HT reviewer Farzana Versey picks her favourite read of 2023

I rarely read popular books, and certainly not soon after release. This year’s celebrated novel Yellowface by RF Kuang claimed to mimic the woke social media outrage on trending topics like diversity, appropriation, cancel culture against the backdrop of friendship and jealousy in the publishing world. You’ll find evidence of cliques all over social media — writers gushing over excerpts of one another’s unpublished manuscripts, squealing over cover reveals, and posting selfies of group hangs at literary meet-ups across the globe”. Except for the narrator: “I’m just brown-eyed, brown-haired June Hayward, from Philly — and no matter how hard I work, or how well I write, I’ll never be Athena Liu.” June admits, “People always describe jealousy as this sharp, green, venomous thing… But I’ve found that jealousy, to writers, feels more like fear. I am the victim here.” Farzana Versey There is much to be said about convenient consciences on social media, and June isn’t immune to it herself.