The return to the “magic mountain” by Olga Tokarczuk, the latest by Nobel Prize winner Han Kang (we include it because it was published in December 2024), the highly celebrated debut by Rita Bullwinkel, the fabulous fictionalized biography of director GW Pabst by Daniel Kehlmann, the always interesting Sara Mesa… We select the books that we liked the most from last year.
Land of empusas (Olga Tokarczuk)
From Nobel Prize to Nobel Prize. One hundred years ago, Thomas Mann published his magnum opus: ‘The Magic Mountain’. One hundred years later, Olga Tokarczuk publishes ‘Tierra de empusas’ (Anagrama), a fabulous novel that dialogues with the German writer’s book and confronts it through a feminist and contemporary perspective. The Polish writer (‘The Wanderers’, ‘The Books of Jacob’) sets her novel in 1913, in the Görbensdof tuberculosis sanatorium, in the Sudeten mountains. The protagonist of the novel, a shy engineering student, will arrive there. During his stay he will meet other patients, with whom he will make friends. Between coughs and sips of alcohol, they will argue, ramble and pontificate on issues of all kinds, particularly women, always from a position of superiority. Tokarczuk transforms the “magic mountain” into a “land of empusas,” where he questions the values of the old order and subverts them in a surprising and cathartic ending.
Impossible to say goodbye (Han Kang)
Another Nobel Prize winner. The latest novel by the Korean Han Kang is a new demonstration of this writer’s incredible ability to deal with extremely hard topics with delicate, poetic and sophisticated prose, and a humanistic and complex perspective, without ever falling into sentimentality or the lurid. In ‘Impossible to Say Goodbye’ (Random House), Han Kang offers an intimate meditation on loss, memory, and the invisible ties that connect people across time. The novel starts from a situation of mourning, to unfold a polyphonic and fragmentary narrative, where the past and the present are constantly intertwined. In the second part, reality breaks. It is not clear if the characters are dreaming, are spirits, are dead… But this ambiguity enhances the emotional dimension of the story: the desperate attempt to understand, to assimilate, to say goodbye when saying goodbye seems impossible.
The director (Daniel Kehlmann)
The new novel by Daniel Kehlmann (‘The Measurement of the World’, ‘You Should Have Left’) has topped many of the best of 2025 lists internationally. The German author has made an extraordinary portrait of GW Pabst, a fictionalized biography that tries to answer a question: why the prestigious director who had elevated Greta Garbo (‘Under the Mask of Pleasure’) and Louise Brooks (‘Pandora’s Box’), who had earned the nickname “Red Pabst” with the anti-war ‘Four Infantry’ (1930) and the leftist ‘Coal’ (1931), and who had filmed in France and in Hollywood, decided to return to the Third Reich in 1939? Kehlmann depicts Pabst as an insecure and conformist man, who put personal interest before moral duty. ‘The Director’ (Random House) explores this Faustian pact with Nazism through agile prose full of dramatic tension, emphasizing the inner conflict of an artist trapped between ambition, fear and the need for recognition.
The Bee Sting (Paul Murray)
Tragedy, humor and tenderness. Those are the three ingredients that the Irishman Paul Murray has mixed in his splendid ‘The Bee Sting’ (Anagrama). The novel delves into the core of a precarious middle class family (post 2008), marked by secrets, silences and small daily dramas. Through the different (and distinctive) voices of its four members, the narrative composes a portrait of a home where each character carries their own fears, traumas and wounds. The most notable thing is the way in which the book manages to balance the present story with evocations of the past, especially the childhood and adolescence of the parents, whose experiences end up conditioning much of the current conflicts. The author thus builds an emotionally rich story, which combines family tensions, long-kept secrets and an empathetic look at the complexity of emotional ties.
Light Strike (Rita Bullwinkel)
Celebrated debut of Rita Bullwinkel, known for being the editor of the literary magazine McSweeney’s Quarterly. Nominated for the Booker, finalist for the Pulitzer and, the definitive accolade for many: Obama was blown away. In ‘Golpe de luz’ (Sexto Piso), Bullwinkel narrates the lives – past, future and imagined – of eight teenage boxers during a championship held in Reno, the cheap and seedy version of the already decadent Las Vegas. The novel opens with the picture of the confrontations and each chapter is dedicated to a combat. It is in that space, inside the ring, where the author explores the interiorities of some extraordinarily well-defined characters. The ring is not only a sporting and physical violence scene, but also a space of intimate revelation where, blow by blow, fears, desires and possible futures are condensed.
