The 1990 sections are the strongest, each with a built-in narrative drive, one taking us forward (where is the child?) and one back (what happened to Isobel?). The story starts out by cycling through three worlds: the diary of schoolgirl Isobel Williams in 1975 Isobel’s cautious life in 1990, where we discover she is deaf and, also in 1990, an investigation by DS Sally Carter into a missing child. This one is a coming-of-age story, a trauma narrative, and a crime thriller. It is less surprising than her debut but shows a similar restlessness - as though, having started late in the game, Ward is determined to write as many novels as possible each time. Her second novel The Schoolhouse therefore carries expectation, and not just as a curio. The Schoolhouse, Sophie Ward (Corsair, £16.99)

But Sophie Ward, best known until recently for Heartbeat, Holby City and Boots No 7, bucked the trend with her original and philosophical debut novel Love and Other Thought Experiments (2020), which was longlisted for the Booker Prize. Comedians generally fare better at the novelling game than straight actors, the putting together of words being their stock-in-trade. Think of poor Naomi Campbell, who reportedly had not even read “her” ghostwritten novel Swan when it was published in 1994. The lot of the model-slash-actor-turned-author is not a happy one. To get the full magazine why not subscribe? Right now we’re offering five issues for just £10. Stranger to the Moon is a brave, powerful, and distinctive novel by a writer who arguably holds the strongest claim to the title of Colombia’s greatest living author.This article is taken from the June 2022 issue of The Critic. Insects and reptiles are trained as agents and spies against the naked ones, and only the most fortunate humans manage to reach old age by taking up strategic spots near the kitchens and grabbing for the fiercely contested food. Each subsequent section of the book adds further layers to the ritualistic and bizarre social order inhabited by its characters.

A parable of pointed social criticism, with naked humans imprisoned in a house in order to serve the needs of “the vicious clothed ones,” the novel describes what ensues when a single “naked one” privately rebels, risking his own death and that of his fellow prisoners. His magnificent novel Stranger to the Moon portrays a world that seems to exist outside time and place but taps into the dark myths and collective subconscious of his country, with its harrowing inequality and violence.

The renowned Colombian writer Evelio Rosero has never been one to shy away from the darker aspects of his nation’s history and society.

Stranger to the Moon by Evelio Rosero