The first rule of holiday reading: Stop buying books at Gate 12

If you usually grab your holiday read at the newsagent next to Gate 12, please stop. Might I gently suggest that choosing reading matter for a trip away is actually one of life’s greatest pleasures? There is nothing more enjoyable than setting aside your small pile of treats for those long afternoons or evenings when your sunburn evaporates into the evening air and you begin to relax into the gentle toot of owls, or mopeds.

I suggest taking three books on holiday – a fun one that you can read when mildly tipsy, a serious one that you don’t mind not getting through and some poetry (I know!) for dipping into, and to disguise your flagrant people-watching in the town square at noon. This year’s Forward Prize longlist is a breathtakingly good place to start, but here are a few suggestions for late summer reading:

If you are away for a long spell or looking for the chance to avoid your family or fellow inmates, Maggie O’Farrell’s Land (Headline) is a lengthy and fascinating account of a map-maker trying to construct the Ordnance Survey of Ireland in the aftermath of the Great Hunger. As the phenomenal success of hits like The Marriage Portrait and Hamnet demonstrate, O’Farrell is a storyteller at the peak of her powers and this interwoven tale of the history and pull of the land of Ireland, traversed over centuries by those who leave and those who stay, is spellbinding.

If you are after something punchier, try Luke Kennard’s Black Bag (John Murray). Deservingly longlisted for this year’s Booker Prize, it is a hilarious and brilliantly conceived novel about an actor hired to inhabit a black bag to enact a psychological experiment.

It is often described as a critique of the thanklessness of a career in the arts/an emotive and dark exploration of the nature of work and the self/ a meditation on the life of a once-ambitious Gen X-er. This makes it sound very serious and worthy, which on the one hand it is, but it is also absolutely enormous fun and a totally captivating read, filled with the whimsy, humour and wry observation that fans of Kennard’s poetry will love.

It will have you writhing with glee and jumping up to read snippets to your nearest and dearest. Or just whoever is on the next table. The psychopathic collie with whom the protagonist enjoys long imagined heart-to-hearts is a real highlight and, thankfully, a regular occurrence across Kennard’s oeuvre.

Might I also thoroughly recommend Foundry Editions’ brilliant collection of translated novels from and inspired by the Mediterranean. Even the covers are designed to evoke the sparkling blue of the ‘Middle Sea’.

Suggested Reading

The stories are just as idiosyncratic, character-filled and fascinating as any encounter you would have around that coast, from Spain to Malta, Italy, and Greece to Turkey, Zanzibar and Palestine. Try Michael Manseri’s Paradiso for a hilarious take on the Italian film industry or Constantia Soteriou’s Brandy Sour for a Greek Cypriot spin on the bar-room novel, in which each character in the hotel bar unravels over their favourite cocktail.

Matteo Melchiorre’s The Duke – set in the Dolomites – is a tale of tradition versus progress which has just been longlisted for the Booker Prize. Experimental, quirky, and expertly translated, you can feel the sunshine and the lilt of local dialects flowing through the pages.

If you are looking to head a little further afield and you love a queer crime thriller, look no further than The Night of Baba Yaga (Faber) by Japanese cult author Akira Otani. Set in Japanese gangland, it’s just as propulsive and bloody as any of Otani’s other work (worth checking out if you haven’t) and places a beautiful story of connection, love and solidarity at its heart.

In a similar but less brutally violent vein, try Claudia Piñero’s exceptional Cathedrals (Charco), a story of the unsolved murder of a young woman and its resonance throughout the lives of her family and her community in Argentina. It is gorgeous and vivid and entirely transporting.

For a more serious take and perhaps an opportunity to read up on one of Andy Burnham’s declared policy areas, try Kate Bayliss’s Privatising Humanity: How Our Essential Human Needs Became Financial Assets (Manchester University Press). As the title suggests, it is not the lowest-stress of holiday reading, but will certainly leave you feeling galvanised. Bayliss offers a beautifully researched account of the failures of privatisation and the ways in which each has financially benefitted the private firms and investors busily pumping profits out of our water, energy, and housing.

Suggested Reading

Tobias Ellwood’s book on defence is a total misfire

Ros Taylor

Personally, I’ll be getting stuck into Lauren Elkin’s Vocal Break: On Women, Music and Power (Chatto and Windus), which delivers Elkin’s usual ease of argument, rangey scholarship and ability to set a scene. The book leans into the politics of women’s voices, looking at the ways in which – following centuries of the silencing in the musical and political arenas – women in music have used their voices and their lyrics to address injustice, sexism, racism, climate change and more.

With huge range, it takes in Edith Piaf and Beyoncé, Kathleen Hanna and Billie Eilish and comes with an endorsement by Viv Albertine, former Slits guitarist and author of the excellent memoir Clothes Clothes Clothes Music Music Music Boys Boys Boys.

Finally, if you are not going away at all, might I suggest soaking up just a little of the south of France through the Fitzgerald classic Tender is the Night (Oxford Classics/any secondhand book shop)? It’s like a holiday in print form.

Not only will you get a sumptuous glimpse into the glamour and beauty of the Riviera in its heyday through Fitzgerald’s sparse description and sizzling storytelling, you also get to feel superior in cocking a snook at the rich and troubled: Money can’t buy happiness even in the south of France. Try Fitzgerald’s captivating short stories if you are worried about dozing off after a glass of something cold at lunchtime.