Monica MacSwan

In fiction, I’m drawn to literary and upmarket novels which provide its readers with a sense of escapism through imagination and adventure: whether that’s being immersed in the world of gaming in Tomorrow, Tomorrow & Tomorrow or putting on a play with your sworn enemies in ancient Sicily in Glorious Exploits. I don’t shy away from serious subjects, but I always like it when the writing makes turning the page easy: Nussaibah Younis’ Fundamentally had me laughing out loud and I found Sunjeev Sahota’s The Spoiled Heart unputdownable in its masterfully-constructured melodrama. I am also searching for a big, high-stakes love story from an original angle, like The Safekeep by Yal van der Wouden, Couplets by Maggie Milner, Deep Cuts by Holly Brickley or Consider Yourself Kissed by Jessica Stanley.

In non-fiction, I like to read books by writers who want to shift public discourse by putting forward a new framework for their subject of expertise. Good examples are Ultra-Processed People by Chris van Tulleken, Careless People by Sarah Wynn-Williams, The Spirit Level by Richard G. Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, Empire of Pain by Patrick Radden Keefe, Doppelganger by Naomi Klein and Free by Lea Ypi. In this space, I am on the lookout for books about health, medicine, history, politics and biographies or memoirs of fascinating lives. My interests outside of books are cookery, art and music, and I would be happy to receive approaches from critics, artists, cooks, academics and journalists on these subjects, be it a lifestyle book, cookery book, or a book on genre, creativity or social politics, which does something like what Dan Hancox’s Inner City Pressure does for London and grime, or like Salt Fat Acid Heat by Samin Nosrat.