He spares us nothing and in gripping stories delivers everything you would want to know about his superbly chosen subject. In the 11 skilfully detailed chapters of The Matter of the Heart (Bodley Head £20), Thomas Morris gives us the spectacular history of heart surgery.

I’m hearing buzz about Jones’s 2018 novel ( An American Marriage) so I thought I’d read this one first. I’m travelling to see my sister in Providence, Rhode Island, this summer, and I’ll take the story collection Strangers to Temptation (Hub City £13.33) by Scott Gould (about a boy in the American south of the 1970s) and the novel Silver Sparrow (Algonquin) by Tayari J ones (about two girls in the American south of the 1980s). I was also blown away by Jane Mayer’s nonfiction book Dark Money (Scribe Publications £9.99), which meticulously, fascinatingly and horrifyingly explains how eccentric American billionaires hijacked our democracy. The whole novel is full of hilarious, brilliant observations about writing, life and crushes. It’s about a girl in her first year at Harvard in the mid-90s, and her email correspondence (when email is still new) with an older male student. I loved the novel The Idiot (Jonathan Cape £16.99) by Elif Batuman. And in my suitcase: Howard Jacobson’s Pussy (Vintage £12.99), because as much as I need to laugh, I also need to confirm that my sense of horror is not just in my imagination but indeed shared David Goodhart’s The Road to Somewhere (C Hurst & Co £20), because I am still looking for clues as to how we got where we are, and where we might be headed next Don DeLillo’s entire backlist, and a bit of Norman Mailer – because in retrospect, despite what one might call his “personality problems” with women, he was an amazing writer with a political eye.Ĭuriously, I’m coming to the UK, spending a month in Oxford, keen to look at a landscape other than my own. Mukherjee brings to life the colours and sounds of a place where modern life is constantly crashing against tradition. Neel Mukherjee’s A State of Freedom (Chatto & Windus £16.99) is a brilliant novel, deeply compassionate and painterly, reminding me of Howard Hodgkin’s paintings.

Best books to read 2017 summer