THE BOOKS OF 2025
My little AAINO readers circle about the reads, old and new, that made their year.
Reading, to me, is magic. Always has been, always will be. But with seemingly millions more interesting books than hours for undisturbed reading, it is getting harder and harder to choose from my ever-growing want-to-read list. So consider this latest edition of the AAINO newsletter my answer to my own, very desperate cry for help.
I asked six of the most passionate readers among my friends — those whose book recommendations never disappoint — to look back at the year gone by and choose the one read that left the greatest impression on them. And to try to put into words why.
An so, if one of your New Year’s resolutions is to read more books but you’re unsure what to pick, I believe these six are an excellent place to start.
APOSTOLOFF
BY SIBYLLE LEWITSCHAROFF
Recommended by my friend Johannes — as a master of the law, a man of detail. Sometimes because of it, sometimes in spite of it, we share many passions, not all of them are as healthy and sophisticated as our love of literature.
This past year, I have become a devoted admirer of Sibylle Lewitscharoff, who sadly passed away in 2023. In her 2009 novel Apostoloff, the narrator — bearing unmistakable traces of Lewitscharoff herself — travels through Bulgaria with her older sister and the titular Rumen Apostoloff. Looming over the journey is the sisters’ father, whose life and death reverberate through the novel: the family he left behind in Bulgaria, the sisters’ upbringing in Stuttgart-Degerloch where he had settled in the 1940s, and finally the elaborate repatriation of his body — he had taken his own life years before — back to Bulgaria, aboard a pompous memorial train carrying eighteen other exiled Bulgarians.
One might expect the narrative to turn inward, to carefully process a family tragedy. Instead, Lewitscharoff unleashes a cascade of furious tirades, their rhythm and edge recalling Thomas Bernhard at his most acerbic. Her language is itself a marvel: deliberately old-fashioned, meticulously precise, and wittily subversive. What emerges is a novel that is as original as it is entertaining, a work whose pleasure lies not in reconciliation but in the freedom to rant, rail, and revel in verbal excess.
Apostoloff is a novel that asks its readers to surrender to its chaos, to delight in the exuberance of anger, and to witness grief transformed into something audaciously inventive. In Lewitscharoff’s hands, mourning becomes a performance, a literary spectacle in which nothing must be neatly resolved — and everything is vividly alive.
AMERICANAH
BY CHIMAMANDA NGOZI ADICHIE
Recommended by my friend Mirjam, who, before she founded a PR agency, recommended books for a living. But even if she weren’t a certified bookseller, we share similar tastes in just about everything — why would literature be an exception?
Americanah is more than a novel — it is a keenly observed exile epic, a love story, and a compelling analysis of contemporary racism. At its heart is Ifemelu, a young Nigerian woman who moves to the U.S. for university and, through her experiences there, painfully realises how much identity and perception depend on social context. While being Black carries little political or social weight in Nigeria, in America she is confronted with clear prejudices and stereotypes, highlighting how identity is both situational and negotiable.
Adichie blends personal experience — When I went to study in the U.S. at 19, African Americans called me ‘sister.’ It was meant as a gesture of solidarity, but I shook my head: What is this? I’m not ‘black,’I’m Nigerian! — with literary precision. Her characters are sharply drawn, their dialogues witty, ironic, and incisive, exposing societal taboos with elegance. The love story between Ifemelu and Obinze, set in 1990s Nigeria, remains credible and profound, functioning not as a mere subplot but as a mirror of social and cultural dynamics.
At its core, the novel offers a nuanced exploration of racism: subtle yet omnipresent, it never moralises but comes alive through Ifemelu’s experiences. Small thought experiments — like asking whether Michelle Obama would have received different votes if she wore an Afro — illustrate how closely identity and social perception are intertwined and how politically charged our notions of race can be.
Americanah captivates with clear, elegant prose, emotional depth, and incisive social critique. It is a book that entertains, provokes reflection, and sharpens understanding of the often-overlooked mechanisms of racism and self-perception.
MY FRIENDS
BY HISHAM MATAR
Recommended by Joëlle, who, besides sharing my love of books and art — she works as a collection manager at a renowned gallery — has something even more fundamental in common with me: genetic material. She is my favourite (and only) sister.
All of the four novels by Hisham Matar which I have read somehow strike a chord. My Friends was no exception.
Khaled and Mustafa, two eighteen-year-old students from Libya, decide to attend a demonstration outside the Libyan embassy in central London. Both are fired upon and wounded, their lives remaining forever changed. The novel is about the aftermath of that fateful incident, told by way of Khaled reminiscing about the decades gone by whilst walking through London. It is a study in friendship in light of the loss of a shared homeland and forced political exile. Matar’s protagonist ponders on the meaning of home and its emotional landscape and on the (im)possibility of returning. He does so in a melancholy, never bitter but profoundly moving way.
