Nussaibah Younis

1 week ago | theguardian.com | Michael Rosen |Katherine Rundell |Olivia Laing |Jonathan Coe |Ali Smith |Rutger Bregman | +6 more

Zadie SmithFor me summer reading is about immersion. Three novels fully absorbed me recently. Flesh by David Szalay is a very smart and stylish novel about the 1%, filtered through the life of a Hungarian bodyguard/driver in their midst. Cécé by Emmelie Prophète (out 23 September) vividly depicts the slums of contemporary Haiti via a very online young sex worker who lives her best life on Facebook.

2 months ago | adastrastories.substack.com | Renee Bracey Sherman |Regina Mahone |Nussaibah Younis |Nadia Terranova

What makes for an excellent book? Obviously the definition is subjective, based on personal tastes, cravings, interests, and more. What we consider a good book right now might not hold the same a year later. Aside from alllll the biases that go into the defining of a “good book” (tap into this post for more on that), I’ve always felt that an excellent book is defined by a feeling we can’t articulate.

Mar 3, 2025 | theguardian.com | Shon Faye |Nussaibah Younis

Shon Faye, authorIn Naomi Klein’s most recent book Doppelganger, she talks about Philip Roth quite a lot, which made me realise that though I read quite a lot of Roth as a teenager, I hadn’t read American Pastoral, which is often considered his greatest novel. So I read it and it was great – I had forgotten how funny Roth is. I also enjoyed Simple Passion by Annie Ernaux, a completely different vibe.