Ellah Allfrey

Before World War II, numerous Jewish emigrants left Lithuania for South Africa. In his debut novel, Kenneth Bonert tells the story of a family among their number. As reviewer Ellah Allfrey writes, despite a few rookie mistakes, that story is told with great inventiveness and care.

This week, 28-year-old Eleanor Catton became the youngest person ever to win the Man Booker Prize, for her novel The Luminaries. Critic Ellah Allfrey says this year's finalists were some of the most compelling in years — and The Luminaries is "a masterwork of structural brilliance."

It's been a good summer for author Jhumpa Lahiri. Her new novel, The Lowland, has been nominated for two major literary prizes. But reviewer Ellah Allfrey says that while the book is elegantly structured, she wished for more humanity from the characters.

Anya von Bremzen's new memoir is a delicious narrative of memory and cuisine in 20th century Soviet Union. She writes about her family's own history and contemplates the nation's "complicated, even tortured, relationship with food."

Daniel Woodrell's new novel explores the lingering consequences of an explosion in an Ozarks dance hall that kills 42 people. It wasn't an accident, but the book isn't about a hunt for the murderer. Instead, reviewer Ellah Allfrey says, it's a remarkable study of a surviving sister's life and grief.

Tash Aw's Five Star Billionaire, set in Shanghai, explores the dynamic tumult of that city. Reviewer Ellah Allfrey says that Aw, with gentle compassion and keen understanding, shows his characters succumb to the lure of a city where everything seems possible.

Iain Banks' last novel, The Quarry, follows awkward teen Kit, his dying father Guy, and a group of Guy's former friends as they search for a possibly incriminating videotape. Reviewer Ellah Allfrey says The Quarry isn't Banks' best work, but "it doesn't disappoint."

For readers in search of tales that step outside familiar viewpoints, these authors unravel conflict, religion, race and love — from new and different angles. In these novels, a child from the slums, an executed zealot, a reluctant immigrant, a guilty survivor and a suffering mother take center stage.

In We Need New Names, NoViolet Bulawayo tells the story of Darling and her friends, desperate children who live in a shantytown called Paradise. Although the early chapters are told in a child's voice, there is no whimsy in this novel of a turbulent Zimbabwe.

It can be a frightening feeling, being out of place. Entering someone else's world and having to learn the ropes is a daunting task. Granta editor Ellah Allfrey recommends three books about encountering other cultures, from the extraterrestrial to the multicultural.