2026 Olympic Gold Winners: A Reading List

The Morning Star by Karl Ove Knausgård

One long night in August, Arne and Tove are staying with their children in their summer house in southern Norway. Kathrine, a priest, is flying home from a Bible seminar, questioning her marriage. Journalist Jostein is out drinking for the night, while his wife, Turid, a nurse at a psychiatric care unit, is on a nightshift when one of her patients escapes. Above them all, a huge star suddenly appears blazing in the sky, and so begins a series of mysterious events. For these six, and three others, life is about to become ever more surprising and unruly…

(Also a staff choice for our Bob)

The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead

Based on the real story of a reform school in Florida that operated for one hundred and eleven years and warped the lives of thousands of children, The Nickel Boys is a devastating, driven narrative that showcases a great American novelist writing at the height of his powers.

(Also a staff choice for our Pleun)

The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden

It’s 1961 and the rural Dutch province of Overijssel is quiet. Bomb craters have been filled, buildings reconstructed, and the war is well and truly over. Living alone in her late mother’s country home, Isabel’s life is upended when her brother Louis delivers his graceless new girlfriend, Eva, at Isabel’s doorstep-as a guest, there to stay for the season… The war might not be well and truly over after all, and neither Eva – nor the house in which they live – are what they seem.

(Also a staff choice for our Matty)

My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante

The story of Elena and Lila begins in the 1950s in a poor but vibrant neighborhood on the outskirts of Naples. Growing up on these tough streets the two girls learn to rely on each other ahead of anyone or anything else, as their friendship, beautifully and meticulously rendered, becomes a not-always-perfect shelter from hardship. A memorable portrait of two women, Ferrante gives her readers the story of a city and a country undergoing momentous change.

(Also a staff choice for our Damla and Lynn)

Kairos by Jenny Erpenbeck

Berlin. 11 July 1986. They meet by chance on a bus. She is a young student, he is older and married. Theirs is an intense and sudden attraction, fuelled by a shared passion for music and art, and heightened by the secrecy they must maintain. But when she strays for a single night he cannot forgive her and a dangerous crack forms between them, opening up a space for cruelty, punishment and the exertion of power.

Bonjour Tristesse by Francoise Sagan

The internationally beloved story of a precocious teenager’s attempts to understand and control the world around her, Fran oise Sagan’s Bonjour Tristesse is a beautifully composed, wonderfully ambiguous celebration of sexual liberation, at once sympathetic and powerfully unsparing.

(Also a staff choice for our Bruna and Damla)

My Friends by Fredrik Backman

In a distant seaside town, a group of teenagers find refuge from their bruising home lives by spending long summer days on an abandoned pier, telling silly jokes, sharing secrets, and committing small acts of rebellion. Out of that summer emerges a transcendent work of art, a painting that will unexpectedly be placed into eighteen-year-old Louisa’s care twenty five years later. She embarks on a surprise-filled cross-country journey to learn how the painting came to be and to decide what to do with it.

(Also a staff choice for our Martijn)

Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse

Alienated from society, Harry Haller is the Steppenwolf, wild, strange and shy. His despair and desire for death draw him into an enchanted, Faust-like underworld. Through a series of shadowy encounters, romantic, freakish and savage by turn, Haller begins to rediscover the lost dreams of his youth.

The Post Office Girl by Stefan Zweig

It’s the 1930s. Christine, A young Austrian woman whose family has been impoverished by the war, toils away in a provincial post office. Out of the blue, a telegram arrives from an American aunt she’s never known, inviting her to spend two weeks in a Grand Hotel in a fashionable Swiss resort. She accepts and is swept up into a world of almost inconceivable wealth and unleashed desire, where she allows herself to be utterly transformed. Then, just as abruptly, her aunt cuts her loose and she has to return to the post office, where – yes – nothing will ever be the same.

The Territory of Light by Yuko Tsushima

Territory of Light is the luminous story of a young woman, living alone in Tokyo with her three-year-old daughter. Its twelve, stand-alone fragments follow the first year of her separation from her husband. The novel is full of light, sometimes comforting and sometimes dangerous: sunlight streaming through windows, dappled light in the park, distant fireworks, dazzling floodwater, desaturated streetlamps and earth-shaking explosions. The seemingly artless prose is beautifully patterned: the cumulative effect is disarmingly powerful and images remain seared into your retina for a long time afterwards.

