The year in which a book is published can be arbitrary at the best of times, and it’s clear we aren’t living through an ordinary year. A sizable number of titles that are coming out in 2021 were originally slated for 2020, and some have carried copyright pages to that effect. To present forthcoming fiction releases, therefore, as if they constitute a precise or cohesive portrait is even more of a stretch than usual.
Still, the majority of trends exceed any 12-month period – the taste for the saga, for example, which continues to show amazing durability. Jonathan Franzen has announced a saga-series – questionably entitled A Key to All Mythologies, and moving from the Vietnam War to the present day – of which Crossroads (Fourth Estate, October) is the first part. Also using the family unit to explore shifting mores are Damon Galgut, writing about South Africa in The Promise (Chatto, June), Sunjeev Sahota, covering India in China Room (Harvill Secker, May), and Taffy Brodesser-Akner, who follows Fleishman is in Trouble with another, albeit larger-scaled, tale of New York life – Long Island Compromise (Wildfire, June).