Look no further if you’re looking for the best 2023 literary fiction books.  From thought-provoking analyses to evocative stories, this list of fiction titles will surely please any reader who appreciates beautifully written and emotionally rewarding stories.  With writers from around the world exploring a range of topics, including love, relationships, loss, and coming of age, there is something here for everyone.  So continue reading to discover some must-read titles that will add depth and pleasure to your reading experience in 2023.

Note: These are the best literary fiction books so far.  More books will be added to the list in the coming months.

LOOKING FOR MORE BEST BOOKS OF 2023?

• The Best 2023 Historical Fiction Books
• The Best 2023 Romance Books
• The Best 2023 Books about Friendship & Family
• The Best 2023 Science Fiction Fantasy Books
• The Best 2023 Horror Books To Read
• The Best 2023 Mystery, Suspense & Thriller Books
• The Best 2023 Cozy Mysteries to Read
• The Best 2023 Short Story Collections

The Survivalists by Kashana Cauley

A single Black lawyer puts her career and personal moral code at risk when she moves in with her boyfriend and his doomsday-prepping roommates.

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Small World by Laura Zigman

A heartfelt novel about two offbeat and newly divorced sisters who move in together as adults—and finally reckon with their childhood.

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The World and All That It Holds by Aleksandar Hemon

An epic story of love, war, and displacement that traces the life of Rafael Pinto, spanning decades and continents, starting just before the First World War.

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Hungry Ghosts by Kevin Jared Hosein

Set in 1940s Trinidad, an immersive story of two families colliding and the chilling mystery at the center of how interconnected their lives are.

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Flux by Jinwoo Chong

A debut novel about a young man whose reality unravels when he suspects his mysterious employers have inadvertently discovered time travel—and are using it to cover up a string of violent crimes.

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In Memoriam by Alice Winn

A haunting, virtuosic debut novel about two young men who fall in love during a time of war.

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The Dog of the North by Elizabeth McKenzie

This slyly humorous, thoroughly winsome novel finds the purpose in life’s curveballs, insisting that even when we are painfully warped by those we love most, we can be brought closer to our truest selves.

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Hello Beautiful by Ann Napolitano

From the New York Times bestselling author of Dear Edward comes an emotionally layered and engrossing family story that asks: Can love make a broken person whole?

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A Likely Story by Leigh McMullan Abramson

The only child of an iconic American novelist discovers a shocking tangle of family secrets that upends everything she thought she knew about her parents, her gilded childhood, and her own stalled writing career in this brilliantly observed standout debut.

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Y/N by Esther Yi

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.

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I Could Live Here Forever by Hanna Halperin

By the award-winning author of Something Wild, a gripping portrait of a tumultuous, consuming relationship between a young woman and a recovering addict.

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The Only Daughter by A.B. Yehoshua, Translated by Stuart Schoffman

From the internationally acclaimed, award-winning Israeli author, a stunning novella that brilliantly illuminates a young girl’s crisis of faith and coming of age in Padua, Italy.

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The Last Animal by Ramona Ausubel

A playful, witty, and resonant novel in which a single mother and her two teen daughters engage in a wild scientific experiment and discover themselves in the process, from the award-winning writer of Sons and Daughters of Ease and Plenty.

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Fire Rush by Jacqueline Crooks

Set amid the Jamaican diaspora in London at the dawn of 1980s, a mesmerizing story of love, loss, and self-discovery that vibrates with the liberating power of music.

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Ghost Girl, Banana by Wiz Wharton

Set between the last years of the “Chinese Windrush” in 1966 and Hong Kong’s Handover to China in 1997, a mysterious inheritance sees a young woman from London uncovering buried secrets in her late mother’s homeland in this captivating, wry debut about family, identity, and the price of belonging.

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The Skin and Its Girl by Sarah Cypher

A young, queer Palestinian American woman pieces together her great aunt’s secrets in this sweeping debut, a family saga confronting questions of sexual identity, exile, and lineage.

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Salvage This World by Michael Farris Smith

In Michael Farris Smith’s latest gritty epic, a young woman returns home with her child, to her ghost-haunted father, while a religious extremist hunts the stormridden territory to find the girl who may hold the key to the region’s apocalyptic future.

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What do you think about these 2023 literary fiction books?

Have you read any books from this list?  What are your favorite 2023 literary fiction books?  What books would you add to the list?

LOOKING FOR MORE BEST BOOKS OF 2023?

• The Best 2023 Historical Fiction Books
• The Best 2023 Romance Books
• The Best 2023 Books about Friendship & Family
• The Best 2023 Science Fiction Fantasy Books
• The Best 2023 Horror Books To Read
• The Best 2023 Mystery, Suspense & Thriller Books
• The Best 2023 Cozy Mysteries to Read
• The Best 2023 Short Story Collections