The Pilgrimage by John Broderick (Pushkin Press, £12.99)
Frank O’Connor likened the world of the 19th-century novel to life in Irish provincial towns, where “Madame Bovary lived across the way”. This is an apt frame for long-overlooked writer John Broderick’s debut, banned on publication in 1961 for its blunt depiction of adultery and queerness in Irish life. The protagonist, Julia Glynn, is unhappily married to an ailing older man and entangled in an empty affair with his nephew. When she receives an anonymous letter detailing the trysts, more secrets than her own begin to unravel. The Pilgrimage is a bleakly comic and often cruel evocation of a repressive Ireland. Broderick’s tight prose is as effective in illuminating the “shoddy brilliance” of O’Connell Street as it is in exposing the narrow-mindedness of the emergent post-Treaty middle class. Harry Higgins
Stalin’s Apostles by Antonia Senior (Hodder & Stoughton, £25)
This riveting and informative book tells the story of the Cambridge Five, from their heady student days as idealistic young Marxists to their double lives as Soviet agents at the heart of Britain’s elite institutions. Senior, a book critic at The Times, moves beyond the well-known story of how privileged young men came to betray their country and highlights the role of intelligence in Stalin’s expansionist ambitions. The book effectively illustrates how treachery from within the British “chapocracy” shaped the fate of nations and the lives of countless people from Tallinn to Tirana. Stalin’s Apostles is a spy thriller, replete with vividly drawn anecdotes of smuggled microfilm and clandestine meetings on park benches. But it is also a fascinating account of the centrality of individuals, ideas and espionage in mid-20th-century European history. Harry Higgins
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Hello, Limerence by Momo Yamaguchi (Faber & Faber, 202pp, £14.99)
Mika is “Christmas Eve age” (24) and a virgin. At her deadening office job in Tokyo, she is ignored at best and harassed at worst. Terminally horny and set on finding a mate, she snags party invites from her better-looking, flaky best friend. No luck – commitment-phobes and “pinks” (westerners) with Japanese fetishes at every turn. Tai is “medium-ugly” and falls into the first category, but he’s the only one to bite, so he’ll do. After an underwhelming, strictly no-strings romp, Mika is sure, though he may not know it yet, Tai is her soulmate. In the saturated, fast-moving world of Hello, Limerence, everyone is disposable: workers, lovers, friends. Part unrequited obsession, part anti-capitalist rage, Yamaguchi’s unfiltered, punchy debut sets the tone for the Gen-Z romantic satire. Margot Guilhot Delsoldato