Cat’s Eye by Margaret Atwood

Cat’s Eye is the story of Elaine Risley, a controversial painter who returns to Toronto, the city of her youth, for a retrospective of her art. Engulfed by vivid images of the past, she reminisces about a trio of girls who initiated her into the fierce politics of childhood and its secret world of friendship, longing, and betrayal. Elaine must come to terms with her own identity as a daughter, a lover, an artist, and a woman–but above all she must seek release from her haunting memories.

Frog by Mo Yan

Gugu is beautiful, charismatic and of an unimpeachable political background. A respected midwife, she combines modern medical knowledge with a healer’s touch to save the lives of village women and their babies.

Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 by Nam-Joo Cho

Kim Jiyoung is a girl born to a mother whose in-laws wanted a boy. Kim Jiyoung is a sister made to share a room while her brother gets one of his own. Kim Jiyoung is a female preyed upon by male teachers at school. Kim Jiyoung is a daughter whose father blames her when she is harassed late at night. Kim Jiyoung is a good student who doesn’t get put forward for internships. Kim Jiyoung is a model employee but gets overlooked for promotion. Kim Jiyoung is a wife who gives up her career and independence for a life of domesticity. Kim Jiyoung has started acting strangely.

The Yield by Tara June Winch

Knowing that he will soon die, Albert “Poppy” Gondiwindi has one final task he must fulfill: to pass on the language of his people, the traditions of his ancestors, and everything that was ever remembered by those who came before him. The land itself aids him; he finds the words on the wind. After his passing, Poppy’s granddaughter, August, returns home from Europe, to attend his burial. Her homecoming is bittersweet as she confronts the love of her kin and news that Prosperous is to be repossessed by a mining company. Determined to make amends and honor Poppy and her family, she vows to save their land―a quest guided by the voice of her grandfather that leads into the past, the stories of her people, the secrets of the river.

White Teeth by Zadie Smith

One of the most talked about debut novels of all time, White Teeth is a funny, generous, big-hearted novel, adored by critics and readers alike. Dealing – among many other things – with friendship, love, war, three cultures and three families over three generations, one brown mouse, and the tricky way the past has of coming back and biting you on the ankle, it is a life-affirming, riotous must-read of a book.

(Also a staff choice for our Bob)

The Essential Kafka by Franz Kafka

Franz Kafka has given his name to a world of nightmare, but in Kafka’s world, it is never completely clear just what the nightmare is. Kafka deals in dark and quirkily humorous terms with the insoluble dilemmas of a world which offers no reassurance, and no reliable guidance to resolving our existential and emotional uncertainties and anxieties.

I Saw Her That Night by Drago Jancar

This novel is a love story in time of war, about a few years in the life and mysterious disappearance of Veronika Zarnik, a young bourgeois woman from Ljubljana, sucked into the whirlwind of a turbulent period in history, Slovenia before and during World War II. We follow her story from the perspective of five different characters.

The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Hidden in the heart of the old city of Barcelona is the ‘Cemetery of Lost Books’, a labyrinthine library of obscure and forgotten titles that have long gone out of print. To this library, a man brings his 10-year-old son Daniel one cold morning in 1945. Daniel is allowed to choose one book from the shelves and pulls out ‘The Shadow of the Wind’ by Julian Carax. But as he grows up, several people seem inordinately interested in his find. Then, one night, as he is wandering the old streets once more, Daniel is approached by a figure who reminds him of a character from the book, a character who turns out to be the devil.

(Also a staff choice for our Damla and Iris)

Dom Casmurro by Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis

Bento Santiago is madly in love with his neighbour, Capitu. He even breaks a promise his devout mother made to God that he become a priest in order to marry her. But, once wed, Bento becomes increasingly convinced that Capitu is having a torrid affair, that his son is not his own, and that his best friend has cuckolded him. What follows is a rich and sardonic narrative, as Bento attempts to discern his sons paternity. Are his suspicions actually based in reality or have his obsessive ruminations given way to deceptive illusions?

(Also a staff choice for our Bruna)

Amanat: Women’s Writing from Kazakhstan by Zaure Batayeva