Opposition (Sara Mesa)
The title ‘Opposition’ (Anagrama, 2021) can be read in two ways: as the set of tests to access public office and as an act of resistance. Sara Mesa plays with this polysemy to build a story about public administration from within, presented as a space with its own rules, often absurd and deeply disconnected from reality. The part dedicated to bureaucratic language is sensational: “performing was better than doing and receiving was better than receiving.” In this environment, the protagonist faces a dilemma that can mark the rest of her existence: fight to get a tedious, frustrating and most of the time useless, but safe and comfortable office job, “for life”; or launch yourself into a labor market dominated by precariousness, exploitation and instability, but full of possibilities, stimuli and open to creativity and initiative? How much is there vocation and enthusiasm in an aspiring civil servant and how much is there fear and resignation?
A Few Dreams (Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie)
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is a controversial figure. Beyond controversies (exposed by my colleague Jordi in this article), what is undoubtable is that Chimamanda – ‘Half a yellow sun’, ‘Americanah’ – is a fabulous novelist. ‘A Few Dreams’ (Random House), his long-awaited new novel after more than a decade without publishing fiction, does not disappoint. Adichie tells the story of three posh Nigerians and the maid of one of them (a character inspired by the hotel cleaner who reported the rape by Dominique Strauss-Kahn), who tell in the first person “a few dreams”: their relationships with men, motherhood, economic power, colonialism, African identity and the contradictions of a female elite trapped between privilege, the wounds left open by their ex-partners and the desire for emancipation. Chimamanda buys babies like a good rich lady, but… how well she writes: what a way of articulating themes, stringing together ideas and elaborating reflections.
The murder of the Aosawa (Riku Onda)
Until five years ago, no one knew Riku Onda outside of Japan, where she is a widely read and award-winning author. It was following the translation into English of ‘The Murder of the Aosawa’ (originally published in Japan in 2005) and its inclusion in several lists of the best of the year, when the author became known internationally. ‘The Murder of the Aosawa’ (Salamandra) is an absorbing thriller that stands out for its attractive and unconventional narrative structure. It all begins at a birthday party held on a sweltering summer day (the hot and humid atmosphere permeates the entire novel): seventeen people, including six children, die from poisoning. From that event onwards, the story opens up to multiple perspectives, different timelines and diverse points of view, as if it were a metafictional puzzle: a young woman interested in the case contacts a writer who wrote about that case, who in turn witnessed the massacre.
The Wager Castaways (David Grann)
With just two previous novels, ‘Z, the Lost City’ (2010) and ‘The Moon Killers’ (2019), David Grann has established himself as one of the most recognized non-fiction narrative writers today. The film adaptations of his works have contributed to this recognition, in particular the recent film directed by Martin Scorsese. With his new book, ‘The Wager Castaways’ (Random House), history repeats itself: critical and public success, and a future film adaptation by Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio, who have acquired the rights to the work. The novel narrates the incredible odyssey of the crew of the British ship HMS Wager, shipwrecked on the coast of Patagonia in 1741. Grann masterfully reconstructs this terrible story of survival, mutiny and murder, combining meticulous work of documentation with vibrant prose, of extraordinary narrative power.
The Messengers of Darkness (John Connolly)
Finally, a personal weakness. ‘The Messengers of Darkness’ (Tusquets) has everything a fan of Charlie Parker’s novels can expect: an absorbing criminal plot, which gets darker as sinister and ominous elements appear; enormously fluid prose (more than 500 pages that fly by), with a rhythm that alternates thriller action with slower reflective passages; dialogues full of wit and stinging irony; a multiplicity of voices skillfully interwoven with the central first-person voice of the protagonist; and a somber and melancholic atmosphere that permeates the entire novel like fog in the dense forests of Maine. Twenty-one novels later, Parker continues chasing ghosts – his own and those of others – and dragging the reader through places as dark and disturbing as they are hypnotic and evocative.
