Lavie Tidhar's "Adama" is a stark portrait of Israeli history, exploring violence, hope and self-destruction. An unusual thriller that demonstrates how no ideal remains unscathed when people have to live with it.

Halim Youssef's "Liebe im Schatten der dunklen Flaggen" is a poetic masterpiece about surviving in the darkness on the Iraqi-Syrian border

In "Theft", Abdulrazak Gurnah traces the fine cracks that run through friendship, love and origins when a society is set in motion. A quiet novel that unfolds its greatest power precisely in its omissions

In his autobiography "I deliver parcels in Beijing", Hu Anyan offers a Kafkaesque vision of the precarious world of the Chinese platform economy

In his third novel "The House of Doors", Malaysian author Tan Twan Eng skilfully blends fact and fiction, exploring the relationship between life and literature

In her emotionally dense and intelligent novel, Caroline Hau tells of the recurring colonial relationships and symbiotic hierarchies that occur in Philippine society and beyond

With "Habitus", Swiss journalist and musician Waseem Hussain skilfully catapults himself into the higher echelons of literary writing, tackling a topic as old as humanity itself

In her novel "Grandmothers", Melara Mvogdobo distills two life stories from different cultures into a literary coup d'état. It would be hard to write about female empowerment more tenderly or brutally

"Cave 72", Fann Attiki's political satire about life and death in Brazzaville is also a disturbing and universally relevant portrait of a society held hostage by populism and dictatorship.

In her coming-of-age novel "The Age of Umbrage", Jessica Zafra creates a gripping portrait of Philippine society under the Marcos regime that is frighteningly contemporary - and also universal