The 20 best books of 2024

Salman Rushdie ’s book is subtitled “ Meditations After an Attempted Murder ” and is an attempt to work through the attack on his life that took place in 2022 , leaving him with 15 stab wounds and blind in one eye.

There are many reasons not to have children: climate change, self-fulfilment, economic insecurity, a menacing planet.

The mess we are in is due to a “densely woven braid between inequality, violence and environmental harm’s way to unknot the braid, says Sunil Amrith .

Sheila Heti's book is “a book about how difficult it is to change, why we don't want to, and what is going on in our brain”.

The Edge of the Alphabet , the third novel by Janet Frame , was first published in 1962 and has been republished to mark the centenary of the New Zealander’s birth.

Rarely has “domestic” fiction felt so expansive: Spent Light is written with sensory precision and bracing candour.