Welcome to Kunzum’s Fiction Bestsellers! Based on what Kunzumwallahs picked up and absolutely devoured in the hot, sweltering, no-good month of May, this list brings you the top titles that are nearly sold out across stores:) From hot-picks viral all over booktok, to old favourites that continue to have a staunch community of fans, these are May’s Top 7 Fiction Picks!
Until August by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
The “extraordinary lost novel from Nobel Prize Winning Author of Love in the Time of Cholera and A Hundred Years of Solitude,” Marquez’s Until August is a discovered manuscript published posthumously and became an instant bestseller. Who is surprised? Two-line backstory on how it came to be out and about– Envisioned as a five-part novel exploring an extramarital affair, tabled while the great man finished Memories of My Melancholy Whores, picked up again at the edge of Alzheimer’s and rejected by Marquez as unworthy of publication shortly after that, Until August was awaiting destruction. Under strict instructions to do nothing with the manuscript, and to destroy it instead, Marquez’s sons took the joint initiative of submitting it to publishers a few years after their father’s passing. Now a 100-something pager, Until August takes us to Ana Magdelena, a happily married woman who takes a solo trip to her mother’s grave every year, engaging in a passionate one-night stand come August.
Funny Story by Emily Henry
The contemporary face of chick-lit and rom-com has released her latest novel and it will fulfil all of your ‘toe-curling binge-reading’ needs. With a plot that is as convoluted and complex as a soap opera, and brilliant for exactly that, Funny Story checks all the boxes. Small-world chaos meets opposites attract meets will-they-won’t-they but on steroids, Funny Place features exes falling in love, specifically ex-fiancés falling for their new-fiancé’s ex. When meticulous and not-a-sharer children’s librarian Daphne finds herself at the butt end of an abruptly dissolved engagement, she is left with emotional turmoil as well as the financial stress of affording a place alone. Seeking a roommate as well as someone who could empathise with the details of her situation, she reaches out to Miles, the ex-fiance of her ex-fiance’s current fiance. I don’t know how to describe this dynamic without running into a loop, but rest assured, Funny Read will do everything that you need from contemporary romances.
The Lost Bookshop by Evie Woods
Woods’ book possesses a premise that practically sells itself, specifically to book-lovers. It’s a bookshop in Dublin that waits for the right customer in a very wardrobe-to-Narnia fashion. The main characters are Martha, a young woman in an abusive marriage and Henry, a PhD student desperately looking for Emily Bronte’s lost novel. The novel does not begin with these contemporary characters. It starts with Opaline Carlisle in 1920s London, a passionate reader who becomes a bookseller and was the last to reference the lost Bronte manuscript. The book moves across time and ends up being a fictional ode to the great moments of literature in Europe, from references to the Parisian landmark Shakespeare and Co. to Joyce and Hemmingway, while exploring themes of loss and abuse with delicate empathy, The Lost Bookshop is a refreshing read that reinstates the magic that is at the core of books, bookshops and book loving communities.
White Nights by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Unavailable in the market, suddenly available, loaded in bulk, out of stock again and back again, White Nights has had a memorable journey at Kunzum. Dostoyvesky’s short-story is a pocket-book-sized exploration of love, longing and grief. A highly introspective story spanning over four nights and one morning, following a young broken-hearted man in St. Petersberg (on-brand Dostoyevsky protagonist), White Nights takes us to a lonely narrator in love with a woman who loves another. A celebration of unconditional and unrequited love, Dostoyevsky’s six-scene narrative, the one adapted for film over 11 times across the world, most famously in Bhansali’s Saawariya, is a narrative that continues to hold significance and value today, in addition to being a great introduction to Dostoyevsky and his glimmering oeuvre.
Yellowface by R.F. Kuang
A book on the status of authors within the contemporary scape of diversity-focused publishing and reading, Kuang’s Yellowface is a satirical work of metafiction that directly calls out her tokenistic appeal as an Asian-American author in a White dominated industry. Inspired by real conversations regarding token authors and representation in publishing, Kuang found herself drafting a conceit narrative that serves to humorously, lightly and intelligently call out biases, prejudices and the sham of political correctness within today’s society and its culture consumption. June Song is a struggling author with a dead author-best friend. In an attempt to carry her friend’s work forward, she begins to edit the manuscript, which is on Chinese labourers in World War 1, and slowly takes ownership of the entire book. Publishing it as her own novel, under a fake and deeply Asian-sounding pseudonym, ‘Juniper Song’, June unwittingly enters a cut-throat world of cancel-culture, fending off accusations of cultural appropriation and plagiarism off of Twitter and other public-private spaces.
Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus (Special HB Edition with sprayed edges)
She is a CHEMIST! Garmus’ novel cannot be brushed off as the run-of-the-mill formulaic storytelling that seems to typically occupy the realm of rom-com, for it is much more than that, touching upon the historical, romantic, cultural and feminist. The story follows Elizabeth Zott, a chemist in a fiercely male-dominated profession, and eventually an unexpected cooking show host in 1960s Southern California. From stabbing your rapist to falling for an unlikely match at a research institute, then adopting an abandoned explosive detection dog, and randomly being hired to host a cooking show, Zott’s life invites women to challenge the status quo. Brilliantly fusing chemistry with cooking and life with research, Lessons in Chemistry offers a refreshingly unique novel with a refreshingly unique protagonist at its helm. We stan a woman in STEM.
Welcome to the Hyunam-Dong Bookshop by Hwang Bo-reum
Bo-reum’s novel allows you to vicariously live out a cardinal fantasy– that of abandoning your stressful metropolitan life to open a bookstore. Looking for a fresh start or even a new life after the dissolution of a stressful marriage and heavy under the weight of a demanding career, Yeong-ju decides to pursue her dream and open Hyunam-Dong. The novel follows its protagonist’s reckoning with the fun and often difficult realities of being a bookstore owner, introducing us to the challenges of the task as well as the cast of characters that seek solace within its walls. Bonding over a shared love of books, Yeongju and her customers find acceptance, friendship, and a chance to rewrite their own stories.
Pick up any of these Top 7 Fiction Bestsellers From May 2024 from any Kunzum store or WhatsApp +91.8800200280 to order. Buy the book(s) and the coffee’s on us.