In the novel, both Khaled and Mustafa are shot at the protest and hospitalised. From this point, they are unable to return to their home country. The book explores the subsequent relationship, and eventual diverging paths, of the two friends, along with a third, the enigmatic author Hosam. The latter is introduced early in the novel as an inspirational figure in Khaled's life, after hearing his poem read out - unusually in lieu of a news broadcast - on the BBC Arabic World Service, by a presenter who would soon after be murdered in London (another event based closely on real events). Khaled later meets Hosam by chance in Paris, before the writer (no longer writing) joins him in London and becomes a lasting friend.

Playground focuses primarily on four characters, who we know will come to share a connection. In Montreal, Evie Beaulieu is introduced in dramatic fashion, as a 12-year-old plunging to the bottom of a swimming pool, strapped to one of the first aqualungs by her father, and grows to love the ocean and everything connected to it. In Chicago, two super-smart kids with vastly differing backgrounds bond at an elite high school over their love of sophisticated board games. And finally there’s Ina Aroita, who has to my memory a far less memorable introduction, but is apparently considered to be one of the four main players also.

You Are Here begins by introducing us to Marnie, a 38-year-old copy-editor living in London, a natural introvert who has become more and more reclusive over time, exacerbated by the Covid-induced move to remote work and a breakup with her ill-matched husband. Her friend Cleo, a teacher, has been trying to get her to re-emerge into the world, and against expectations, it’s a big trip to the north of England that finally works. Cleo’s colleague and friend Michael, a 42-year-old Geography teacher and general loveable nerd (also recently separated), is planning to walk the Coast-to-Coast path - crossing England from the Irish Sea in Cumbria to the North Sea in North Yorkshire. Cleo arranges a group of fellow adventurers - including Marnie - to join him for the first part of the trip in the Lake District.

Rare Singles is a slim novel focusing on Earlon ‘Bucky’ Bronco, a seventy-something Black man living in Illinois, who cut a few soul records as a teenager but has spent much of the recent of his life working dead-end jobs and devoting his life to his wife Maybellene, who has recently died. Out of the blue, he receives a request to travel to Scarborough, a fading seaside resort in Northern England, to play a comeback show at a Northern Soul Weekender. Unbeknownst to Bucky, who was paid a derisory flat fee for his initial recordings so has no way of tracking their afterlives, his two ‘rare singles’ have become loved and treasured in the Northern Soul scene, which gave another life to many obscure releases from US soul singers on the Northern-English dancefloors (and to some extent, the UK charts) of the 70s and beyond.

Martyr! introduces us to Cyrus Shams, a recently sober son of Iranian immigrants (and evidently an autobiographical proxy for the author). As a child he moved to the US following the loss of his mother when her plane (Iran Air Flight 655; based on a real incident) was shot down over the Persian Gulf by US forces. His father, who made his way in the States as a factory farm worker, has also died, leaving Cyrus seeking meaning initially in narcotics but subsequently in poetry.

Fire Rush is focused on Yamaye, a young woman of Jamaican heritage, living on the Tombstone Estate in suburban London in the late 1970s. Her mother is long gone, though remains a spectral presence in her life, and her father, while physically present, is cold and distant. She escapes into an underground culture of Caribbean music, centring on a local club called the Crypt, which is of course quite literally underground. She parties with her friends Asase and Rumer (the latter an Irish immigrant) and takes on the male-dominated club culture by developing her own knowledge of music and fierce line in lyrics which she begins to unleash at the Crypt. She meets a sensitive and romantic man, Moose, at the club, and the two fall in love and dream of escape to the Jamaican countryside

A Little Life begins in a familiar enough mode, detailing the lives of four clearly exceptionally talented young men, brought together as roommates at university in New York: JB, a painter; Malcolm, an architect; Willem, an aspiring actor; and finally Jude, a mathematical genius and eventual lawyer. It’s clear from early on that much of the novel’s intrigue is going to revolve around Jude, who despite his many talents is clearly suffering - with both serious physical and mental health issues resulting from initially undisclosed past events.

As it develops, it comes to focus more directly on Jude, and all of the other characters largely come to be defined more in terms of their relationship to him. We learn relatively early on that he has suffered severe abuse as a child, the nature of which is slowly expanded upon in increasingly horrific detail. Crucially, he is unable to reveal the truth of his life to anyone - instead taking refuge in long hours of work as a lawyer and in persistent self harm. While he enjoys the love of many friends, and ultimately adoptive parents in the form of mentor Harold and his wife Julia, he is unable to overcome his trauma. Throughout we’re given hope that through a series of positive developments Jude may be able to begin to face his past and at least begin to enjoy his life, but this - ultimately - isn’t that kind of novel.