The Age of Orphans by Laleh Khadevi
Bloomsbury, £14.99; 292pp Buy the book

The author was born in Iran in 1977 and her family left in the aftermath of the Islamic Revolution, eventually settling in Canada. This poetic, heartfelt first novel was inspired by stories from Khadevi’s own family history, handed down the generations. It opens in “Courdestan” in 1921. A Kurdish boy is initiated into manhood and almost immediately finds himself fighting the army of the Shah. Years later the orphaned Reza is a soldier, his Kurdish identity wiped away. He’s about to marry a beautiful, educated girl, but doubts are stirring as he searches for his own identity. This is the first in a projected trilogy that will explore the immigrant experience from the inside.

Kissing Alice by Jacqueline Yallop
Atlantic Books, £12.99; 300pp Buy the book

On his 19th birthday, Arthur Craythorne steals a book. He can’t read, but the pictures in the book intrigue him — we learn later that it’s the poems of William Blake, and a sign that Arthur is struggling towards some kind of spiritual awakening. It is interrupted by the First World War. When he returns, he is a stranger to his wife, Queenie, and his two young daughters, Florrie and Alice. Arthur discovers Roman Catholicism and Florrie tries to win his approval by following him — but it is Alice he seems to prefer, and Florrie is jealous. Dad’s attention, however, is no blessing, and the effects follow the sisters into adulthood. A disturbing first novel.

Adrian Mole: The Prostrate Years by Sue Townsend
Michael Joseph, £18.99; 404pp Buy the book
Adrian’s life is almost an alternative history of our times. He’s coming up to the big Four O now, and he is in the usual state of hopelessness. He’s stopped having sex with his wife, Daisy, who might be having an affair. His play about medieval plague is rejected by the amateur dramatic society — but his mum is having far more success with her misery memoir, “A Girl Called Shit”. He lives in a converted pigsty and works in a second-hand bookshop, worrying that he has prostate cancer. Townsend’s writing is effortlessly hilarious, but she can also do brilliant satire and tragedy.

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