2024 has been a year of literary milestones, blockbuster book releases, and celebrating authors new and old.
Exciting debuts became critically acclaimed bestsellers, while beloved authors such as Jacqueline Wilson and Haruki Murakami returned with hotly anticipated new novels. August marked the 100-year anniversary of James Baldwin’s birth, offering an opportunity to reflect on the writer and social activist’s far-reaching cultural legacy. And in October, Han Kang became the first-ever South Korean author to receive the Nobel Literature Prize, shining a spotlight on the vast and varied canon of Korean fiction available to read in English.
In the world of non-fiction, Richard Flanagan became the first former Booker Prize winner to also scoop the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction, thanks to his genre-bending memoir Question 7. We were also treated to a range of big-name autobiographies, plus incisive, eye-opening new reads by the likes of Empireland author Sathnam Sanghera and Sapiens author Yuval Noah Harari.
From award-winning novels to memoirs that made a splash, we’ve rounded up our selection of the books that shaped 2024.