{"id":656026,"date":"2025-12-26T14:32:13","date_gmt":"2025-12-26T14:32:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/656026\/"},"modified":"2025-12-26T14:32:13","modified_gmt":"2025-12-26T14:32:13","slug":"like-kafka-by-way-of-pedro-almodovar-10-debut-novels-to-look-out-for-in-2026-fiction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/656026\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Like Kafka by way of Pedro Almod\u00f3var\u2019: 10 debut novels to look out for in 2026 | Fiction"},"content":{"rendered":"

Belgrave Road<\/a><\/strong>
<\/strong>Manish Chauhan (Faber, January)
An affecting tale of loneliness and love in Chauhan\u2019s home town of Leicester, Belgrave Road tells the story of Mira, newly arrived in the UK from India following an arranged marriage, and Tahliil, a Somali cleaner who becomes her lunch partner, and her escape. By day, Chauhan is a finance lawyer; his debut novel follows his shortlisting in last year\u2019s BBC short story competition.<\/p>\n

Photograph: PR<\/p>\n

This Is Where the Serpent Lives<\/a><\/strong>
<\/strong>Daniyal Mueenuddin (Bloomsbury, January)
The Pakistani-American writer\u2019s 2009 story collection, In Other Rooms, Other Wonders, was a Pulitzer finalist. Like his debut, hHis first novel is set in Pakistan, moving between bustling cities and agricultural estates, interrogating the country\u2019s class dynamics through an epic portrait spanning six decades.<\/p>\n

Jean<\/a><\/strong>
<\/strong>Madeleine Dunnigan (Daunt, February)
Blurbed by the likes of Katie Kitamura<\/a> and Garth Greenwell<\/a>, this 70s-set novel is one of the buzziest debuts of 2026. Jean is sent to boarding school Compton Manor \u2013 \u201caka House of Nutters\u201d \u2013 to curb bad behaviour. He is an outsider, a Jewish scholarship boy surrounded by the children of heiresses, but an unlikely connection with a fellow student, Tom, promises to upend, and enrich, his life.<\/p>\n

Photograph: Little, Brown Book Group<\/p>\n

Good People<\/a><\/strong>
<\/strong>Patmeena Sabit (Virago, February)
Described by Monica Ali as the best debut she\u2019s read \u201cin a very long time\u201d, Sabit\u2019s novel, which took 10 years to complete, is told through dozens of voices surrounding the Sharaf family, who arrived in the US as refugees from Afghanistan in the late 90s. After teenager Zorah Sharaf is found dead in mysterious circumstances, the jury of characters gives their perspectives on what really happened. A clever debut probing the American dream and a clash of cultures.<\/p>\n

The Renovation<\/a><\/strong>
Kenan Orhan (Hamish Hamilton, March)
Dilara, an exile from Turkey living in Italy, plans a bathroom renovation so her elderly father can move in with her. Yet, when the builders leave, she realises something has gone seriously wrong: instead of a bathroom, there is now a cell, modelled after Istanbul\u2019s Silivri mega-prison. This surreal novel of migration and memory, described as \u201clike Kafka by way of Pedro Almod\u00f3var\u201d by the Booker-shortlisted author Avni Doshi, follows Orhan\u2019s celebrated 2023 story collection.<\/p>\n

Photograph: Penguin Books Ltd<\/p>\n

The Infamous Gilberts<\/a><\/strong>
Angela Tomaski (Fig Tree, March)
Tomaski\u2019s\u2019s has said that \u201cwith the publication of this book, 30 years of relentless, excruciating failure come to an end\u201d. Her debut takes the form of a house tour around Thornwalk, the gothic mansion home to the last of the eccentric Wynford Gilberts, and soon to be handed over to a luxury hotel chain. Our tour guide, Maximus, narrates the family\u2019s turbulent history through the house\u2019s many quirks.<\/p>\n

Yesteryear<\/a><\/strong>
<\/strong>Caro Claire Burke (4th Estate, April)
Natalie is a tradwife influencer \u2013 posting content of her perfect children along with tutorials for homemade orange juice and soap from her 500-acre farm \u2013 and totally insufferable at that. Soon, she is ripped from her life, waking up in 1805, where the aestheticised gender roles she has espoused become much more real. This has already been optioned for film, with Anne Hathaway set to star and produce.<\/p>\n

What Am I, a Deer?<\/strong>
<\/strong>Polly Barton (Fitzcarraldo, April)
Barton is responsible for bringing one of the biggest books of recent years to UK audiences, having translated Asako Yuzuki\u2019s Butter<\/a> from Japanese. In her own first novel, a woman takes a job as a translator for a games company in Frankfurt and soon becomes fixated on a man she spots on the tram.<\/p>\n

Photograph: Penguin Books Ltd<\/p>\n

Smallie<\/a><\/strong>
<\/strong>Eden McKenzie-Goddard (Viking, May)
McKenzie-Goddard, who worked in publishing for almost a decade and co-founded the pop-culture podcast Don\u2019t Alert the Stans, has written a multigenerational story of a British-Bajan family impacted by the Windrush scandal. In 1961, Lucinda travels from Barbados to England in search of her son\u2019s father, Clarence. Decades later, a Home Office letter threatens her deportation.<\/p>\n

I Want You to Be Happy<\/a><\/strong>
<\/strong>Jem Calder (Faber, May)
Calder\u2019s first published fiction came under Sally Rooney\u2019s editorship of the literary magazine Stinging Fly. Arriving Hthree years after his acclaimed story collection Reward System, his debut novel follows the relationship between 35-year-old Chuck, a copywriter freshly broken up with his fiancee, and the much younger Joey, a barista and aspiring poet.<\/p>\n

To browse and preorder the titles in the 2026 lookahead, visit guardianbookshop.com<\/a>. Delivery charges may apply.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Belgrave RoadManish Chauhan (Faber, January)An affecting tale of loneliness and love in Chauhan\u2019s home town of Leicester, Belgrave…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":656027,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[77,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-656026","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-uk","10":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115786360099993033","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/656026","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=656026"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/656026\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/656027"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=656026"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=656026"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=656026"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}