From multigenerational family sagas to speculative dystopias – the very best fiction of the year so far.

More than 10 years have passed since Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's acclaimed Americanah, so the arrival of her new novel is a big literary moment. Dream Count is built around interconnecting storylines and the friendship of three Nigerian women whose lives have not worked out as they had envisioned. Recounting the characters' hopes and struggles, the novel interweaves childhood and early-adult memories with the women's current lives. It is "worth the wait," says The Observer, and is like "four novels for the price of one, each of them powered by the simple but evergreen thrill of time spent in the company of flesh and blood characters lavishly imagined in the round." The book explores "big themes" according to the New Statesman – masculinity, race, colonialism, power. "A complex, multi-layered beauty of a book. Extraordinary. " (LB)

We Do Not Part was released in English translation in February, although it was originally published in Han Kang's native South Korea in 2021, and therefore helped contribute to the body of work that won her the 2024 Nobel Prize for Literature. Drawing comparisons with her Booker Prize-winning bestseller, The Vegetarian, and similarly blurring the lines between dreams and reality, We Do Not Part explores the relationship between two women, Kyungha and Inseon, while uncovering a violent and forgotten chapter in Korean history. The LA Times calls We Do Not Part: "exquisite and profoundly disquieting". It writes of Han Kang: "her singular ability to find connections between body and soul and to experiment with form and style, are what makes her one of the world's most important writers." (RL)

The follow-up to Torrey Peters' critically acclaimed debut Detransition, Baby is a collection of tales, each with an intriguing premise, ranging in genre from romantic to dystopian to historical. In The Masker, a young party-goer on a hedonistic Las Vegas weekend must choose between two guides, a mystery man or a veteran trans woman; in The Chaser an illicit boarding-school romance surfaces; in the titular Stag Dance a group of lumberjacks in the 19th Century, working deep in the forest, plan a winter dance – with some of the men volunteering to attend as women. The Chicago Review of Books compares the collection favourably to Peters' debut, describing the stories as "seductive, dazzling, and history-making once again". The Guardian is similarly effusive: "The pieces are meticulously crafted; especially Stag Dance, with its deft pacing and almost operatic denouement." The writing is "mischievous rather than sanctimonious", it adds, and "it is clear she is having a great deal of fun". (LB)

"A quietly powerful demonstration of storytelling mastery" writes The Observer of Theft, the 11th novel from the 2021 winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature. Set against the backdrop of postcolonial East Africa, situated between Zanzibar and Dar-Es Salaam, Tanzania, Theft is a coming-of-age tale exploring the inner lives of three teenagers – Karim, Badar and Fauzia – who bond despite growing up in very different circumstances. "A tightly focussed, beautifully controlled examination of friendship and betrayal," writes The Economist, while The Wall Street Journal........

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