Hisham Matar wrote the (magnificent, one-page-long) opening paragraph and carried it in his head for a decade before he sat down to write the book. My Friends bears the weight of these years, of time passing and relationships evolving, of struggles with matters of loyalty to the homeland, to family, friends and, ultimately, oneself.
MINIHORROR
BY BARBI MARKOVIĆ
Recommended by my friend Anna — a woman of strong convictions and one never afraid to voice them. Anna says things as she sees them — and unless it’s about the tea versus coffee debate, I tend to agree with her wholeheartedly.
As a lawyer, I am often tormented in my professional life by sentences that sound lofty but are, regrettably, impenetrable — long, winding constructions that obscure rather than clarify meaning. All the more reason why I delight in language stripped of ornament, and Barbi Marković commands this discipline with remarkable mastery.
In Minihorror, she guides the reader with incisive, expressive precision through twenty-six loosely connected short stories drawn from the everyday lives of Mini and Miki. Familiar, seemingly harmless situations gradually reveal themselves as absurd horror scenarios. Without ever tipping into the ridiculous, Marković creates images that amuse, unsettle, and linger in the mind. For me, this is ideal, brisk entertainment — one that remains light on its feet while still leaving ample space for the reader’s own associations.
THE SUN ALSO RISES
BY ERNEST HEMINGWAY
Recommended by my friend Simon, managing editor of Studio Magazine, and a man of generally impeccable taste. Simon can get excited about a great many things, from the tiniest to the grandest. Lucky for me, books are among them.
Reading The Sun Also Rises, I found myself completely immersed in the 1920s. Everything seemed simpler, looser, somehow more creative than today. No digital tools, no permanent pressure, no constant availability. People met in the bars of Paris, encountered figures from the art and literary scene, drank, danced, talked — and spent their money without thinking too much about it. Were they freer than we are today? Or is this merely a certain nostalgia speaking through me? It’s hard to say.
At some point, the story leaves Paris and heads toward Spain. The main characters first arrive in Burguete, a quiet village with good food and plenty of wine. They fish, discuss life, friendship, masculinity — or, just as often, nothing at all. Then the journey continues to Pamplona for the bull festival, and the narrative gathers pace once more: bulls charge through the streets, wine flows in abundance, and the atmosphere grows wilder, more chaotic, more aggressive. What had felt relaxed and pleasure-driven tilts — at least in part — into excess and conflict.
I am, in general, a great admirer of Hemingway. He writes from the gut, direct and unadorned, attentive to things as they are—or as they once were. In the case of The Sun Also Rises: less stress, less bad temper, more pleasure. And definitely more style.
Voilà. Olé.
THE ELEVENTH HOUR
BY SALMAN RUSHDIE
Recommended by my friend Rahel. With her being a fellow writer — culture editor at NZZ, to be precise — discussing other people’s written works together came naturally. And to this day, I can say with the deepest of conviction: if Rahel loved it, I will too.
The Eleventh Hour is Salman Rushdie’s first collection of short stories since the knife attack of 2022, in which the writer very nearly lost his life. And yet this is not a dark book, nor one overshadowed by trauma. The five stories are carried by a striking sense of composure, often even by a quiet, idiosyncratic humour. Death is omnipresent — but it is neither invoked nor dramatised. Instead, it appears as something that can be approached through storytelling.
Rushdie writes about old men, about writers whose great moment has passed, about people in states of transition. In the story Loose Ends, an author realises that he has died — and at first experiences this as a relief. He is more mobile, free of expectations. Only gradually does he begin to ask himself what this new condition actually means. Moments like these reveal one of Rushdie’s great strengths: a form of intellectual play, full of enchantment, that never loses its sharpness.
The most expansive story, The Musician of Kahani, leads back to India and, with its magical realism, recalls earlier works such as Midnight’s Children (1981). Art, money, faith, and power are brought into a fragile state of balance.
Read as a direct response to the attack, The Eleventh Hour offers little purchase. The collection sits so naturally within Rushdie’s late work that one might think the assault had never occurred. Perhaps that is its greatest triumph: Rushdie continues to write as if storytelling itself were the answer — and as if nothing could be set against death more effectively than a book that refuses it the final word, and with it, the last trace of drama.
And that, my dears, is all for now. Thanks for reading along — and, as always:
Talk soon,
Kiki