Best novels to read in 2025

If you're looking for a good book, here are our top picks for this year so far

Book covers of Dream Count, Perspectives and We Do Not Part
Halle Butler and Charlotte Mendelson are among the authors to recently release new novels
(Image credit: Fourth Estate / Harvill Secker / Hamish Hamilton)

The Director by Daniel Kehlmann (translated by Ross Benjamin)

The German novelist Daniel Kehlmann has often blended fact with fiction to dramatise the lives of famous figures, said Malcolm Forbes in The Washington Post. "Measuring the World" (2005) "mapped the lives and discoveries of two scientists of the German Enlightenment". In a similar vein, Kehlmann's latest novel focuses on the Austrian film director G.W. Pabst, who discovered the likes of Greta Garbo and Louise Brooks. Pabst fled his homeland when Hitler came to power, but returned to visit his sick mother, and was forced to stay throughout the War, directing Nazi-sponsored films. Composed of a series of "enthralling set pieces", it's a "captivating", "thoroughly satisfying" novel.

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