Books of the year: the best books of 2023

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Politics on the Edge by Rory Stewart
Absolutely & Forever by Rose Tremain
A Thread of Violence by Mark O'Connell
Hitler, Stalin, Mum & Dad by Daniel Finkelstein
The Bee Sting by Paul Murray
Wifedom by Anna Funder
The Earth Transformed by Peter Frankopan
Soldier Sailor by Claire Kilroy

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Politics on the Edge by Rory Stewart

The former diplomat and Harvard professor Rory Stewart spent ten years as a Tory MP, and briefly served in Theresa May's cabinet. But he came to despair of British politics, finding his fellow MPs shallow and narrow-minded, and the system they operated in "dysfunctional". In his memoir of his time in Westminster, Stewart is blunt about his own failings, and equally withering about his former colleagues: Boris Johnson is an "egotistical chancer"; George Osborne displays "breathtaking cynicism". Lauded for its honesty and humour, the book was widely described as one of the best-written memoirs ever produced by a British politician.

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Rose Tremain's 17th novel is a coming-of-age story set in the 1950s and 1960s – the era in which Tremain herself grew up. Marianne Clifford, a girl from the Home Counties, falls passionately in love at the age of 15 with a slightly older boy named Simon – a relationship that soon ends when he moves to Paris, but which nevertheless echoes through the rest of her life. The novel was widely praised for its emotional subtlety, its elegant prose, and for its precise evocation of the atmosphere of mid-20th century England.

In 1982, Malcolm Macarthur, a dissolute Irish aristocrat, killed two people. Having frittered away his inheritance, Macarthur planned to rob a bank, but needed a car and gun to do so – and committed his murders while acquiring them. "A Thread of Violence" revisits this notorious double murder: Mark O'Connell, a Dublin-based journalist, gained Macarthur's trust during the pandemic, and over the course of several interviews tried to make sense of his crimes – although he concludes it was probably a doomed enterprise. Critics described it as a crime story in the vein of Truman Capote's "In Cold Blood", and admired its cool handling of a disturbing subject.

Daniel Finkelstein's mother was a German Jew who was sent to a Nazi concentration camp in 1940. His father was a Polish Jew who spent part of his childhood in the Soviet Gulag. Miraculously, both survived and moved to England after the War, where they fell in love. In this wide-ranging family memoir, Finkelstein, a journalist and Tory peer, tells the stories of his parents in tandem, and by doing so illustrates the horrors wrought by the 20th century's two most reviled dictators. Reviewers found the book enormously moving, and Finkelstein was praised both for his lucid writing and meticulous research.

This sprawling novel by the Irish author Paul Murray is focused on a single family – the Barneses – in the wake of the 2008 financial crash. Dickie, a once-successful car dealer whose business is going under, has taken to hiding out in a shelter in the woods while his wife, Imelda, sells the family's possessions on eBay. Their teenage daughter Cassie is binge-drinking her way through school, and 12-year-old P.J. is planning to run away from home. Critics praised the novel's intricate construction, and Murray's deft shifts of perspective. Many felt that it was more deserving of the Booker Prize than the novel which actually won – Paul Lynch's "Prophet Song".

This book, a blend of biography, fiction and polemic, argues that George Orwell had one significant blind spot when it came to equality: he didn't notice the oppression of women, even in his own life. Anna Funder focuses on Orwell's first wife, Eileen O'Shaughnessy, who was married to Orwell between 1936 and her death in 1945. Although she was formidably intelligent, and played an important role in his writing, Funder claims that Orwell treated her as a drudge, and never acknowledged the help she gave him. While many reviewers admired the book's spirited revisionism, others said Funder had twisted certain facts to bolster her argument.

"The Earth Transformed" is an epic history of the environment, and its influence on the rise and fall of civilisations. Peter Frankopan shows, time and again, that major historical events have been prompted by climatic events: the turmoil that led to the end of the Roman empire owed much to a huge volcanic eruption in Alaska in 43BC; wet weather smoothed Genghis Khan's path to power; central Asian droughts helped spread the Black Death across the world. Critics praised the book for its magisterial sweep, and particularly admired the sections on the past 200 years – during which humanity went from victim of the climate to its chief ravager.

A frantic, furious but often funny novel about early motherhood, "Soldier Sailor" is a tale of teething, wet wipes and collapsing buggies. The Irish writer Claire Kilroy's first book in a decade centres on a mother who spends her days at home, caring for her baby son, while receiving little help from her self-absorbed husband. Kilroy conjures her feelings of isolation, and her sense of being displaced from her former life. At the same time, the book is mordantly amusing – as it describes, say, the dynamics of a mother-baby group. Critics agreed that Kilroy had tackled her subject in an original way, and had made out of it a surprisingly gripping story.