4321 by Paul Auster (US)

Paul Auster’s first novel for seven years follows Archibald Ferguson through four different, simultaneous lives starting from his birth in Newark in 1947. The 880-page novel takes in momentous events, from the cold war through JFK and the My Lai massacre as its various personal stories unfold. In his review for the Guardian, Blake Morrison wrote: ‘There was a time when Auster seemed to regard narrative momentum as an offence to the duties of metafiction. That’s not the case here.’

Days Without End by Sebastian Barry (Ireland)

Barry’s Costa award-winning novel follows Thomas McNulty from his home in famine-stricken Ireland across the Atlantic to the US where he meets a fresh set of traumas, including the civil war, as well as finding a profound love with a fellow soldier. Alex Clark’s Guardian review called it ‘a work of staggering openness; its startlingly beautiful sentences are so capacious that they are hard to leave behind, its narrative so propulsive that you must move on.’• Podcast with Sebastian Barry• Interview: ‘My son instructed me in the magic of gay life’

History of Wolves by Emily Fridlund (US)

Fridlund’s debut novel depicts the faltering steps towards independence of 14-year-old Linda, the awkward daughter of ex-commune members living in rural Minnesota. The arrival of an apparently ideal family across the lake seems to promise refuge for Linda, scorned as a ‘freak’ by her schoolmates. But things are not so simple. Sarah Ditum’s Guardian review said: ‘For a novel that aspires to say something about about power, History of Wolves is strikingly impotent.’

Exit West by Mohsin Hamid (UK-Pakistan)

In an unnamed Middle Eastern country on the brink of civil war, a young couple embark on a furtive romance. As conflict escalates around them, they are driven to seek a dangerous exit. Andrew Motion’s Guardian review said: ‘A major part of Hamid’s achievement in Exit West is to show how profoundly social damage will injure private lives – not only in obvious ways (physical injury, homelessness), but by hampering the ability to construct any sort of life outside their sphere of influence.’• Podcast with Mohsin Hamid

Solar Bones by Mike McCormack (Ireland)

McCormack’s novel, the reflections of a man’s ghost written in a single sentence, was first published by Ireland’s Tramp Press in 2016, but Booker rules require novels to be published in the UK. Now picked up by Canongate, Solar Bones is eligible, fresh from winning the Goldsmiths award for form-challenging fiction.Reviewing Solar Bones, Ian Sansom wrote that it ‘stutters into life, like a desperate incantation or a prose poem, minus full-stops but chock-full of portent’.• Mike McCormack: ‘On my fifth book I’m a debutante’

Reservoir 13 by Jon McGregor (UK)

While on holiday in the Peak District with her family, 13-year-old Rebecca goes missing. McGregor’s novel studies the villagers while the search to find her plays out. Tessa Hadley’s Guardian review said: ‘McGregor is a writer with extraordinary control, and he uses the power of the archetype as well as our genre expectations for his own purposes... His sentences are abrupt and minimal, austerely denotative, building the tension: he hasn’t got narrative time to waste.’

Elmet by Fiona Mozley (UK)

York-born Mozley’s first novel, currently scheduled for November publication, considers a troubled family living in a remote copse in Elmet (the name of the ancient Britton kingdom in what is now the West Riding). Siblings Daniel and Cathy grew up in a house that their father built himself, but tensions begin to build as the atmosphere between ‘Daddy’ and some local men turns violent.

The Ministry of Utmost Happiness by Arundhati Roy (India)

Twenty years after she won the Booker with her debut The God of Small Things, Roy returns with a novel that dives into the complexities of the dispute between India and Pakistan over Kashmir. According to Alex Clark, it is a novel ‘of maddeningly frayed edges, wonky pacing and occasional longueurs … [but] its depiction of the constant battle toward self-assertion in a society still held in thrall to the taxonomy of caste and class, make for a disturbing and memorable return to the land of make-believe.’• Podcast with Decca Aitkenhead

Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders (US)

Much praised as a short-story writer, Saunders in his first novel follows US president Abraham Lincoln’s son Willie, who died aged 11 while Lincoln was still in office. Trapped in a posthumous limbo in a graveyard, Willie’s interactions with his mourning father begin to create unrest among his fellow spirits. In his review, Hari Kunzru called it ‘a performance of great formal daring. It perhaps won’t be to everyone’s taste, but minor missteps aside it stands head and shoulders above most contemporary fiction.’ • Podcast with George Saunders

Home Fire by Kamila Shamsie (UK-Pakistan)

This reworking of Sophocles’ Antigone opens in a Heathrow interrogation suite, as Isma heads for the US to resume her studies after they were interrupted by her mother’s death. But when she bumps into the son of the British home secretary in a Massachusetts cafe, a chain of events is unleashed that ends in tragedy. Home Series is due to be published on 7 September.

Autumn by Ali Smith (UK)

The first in a four-part project charting the seasons, Autumn sees Smith exploring our experience of time in a portrait of post-referendum Britain. Joanna Kavenna found it ‘a beautiful, poignant symphony of memories, dreams and transient realities; the “endless sad fragility” of mortal lives’.• Interview with Ali Smith: ‘It’s a pivotal moment … a question of what happens culturally when something is built on a lie’

Swing Time by Zadie Smith (UK)

Smith examines shame, motherhood and global inequality in this coming-of-age story. Aminatta Forna praised her ‘unflinching portrait of friendship, driven as much by jealousy and competition as by love and loyalty. Perhaps what lies at the heart of this book is the idea that all relationships are transactional … even those with the people who should love us the most, and especially between those of unequal wealth.’• Zadie Smith: the smart and spiky recorder of a London state of mind

The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead (US)

Whitehead’s Pulitzer prize winner forges metaphor into reality in a story of two slaves escaping the horrors of plantation life on a mysterious underground train ride towards freedom. Cynthia Bond hailed it as an ‘uncanny novel’: ‘I may never know who my great-great-great-grandmother was, but after reading this novel I know where she has been in ways I never had before. It provides a firm pillar to stand on, the arc of history all the more clear.’ • Interview with Colson Whitehead