Sheila Hale
8. In the Shadow of the Sword: The Battle for Global Empire and the End of the Ancient World (Little, Brown, 2012) / Tom Holland
9. The Robber of Memories: A River Journey Through Colombia (Granta Books, 2012) / Michael Jacobs
10. The Old Ways: A Journey On Foot (Hamish Hamilton/Viking Adult, 2012) / Robert Macfarlane

11. Gossip from the Forest: The Tangled Roots of Our Forests and Fairytales (Granta Books, 2012) / Sara Maitland
12. Waiting for the Barbarians: Essays from the Classics to Pop Culture (New York Review Books, 2012) / Daniel Mendelsohn
13. Country Girl (Faber & Faber, 2012) / Edna O’Brien
14. Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom: China, the West, and the Epic Story of the Taiping Civil War (Alfred A. Knopf, 2012) / Stephen R. Platt
15. Bertie: A Life of Edward VII (Chatto & Windus, 2012) / Jane Ridley
16. Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty (Crown, 2012) / Daron Acemoglu & James A. Robinson
17. Meander: East to West, Indirectly, Along a Turkish River (Bloomsbury USA/Chatto & Windus, 2012) / Jeremy Seal
18. The Tender Hour of Twilight: Paris in the ’50s, New York in the ’60s: A Memoir of Publishing’s Golden Age (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2012) / Richard Seaver
19. A Free Man: A True Life Story of Life and Death in Delhi (Jonathan Cape/W.W. Norton, 2012) / Aman Sethi
20. Sugar in the Blood: A Family’s Story of Slavery and Empire (Portobello Books, 2012) / Andrea Stuart
21. Stranger Magic: Charmed States and the Arabian Nights (The Belnap Press/Harvard University Press, 2012) / Marina Warner