New books to read this week

We have two books from the prestigious Women’s Prize for Fiction 2025 longlist this week, one by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and the other by Laila Lalami…

Fiction

Dream Count by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is published in hardback by Fourth Estate

After 10 very long years, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is back with a new novel, which, rather dauntingly, has been heralded as the ‘feminist War and Peace’. But do not be put off, it’s far less impenetrable than that makes it sound. Chiamaka is a wealthy travel writer seeking true, all-encompassing love, while her best friend Zikora, a lawyer, is simply trying to align her life and relationships with her biological clock. Kadiatou, Chiamaka’s housekeeper, is working multiple jobs when a brutal encounter upends her life, while high-flying Omelogor grapples to work out what she really wants.

Complicated by layers of race, wealth and shame, Adichie deftly explores what women are and are not allowed to desire, the pressures they are under to appease – and not just men, but family and friends, other women and even their own ideas of themself – to not be needy or too much. She also examines motherhood, and how we think we know the woman that birthed us, but there’s always so much more to know. An incredible feat of a novel that weighs heavy in your mind once it’s finished.

The Dream Hotel by Laila Lalami is published in hardback by Bloomsbury Circus

Sara isn’t a prisoner, although she can’t leave the sinister ‘facility’ in which she is detained. And she hasn’t committed any crime – but one day she might, according to data harvested from multiple devices. In this vision of the near future, every moment is monitored, including people’s dreams, providing evidence to detain them indefinitely on the grounds that they might, in future, break the law. With its ever-shifting rules, maddening bureaucracy and sadistic guards, the facility seems impossible to escape. But somehow Sara must find her way out of this algorithmic nightmare and get back to her family. To do this, she has to both look deep into her past and understand the true purpose of her detention. With its tense and engrossing narrative, Dream Hotel is both a page turner and a salutary warning about putting our trust in big tech.

Stag Dance by Torrey Peters is published in hardback by Serpent’s Tail

The four stories in this collection span vastly different genres, from sci-fi to Western – but what unites them is Torrey Peters’ incisive thoughts about gender. This was also central to her breakout 2021 debut, Detransition, Baby, but while that novel felt fully realised, some of the stories in Stag Dance feel somewhat unfinished. The opener – a look into a dystopian alternate reality where a virus, originating from trans women, is sweeping the world, is a masterful display of world building, but leaves you wanting more. The titular story tells of a burly logger in the middle of the forest, who wants to explore his femininity, which proves tough in his macho environment. Peters is skilled at drawing characters and building a background sense of discomfort, but you just can’t help but wish she picked one story and fleshed it out into a novel.

Non-fiction

Maternity Service: A Love Letter to Mothers from the Front Line of Maternity Leave by Emma Barnett is published in back by Fig Tree

Broadcaster Emma Barnett is on a mission to rebrand maternity leave as ‘maternity service’ and the case she makes is thoroughly convincing and enormously reassuring. Written in real-time while off with her second child, Barnett examines how taking time out from your life to care for your baby is less ‘leave’ (it’s no holiday) and more a tour of duty, akin to military service. Void of parenting tips, the book purely focuses on mums and the new ‘liminal’ world they have entered, describing unabashedly the crushing boredom, the tedious jobs (nappies, laundry), the discombobulating lack of sleep, the astonishing physical and mental changes, and the joy beneath it all of a newborn’s soft little head resting on your shoulder. She goes big on undeniably important caveats – we’re lucky to have mat leave at all, not everyone enjoys it, not everyone can afford it etc – but in a slim book, they arguably don’t warrant quite so much reiteration. A vital, heartening manual that will help anyone who’s done their own tour of duty feel seen.

Children’s book of the week

Gozzle by Julia Donaldson, illustrated by Sara Ogilvie, is published in hardback by Macmillan Children’s Books

Children’s fiction stalwart Julia Donaldson – whose groundbreaking work in the sector is too eminent to list here – returns with a new picture book for young school-aged children, illustrated by her long-time partner Sara Ogilvie, who collaborated with her on the sensational The Detective Dog. Gozzle follows an orphaned gosling who attaches herself to a grumpy bear she believes to be her daddy. The confused bear tries to shake off the unwelcome young protégé, but finds Gozzle relentlessly mirroring his every move. In a departure from her usual rhyming style, Donaldson presents a sweet story about the home and family we make for ourselves with rich illustrations that parents will enjoy. However, younger readers are likely to miss the lyrical charm of the author’s more classic work.