The New Torchlight List

Writers' festivals, TV book shows, radio interviews, book clubs, TED talks— today's novelists are a travelling roadshow. Meanwhile their books are thrown to the wolves—aka reviewers—to be savaged, praised to the skies, or just ignored. In the midst of all this, how can the bewildered book-lover decide what to read? Is Toni Morrison America's best novelist? Perhaps it's Donna Tartt? Is Don DeLillo really a modern Tolstoy, Jonathan Franzen too self-conscious, and Hanya Yanagihara's A Little Life worth the hype? And what of the street tales of Junot DÍaz? With British fiction, should you dive into the works of Ian McEwan? Hilary Mantel? Kazuo Ishiguro? And what is it about Martin Amis? And then there are all those Irish writers—Edna O'Brien, John Banville, Sebastian Barry, Colm TÓibÍn, Colum McCann… What about new books in translation, from Italy's Elena Ferrante to Libya's Hisham Matar, Morocco's Tahar Ben Jelloun, Iran's Azar Nafisi and Israel's Edna Mazya—not to mention…