Camilla Grudova (Fitzcarraldo Editions)

Camilla Grudova is a Canadian writer who has featured in literature journals such as Granta. This is her first collection of fiction, and it marks her out as one of the most troublingly imaginative, blackly hilarious authors to have emerged in recent times. Thirteen short stories paint multiple worlds in which dysfunction, disease and death are garden variety obstacles, the average diet makes the height of postwar rationing seem like a banquet, and anthropomorphic episodes are as frequent as any Grimm anthology. Grudova’s prose is both elegant and nonchalant, offering horrific imagery as if nothing were untoward, and a feminist subtext colours almost every story. Waxy, the collection’s highlight, takes place in a disturbingly vivid, joyless patriarchal society where work, relationships and care are strictly regulated but seem to have no ultimate function.

Price: £10.99. Info: www.fitzcarraldoeditions.com