I could never read something that big!

Is your attention span shot after a huge 2020? Here are some of the best big page turners that you can really get your teeth stuck into over the summer break.

  1. 01

    The Absolute Book by Elizabeth Knox

    The Absolute Book Cover - illustration looking up from a forest floor with trees overhead and birds in the sky

    An astonishing journey through libraries, forests and portals between worlds. Knox’s new tome is addictive and alluring, you won’t be able to put it down and it will keep you company for days, if not weeks.

  2. 02

    Kintu by Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi

    Kintu book cover

    Told over several generations this sprawling epic manages to have a very intimate tone. The story of a Ugandan tribe over the course of hundreds of years is told through the eyes of the members of one family. Magic, myth, colonisation, religion and ego are all woven together to create a modern masterpiece.

  3. 03

    The Yiddish Policeman’s Union by Michael Chabon

    The Yiddish Policeman’s Union book cover illustration: silhouettes of two men in suits facing each other smoking cigarettes

    A drunk detective down on his luck in a flea ridden hotel is faced with a murder. Sounds like something you’ve read before? It’s not! Set in the Yiddish speaking enclave of Sitka, Alaska this alternate world police thriller is one part mystifying to one part delightful the whole way through.

  4. 04

    The Gone Away World by Nick Harkaway

    The Gone-Away World book cover

    I’ve read a lot of dystopic world fiction but nothing has ever stuck in my brain like The Gone Away World. Told from the perspective of the outsider the book charts a world heading into destruction and then plunges deeply into the chaos of the immediate aftermath of the apocalypse. Part thriller, part romance, part philosophical treatise, The Gone Away World is mind shatteringly good.

  5. 05

    The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova

    The Historian book cover

    A young woman trains as a historian and finds a letter from her father which pushes her down a decades long rabbit hole hunting for the supposedly mythical Count Dracula. Blending actual history of central Europe and Turkey with folklore and imagination Kostova has created a timeless thriller which keeps your eyes locked to page from the moment you pick it up.