Fiction selection autumn 2026

What can fiction be? This autumn’s selection offers a wealth of answers. Several of the young authors listed below move effortlessly between genres, bringing poetic precision and formal daring to their novels. Whether through ambitious literary experiments or stories centred on friendship, family ties and care, these books explore the many ways people seek connection. Completing the selection is a modern classic from one of Flanders’ great chroniclers of life on society’s margins, whose singular voice continues to resonate today.

Few debut novels become such an instant cult sensation upon publication as ‘Corpus Britney’. The book appears to begin as a crime story: Bella Goth, a B-movie horror film actress and Britney Spears lookalike, has vanished without trace. A paranormal detective is called in to find her. The search takes her through the 19th century, the virtual world of The Sims, witch hunts and much, much more, in this rich, maximalist novel that constantly surprises the reader and immerses them in new worlds. 

Helle, an internationally successful artist, is devastated when Alma, her closest childhood friend, unexpectedly cuts off all contact. She withdraws to one of the German Wadden Sea islands, where, amid the silence and ruggedness of nature, she tries to understand what has been lost. In a lyrical, sensory style, Astrid Haerens explores the complex boundaries between friendship, love and loss. ‘Erosion’ is a poignant novel about a crumbling friendship, loneliness and our relationship with nature.

In ‘You Sit on a Chair’, Bob Vanden Broeck takes as his starting point an extremely simple situation: a person is sitting on a chair at a table. What at first seems mundane, branches out into memories, fears, desires and philosophical reflections on identity, perception, time and the relationship between body and mind. An ambitious, hallucinatory reading experience.

Actress Abbie de Lange is playing the early 20th-century Irish writer Therese Mae Smith in a historical biopic. Gradually, the line between the two women begins to blur. Abbie recognises herself in Therese: both lost their mothers at a young age, struggle with motherhood, and neither is taken seriously when it comes to their artistic ambitions. Their lives become increasingly intertwined. A gripping novel about motherhood, longing, loss and female self-determination. 

Eleven years after his art history teacher, Ilara, suddenly disappeared from school, she shows up unexpectedly at Willem’s door. Silent and distraught, she moves in with him without explaining what happened. Willem, who writes eulogies and lives like a recluse in a damp apartment, tries to break through her silence. He becomes completely absorbed in his task of providing comfort. Gradually, a novel about complex forms of love, boundaries, art and care unfolds.

The recently retired Nadia is looking forward to a new and carefree phase in her life and finally having time for herself again. But as her children go their own way and her husband finds it difficult to adjust to retirement, she feels her familiar world starting to crumble. In the defined space and time of a family holiday in Italy, Moerman explores themes such as transience, family, love and letting go. He brings existential questions to the fore with wit and sensitivity, avoiding becoming sentimental or cynical.

In this collection of stories Berckmans shows the most unsavoury and corrupt side of reality. Violence is not an issue, murder and manslaughter are simply omnipresent. The unstable characters bear their existential emptiness without illusions. J.M.H. Berckmans (1953-2008) was an uncompromising chronicler of the margins of society, penning stories and books full of fear, paranoia, alcohol and decay, in a linguistic idiom strongly influenced by Bukowski, Beckett, De Sade and Céline. His collected works have been republished this year.