The New Yorker Announces Their Best Books of 2023

A NEW YORK TIMES TOP TEN BOOK OF THE YEAR • FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD IN NONFICTION • FINALIST FOR THE PEN/GALBRAITH AWARD FOR NONFICTION • WINNER OF THE 2024 JOHN WESLEY DAFOE BOOK PRIZE • A stunning account of a colossal wildfire and a panoramic exploration of the rapidly changing relationship between fire and humankind from the award-winning, best-selling author of The Tiger and The Golden Spruce • Winner of the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The New York Times, The Washington Post, The New Yorker, TIME, NPR, PBS, Good Morning America, Slate, Financial Times, WIRED, The Guardian, Smithsonian Magazine, Air Mail, and Orion Magazine“Grips like a philosophical thriller, warns like a beacon, and shocks to the core." —Robert Macfarlane, bestselling author of Underland“Riveting, spellbinding, astounding on every page.” —David Wallace-Wells, #1 bestselling author of The Uninhabitable Earth

From acclaimed and bestselling novelist Zadie Smith, a kaleidoscopic work of historical fiction set against the legal trial that divided Victorian England, about who gets to tell their story—and who gets to be believed

An unprecedented and intimate portrait of Russia, and a passionate cri de cœur for journalism in opposition to the global authoritarian turn

A fearless, powerfully written on-the-ground account of a nation careening into a violent autocracy—told through harrowing stories of the Philippines’ state-sanctioned killings of its citizens—from a leading journalist of international renown

Surreal, hilarious, and shrewdly poignant—a novel about a Korean American woman living in Berlin whose obsession with a K-pop idol sends her to Seoul on a journey of literary self-destruction.