# What we’re reading: writers and readers on the books they enjoyed in February

## Authors and Guardian readers discuss the titles they have read over the last month. Join the conversation in the comments

## Shon Faye, author

In Naomi Klein’s most recent book **Doppelganger**, she talks about Philip Roth quite a lot, which made me realise that though I read quite a lot of Roth as a teenager, I hadn’t read **American Pastoral**, which is often considered his greatest novel. So I read it and it was great – I had forgotten how funny Roth is.

I also enjoyed **Simple Passion** by Annie Ernaux, a completely different vibe. The short autofictional work is about an affair between the narrator, a divorced mother, and a younger married man, and the obsession and longing and lust that occurs. In the era of Babygirl, the sexual desires of older women are having something of a cultural moment. Simple Passion helped me a lot with the fact that I’m passing into a stage of life at a time when a lot of mainstream culture doesn’t really think older women are sexually desirable.

In the theme of originality, **The Coin** by Yasmin Zaher is Palestinian literature like you’ve never seen it before. In the novel a young Palestinian woman moves to New York and proceeds to have a breakdown, but in the most delightfully absurd, unhinged and oddly chic manner.

I love it when writers upend the expectations placed on them by their identity, and for that reason Torrey Peters’ **Detransition, Baby** is one of my all-time favourite novels. She writes with brutal honesty about the trans experience, refusing to shy away from the dark sides, creating full-formed characters rather than political mouthpieces, and in doing so, allows the reader a full empathic experience. If you read it, you’ll find the best Wim Hof joke of all time near the end.

_Love in Exile by Shon Faye_ is published by Allen Lane (£18). To support the Guardian and Observer, order your copy at .

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## Andrew, Guardian reader

**Theory & Practice** by Michelle de Kretser starts off as a conventional narrative but then it is upended. We eventually settle in to the main story about a student studying for a MA in English in Melbourne concentrating on Virginia Woolf’s later novels. From hereon in, the novel provides a critique of post modernism and literary theory, wrapped in a story revolving around the lives of the narrator’s friends and the university faculty members. It is extremely well written and a very enjoyable read.



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## Nussaibah Younis, author

I recently read Percival Everett’s **The Trees**, and I’m obsessed. Anyone who can write a laugh-out-loud novel about lynching is a genius as far as I’m concerned. Everett’s smart and nuanced skewering of American racial politics forges such an original path, it’s virtually a genre unto itself.

On the theme of originality, **The Coin** by Yasmin Zaher is Palestinian literature like you’ve never seen it before. In the novel a young Palestinian woman moves to New York and proceeds to have a breakdown, but in the most delightfully absurd, unhinged and oddly chic manner.

I love it when writers upend the expectations placed on them by their identity, and for that reason Torrey Peters’ **Detransition, Baby** is one of my all-time favourite novels. She writes with brutal honesty about the trans experience, refusing to shy away from the dark sides, creating full-formed characters rather than political mouthpieces, and in doing so, allows the reader a full empathic experience. If you read it, you’ll find the best Wim Hof joke of all time near the end.

 by Nussaibah Younis is published by W&N. To support the Guardian and Observer, order your copy at .

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## Richard, Guardian reader

I’ve been reading **The Moon and Sixpence** by Somerset Maugham, which reminds us not to be too hasty in trying to meet our heroes, as they may and quite regularly do disappoint. I also read **My Father’s House** by Joseph O’Connor, about the Nazi occupation of Rome and an Irish man’s attempts to ameliorate the situation by setting up an escape route for the targets of the vile Obersturmführer. Stirring stuff.
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