Wild Fictions: Essays on Literature, Empire, and the Environment by Amitav Ghosh
Wild Fictions is a compelling collection of essays by Amitav Ghosh, one of the most influential literary voices of our time. Best known for novels like The Hungry Tide and the Ibis Trilogy, Ghosh has long explored the intersections of history, ecology and colonialism. In this volume, he brings together more than 20 years of essays, speeches, diary entries and reflections on the major themes that run through both his fiction and non-fiction.
Structured across five sections — climate and the environment, witness, travel and discovery, narrative, and presentations — the book ranges widely in scope and tone. Some essays are academic in approach, others deeply personal. All are underpinned by Ghosh’s belief in the importance of storytelling, not just in literature, but in how societies make sense of the world.
The essays on climate change are particularly striking. Ghosh argues that ecological disaster is not only an environmental crisis but a political one, shaped by colonial legacies and present day global inequalities.
He challenges Western governments’ failure to act meaningfully on climate mitigation and connects the climate crisis to forced migration, war and economic exploitation. One recurring theme is the artificial divide between the human and the natural, something Ghosh sees as a product of Western modernity, and a major barrier to ecological recovery.
In the chapters on witness and travel, Ghosh draws from his own journeys, from Egypt to Bengal to the Sundarbans, and reflects on how geography, language and culture inform our world views. He revisits the character of Deeti from the Ibis Trilogy, positioning her enduring narrative presence as a form of resistance and continuity. His reflections on multilingualism, oceanic histories, and the flow of people and goods offer a rich counterpoint to dominant Western narratives.
Throughout Wild Fictions, Ghosh makes a case for literature’s power to reflect society and also to shape it. He calls on writers, readers and institutions to take storytelling seriously as a vital tool for reckoning with the past and navigating the future. Stories, he suggests, are not distractions from reality but the means by which we understand it.
What makes Wild Fictions an absorbing read is Ghosh’s ability to blend scholarly insight with accessibility. His writing is clear and appealing, balancing intellectual argument with emotional depth. He offers criticism without cynicism, and urgency without panic.
Ghosh reminds us that ideas have consequences, and that storytelling, at its best, is an act of responsibility. This is a great collection for anyone interested in how empire, environment and imagination interact. It will appeal to readers of postcolonial theory, environmental writing and global history.
May All Your Skies Be Blue by Fíona Scarlett
May All Your Skies Be Blue is a clear-eyed, emotionally grounded novel about first love, family duty, and the impact of the choices we make. The story centres on Shauna Ryan and Dean Whelan, who meet as teenagers in 1990s Dublin when Shauna and her mother move to a new suburb to open a hair salon.
Their friendship quickly grows into something more, but personal struggles, family pressures and bad timing keep getting in the way.
The story moves between past and present. In the present day, Shauna works as a hairdresser while caring for her mother, who is living with dementia. As the day unfolds, memories come flooding back, forcing her to face regrets and consider how her life might have looked if things had gone differently.
Scarlett writes with a straightforward honesty that captures the atmosphere of working-class Dublin and the emotional push-pull of relationships over time. The dialogue feels natural, the characters are believable, and the story builds gradually towards a quietly powerful ending.
Thoughtful and well-paced, it’s a solid read for fans of character-driven fiction. For fans of Sally Rooney and Marian Keyes, Scarlett has written a bittersweet, distinctly Irish and deeply human take on love and loss.
Hope You Are Satisfied by Tania Malik
Set in the uncertain months before the first Gulf War, Hope You Are Satisfied by Tania Malik is a smart, fast-moving novel that explores ambition, displacement and survival in a city on the edge of transformation. The year is 1990, and Dubai is still a dusty outpost rather than a global metropolis.
Riya, a 25-year-old Indian woman working for a struggling tour company, Discover Arabia, is just trying to survive. Like many others from South Asia, Africa and Europe, she’s part of the city’s transient workforce, sent abroad to earn, remit, and somehow find purpose in the process. When a mishap involving a furious sheikh puts her job on the line, Riya turns to one of the city’s most notorious fixers for help. What follows is a gripping, layered story where arms dealers, American soldiers, CIA agents and lost tourists cross paths, and where one mistake can change everything.
Malik captures the absurdities and challenges of expat life in a place defined by ambition, inequality and rapid change. Her writing is witty and observational, with a clear eye on class, gender and power dynamics.
For readers who enjoy fiction with a strong sense of place, international intrigue and flawed but relatable characters, this is an intelligent and well-timed read.
Butter by Asako Yuzuki
Butter, the first of Asako Yuzuki’s novels to appear in English, is a richly layered exploration of food, gender and power in modern Japan. Based on the real-life case of a woman accused of killing her lovers through seduction and luxury, the novel centres on Manako Kajii, a larger-than-life gourmet imprisoned for allegedly murdering three men. Her crime? Feeding them decadent meals before they died under mysterious circumstances.
Journalist Rika Machida is drawn to Kajii’s case and begins writing to her, hoping for a story. Kajii doesn’t give interviews, but she responds to Rika’s questions about cooking. What begins as a professional investigation soon becomes personal. Rika starts cooking the recipes Kajii suggests, eating meals on her behalf, and questioning her own beliefs about food, work and womanhood. The novel quietly shifts from a crime story to a broader commentary on how women are controlled by media narratives, beauty standards and ideas about success.
The writing is immersive, with detailed descriptions of dishes that are almost tactile. Translated by Polly Barton, Butter is deliberately paced, with vivid detail and clear prose. The food writing is rich without being overdone, and the story raises important questions about guilt, power and the cost of independence.
Part slow-burn thriller, part social commentary, Butter asks how much of our identity is shaped by what we consume and what we’re told to deny ourselves.
The Death of Us by Abigail Dean
The Death of Us is a tense and thoughtful psychological drama about the long-term impact of violent crime. Twenty-five years ago, married couple Isabel and Edward were living in South London when a man broke into their home and attacked them. The trauma of that night caused their relationship to fall apart.
Now, decades later, their attacker has finally been caught and is facing trial.
The story is told from two perspectives. Isabel writes her account as a kind of victim impact statement, directly addressing the man who hurt her. She starts from the beginning — how she met Edward, how their life together grew and how it eventually fractured. Edward’s chapters take place during the trial and reflect on the years since the attack. Both are still trying to process what happened, and what they lost.
This is not a fast-paced thriller, but a character-led story about survival, memory and the limits of what love can carry. It explores how people live with trauma, and how difficult it can be to move forward when something so life-changing ties two people together in ways they can’t escape.
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