Introducing our 10 best debut novelists of 2021 The Observer
It’s a tough time to be a debut novelist, with so many of the usual channels for promoting new writing suspended or curtailed. The
Observer’s pick of this year’s first novels will be published in a country whose bookshops are closed, and whose literary festivals have been postponed or made virtual. It therefore feels particularly important to celebrate these books, to make sure that they receive the profile and plaudits they deserve.
This is the eighth year in which the
New Review team has read through dozens of first novels, looking for books that leap out from the crowd, writers who speak with powerful, fresh voices. Our record is pretty good. Last year we were the first to champion Douglas Stuart’s
Empireland by Sathnam Sanghera / Viking
Several authors tackle colonialism in very different ways, from
Alex Renton confronting his own family’s involvement in slavery in
Blood Legacy: Reckoning with a Family’s Enslaving Past (Canongate), and
Sathnam Sanghera in
Kehinde Andrews, who rather more controversially takes on capitalism and racism together in
The New Age of Empire: How Racism and Colonialism Still Rule the World (Allen Lane).
Gender and Identity Politics
Likewise gender and identity politics get a good look-in, from
Julie Bindel’s manifesto,
Feminism for Women (Constable) to
You Are Not the Man You Are Supposed To Be: Into The Chaos of Modern Masculinity (Bloomsbury) by founder of the Book of Man website