Capital by
John Lanchester
Faber and Faber,
out in March
In an ordinary London road, a postcard drops through every door with a simple message: 'We want what you have.' John Lanchester, who wrote one of the best non-fiction accounts of the credit crunch in Whoops!, here delivers the big social novel, responding to the crash. If anyone can pull it off, it's him.
Can We Still Be Friends by Alexandra Shulman
Fig Tree, April
The first novel from the editor of British Vogue traces the lives of three
female friends who graduate from university in 1983 — Sally, who wants to be a journalist, beautiful Annie, who wants only to marry, and Kendra, who discovers a different sexuality... It's chick-lit with style.
The Chemistry of Tears by Peter Carey
Faber and Faber, April
The two-times
Man Booker Prize winner returns to contemporary London in his new novel. A curator at a museum loses her married lover of 13 years and, in her misery, begins a project to bring back to life an
eerie automaton, created 200 years earlier. A dead
cert for a prize.
Lionel Asbo by Martin Amis
Jonathan Cape, July
Amis revealed this is to be a satire on the state of England — all crime, porn and media madness — starring a skinhead lout who wins £90m while in prison and doesn't spend it tastefully. It also features a Katie Price lookalike called Threnody. Promising! Amis has always loved the lowlife, so this may be his best for ages.
NW by Zadie Smith
Penguin, September
Zadie Smith's keenly awaited new book
is set on her old stamping ground
of Brent, as the postcode title suggests. All she's said about it so far
is that, 'It's about
a few people in northwest London — and it's about class.' She has
also disclosed, intriguingly, 'It's going to be a very, very small book.'
David Sexton is literary editor of the London Evening Standard.
