Reviews of notable new fiction and nonfiction.  A Stone Is Most Precious Where It Belongs, by Gulchehra Hoja (Hachette). This chronicle of the transformations of the Uyghur homeland of Xinjiang opens in 2018, on a night when more than twenty members of Hoja’s family were arrested, after she began reporting on the Uyghur internment camps run by the Chinese government. Buy now on Amazon or Bookshop. I Am Still with You, by Emmanuel Iduma (Algonquin). Combining memoir and travel writing, Iduma uses personal loss—of close relatives—to reflect on the history of the “faultily amalgamated” country of Nigeria. Rummaging through derelict regional archives and filling lacunae with his relatives’ memories, he attempts to piece together the story of his namesake, an uncle who died in the Biafran War. Buy now on Amazon or Bookshop. Biography of X, by Catherine Lacey (Farrar, Straus & Giroux). In this intricate, metafictional novel, a recently widowed writer embarks on a biography of her late wife, an enigmatic artist, author, and musician known only as X. As the writer delves deeper into X’s life and work, Lacey unfolds a startling counter-history, in which the United States has just reunified, having dissolved, after the Second World War, into three states: one liberal, one libertarian, and one theocratic. Buy now on Amazon or Bookshop. Users, by Colin Winnette (Soft Skull). The protagonist of this novel is a virtual-reality designer who crafts popular “Original Experiences,” which draw on his most disturbing memories: “That way, the whole thing could be forgotten, or at least its potency could be reduced.” But one day the designer begins receiving death threats, and shortly afterward ethical concerns about the technology arise. Buy now on Amazon or Bookshop. What are you reading this week? Reply to let us know. | 
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