Recommended by Gladys Lai.

 Every sentence in A Personal Matter is a revelation. There's a monstrous agony at the heart of the novel, but it's the way that Oë describes the simplest scenes- the touch of summer, a gaze, the curve of a face- that arrests you. This is a book that challenges you in every way; it will unseat you with the narrator's raw, ugly thoughts, it will cut you with his pain. But for all of that sadness, the book is really about triumph. A novel you'll devour in a single day, but you'll be raving about it for many days after.