Arabic version: إيه بي سي آرتس تختار 10 كتب جديدة لشهر يوليو

According to ABC News, ABC Arts critics have reviewed 10 of the best new books released in July, spanning fiction, romance, cultural history and literary experimentation. The selections include new work by Dave Eggers, Kris Kneen, Jodi McAlister, John Kinsella, Zakia Sewell and Colson Whitehead.

Dave Eggers’s Contrapposto follows the lifelong friendship of Cricket and Olympia, two aspiring artists from the American Midwest. The novel moves across more than six decades, covering art, travel, relationships, war, addiction and death. Reviewer Claire Nichols described its final page as perfect and called the book “something very special.”

Zakia Sewell’s debut, Finding Albion: Myth, Folklore and the Quest for a Hidden Britain, combines memoir and cultural history in a search for an alternative British identity. Building on her BBC Radio 4 series My Albion, Sewell follows the pagan Wheel of the Year and examines folklore, access to countryside, oral traditions and the history of England.

In Kris Kneen’s Rite of Spring, marine biologist Miranda and her partner Richard spend six months as caretakers and weather watchers on a remote island off Tasmania after her near-fatal accident and his affair. The novel brings together an isolated landscape, eerie sculptures, water, sensuality and transformation.

ABC Arts also highlighted Jodi McAlister’s romance A Study in Sparkling, centred on Fiona Fisher and Satoshi Tsukamoto in Hobart; and John Kinsella’s The Fountain of Youth, a shifting novel set around a country-town play. Other titles on the list include Jenny Jackson’s The Shampoo Effect, Sally Piper’s People Like Us, Stacey Yu’s Kitten, Colson Whitehead’s Cool Machine and Constance Debré’s Offenses.