books published in 2025 I want to read

I am very excited for Ágota Kristóf’s I Don’t Care (Penguin Classics, aug 2025). If you haven’t read The Notebook by her do now, it’s extraordinary. The book I am probably most impatient for is Electric Spark: The Enigma of Muriel Spark by Frances Wilson much needed new biography from Bloomsbury in June 2025.

From Daunt Books there is the reissue of Other People by Celia Dale ( sept 2025) and The City and the House Natalia Ginzburg ( may 2025) though I also wonder, will they or won’t they someday reissue The Skin Chairs by Barbara Comyns at some point which is one of her best, and notoriously hard to find. I have read it twice in one sitting, at the Toronto Reference Library and the National Library of Scotland, which both have it in the reserve stacks. God, can someone! There is another Caroline Blackwood reissue, The Stepdaughter (June 2025) from Virago Press, and also from them Black Narcissus by Rumer Godden (feb 2025) I love the Powell and Pressburger film but haven’t read the book.

From Faber I am looking forward to Gertrude Stein: An Afterlife by Francesca Wade (may 2025) and A New New Me Helen Oyeyemi (also may 2025,) which I was lucky enough to hear an excerpt from at the British Council’s Berlin Literature Seminar. The Lowlife by Alexander Baron from their excellent classics list also looks good. From Fitzcarraldo Editions, I want to read Memories of a Catholic Girlhood Mary McCarthy and Erik Satie Three Piece Suite by the wonderful Ian Penman. If you don’t have a copy of the Mammal’s Notebook by erik satie go buy one now your life will be enormously improved. From Canongate, The Life Cycle of a Moth (June 2025,) by Rowe Irvin who was a runner-up for the Seán Ó Faoláin International Short Story Competition I judged this past fall, and Borderline Fiction by Derek Owusu (November 2025). I also want to read Love in Exile by Shon Faye out in Feb with Allen Lane.

Granta Books has acquired the new Nicola Barker: TonyInterruptor. It is out August 2025, and also they are rereleasing Yoko Tawada’s The Naked Eye in March, whose English version originally came out with New Directions in 2009.

At the moment, I am reading The Wall by Marlen Haushofer which has similar vibes to I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman. It is a ‘heartrending read’ if you like me, are mainly emotionally dependent on a cat or another small animal. I think Ludwig has gotten extra treats out of me because of it.