Hello and welcome to The Long Wave. Amid an already bumper year of literary wins for Black authors, with the Sudanese writer Leila Aboulela’s Pen Pinter prize among the most recent, there is no better time to beef up your summer reading list. In this week’s newsletter, I’ll talk you through some of my favourite page-turners – from a romcom about old flames to stories about queer life in Nigeria and a debut coming-of-age novel about class, affluence and grief.
Your summer reading list starts here
Sweet Heat by Bolu Babalola
Bolu Babalola has become one of the foremost romcom writers – her short story collection Love in Colour was a bestseller and her debut novel, Honey & Spice, was picked for Reese Witherspoon’s book club. Honey & Spice charted the fake-to-real romance of university students Malakai and Kiki. Now, the much anticipated follow-up, Sweet Heat, picks up three years after their explosive breakup, as Kiki finds that her ex is to be the best man at a wedding at which she is the maid of honour. Babalola expertly captures the frustration and tension that emerges when we encounter old flames, and asks us to consider how love can be equally transformative and disruptive. It’s exactly the kind of book you need this summer.
Sweet Heat is published by Headline Review (£18.99). To support the Guardian, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.
Great Black Hope by Rob Franklin
This debut novel centres on Smith, a young Black gay man who has been raised in a bourgeois family in Atlanta, and who is looking to escape his grief after discovering the body of his roommate, who had overdosed. Returning to Atlanta, the expectations of his family – a cabal of doctors and lawyers – only deepen his despair, and he soon finds himself again drawn once again to the tragic and glamorous New York underworld that claimed his friend’s life. This book is a timely examination of the limits to which class can insulate Black people, and an antidote to respectability politics. Franklin was the son of an HBCU president during the Obama era, and it appears that he has gone through a significant journey while grappling with the pitfalls of affluence and shedding the false promises of exceptionalism.
Great Black Hope is published by Simon & Schuster (£16.99). Order your copy at guardianbookshop.com.
Absence by Issa Quincy
In Quincy’s novel, the narrator is charmed by a poem first read to him as a child by his mother, which then follows him through his life. He’s stirred by memories and emotions as he is confronted by letters and photographs, phantoms and secrets, all of which make up a life that has been affected by generations of profound familial tragedy. Quincy’s prose is deftly lyrical and imaginative; I’ve had the pleasure of hearing him read from Absence at a literary salon in London and it was entrancing. He observes the fragility of memory, and what remains after our encounters, however fleeting, with people, say a schoolteacher or an estranged aunt; you might think of him as a counterpart to the novelists Rachel Cusk and Teju Cole.
Absence is published by Granta Books (£14.99). Order your copy at guardianbookshop.com.
Necessary Fiction by Eloghosa Osunde
I loved Osunde’s book Vagabonds!, so I am excited to get stuck into Necessary Fiction, which explores cross-generational queer life in Nigeria. The action is set in Lagos, a dynamic but chaotic 24-hour city, and against this buzzing backdrop Osunde’s characters balance their sexuality and the demands of their lives: negotiating relationships with their parents, building chosen families, embracing and risking romance, and considering desire, death and religion. Lagos is a repository of dreams and aspirations that are often beaten down by the difficulties of the city – yet art, music and creativity have helped define it beyond the mismanagement and corruption it has suffered. “Necessary fiction” is what Osunde’s Lagosians must carry with them for survival. I look forward to getting to know them – and their stories.
Necessary Fiction is published by Harper Collins (£16.99) on 31 July. Order your copy at guardianbookshop.com.
The Catch by Yrsa Daley-Ward
This hotly anticipated novel by the eminent writer and poet has been described as “dark and lyrical” by the author Yomi Adegoke. You can certainly glean that from the synopsis. Twin sisters Clara and Dempsey became estranged after their mother vanished into the River Thames. But when, as adults, they notice a woman called Serene, who looks exactly like their mother at the time of her disappearance, their lives are thrown into confusion. Is Serene their mother? The originality of the plot is compelling, and so is Daley-Ward’s exploration of familial absence and estrangement.
The Catch is published by Cornerstone (£16.99). To support the Guardian, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com.
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Sunstruck by William Rayfet Hunte
Billed as Saltburn seen through the prism of race, Hunter’s gay mixed-heritage narrator is down bad for the terrible and terribly wealthy Felix Blake, the brother of his university friend Lily. A romance develops during the summer when the unnamed narrator visits the Blake family in the south of France, but when they return to London, they are assailed by race and class tensions. Both men are haunted by past traumas, and the narrator also faces the sisyphean task of trying to fit into the Blake’s world. In Sunstruck, Notting Hill in London is depicted as a site of great privilege and wealth (the Blake family’s residence is there) and also a place where Caribbean culture is celebrated at the Notting Hill carnival.
Sunstruck is published by Cornerstone (£16.99). Order your copy at guardianbookshop.com.
