Priya Hein’s debut novel, Riambel, is an excoriating examination of Mauritius’ socio-political structures and the colonial past from which they have sprung. Centred around Noemi, a young Mauritian girl who lives in the novel’s titular village slum and is forced to give up school in order to work for the wealthy De Grandbourg family, Riambel focuses on the "other" side of Mauritius, the one not depicted on tourist postcards.

Motion Sickness (1991) is the second novel published by the writer, art collector and cultural critic Lynne Tillman. It is difficult, to her credit, to say what it is really about – what makes Tillman a formative figure for much contemporary fiction is a capacity for formalised evasion, for writing a sparse language that nonetheless feels strangely interior to itself.

One day, someone will compile a full illustrated history of Rolling Stones press conferences, going right back to Mick and Keith in 1964 buying a couple of pints in a pub in Denmark Street for journalists from the NME and Melody Maker – both now in the dustbin of history – and telling them, “here’s our album, have a listen” and leaving them to it.

Isabelle Huppert is French cinema’s icon of icy transgression, from Bertrand Blier’s outrageous Les Valseuses (1974) to Paul Verhhoeven’s Elle (2017), in which her character Michéle denies rape’s trauma, instead seeking out her rapist for sadomasochistic sex and mind-games. Huppert was Oscar-nominated for the latter, though she was ultimately too much for Hollywood.

With the release this week of Blómi, her sixth studio album, Norway’s Susanne Sundfør discloses more about herself than she previously has through her music – but nothing is made obvious. As she says during this interview, the driving concept became complex.

Tarik Saleh was born between two worlds, with a Swedish mum and Egyptian dad. His Egyptian side has inspired his two highest-profile releases.

Fiona Benson’s new collection of poems, Ephemeron (Jonathan Cape, 2022), tries to capture those things that are always moving out of grasp.

It’s 1877, and Austria’s Empress Elisabeth (Vicky Krieps) is first seen gasping under freezing water, skin blotchy with another extreme treatment to maintain her legendary beauty. Every day she constricts herself in her corset, as she’s constrained as Emperor Franz Joseph’s trophy wife. Nearing the dangerous female age of 40, the corset tightens notch by notch.

Johanne Lykke Holm’s spellbinding novel Strega recounts one teen’s journey into womanhood. Leaving her parental home to work with eight other girls in a lavish but mouldering hotel, Rafa grapples with what it means to be a woman in a world literally and culturally saturated with gender-based violence.

US comic Alex Edelman first came to the attention of British audiences in 2014, when he was named best newcomer in the Edinburgh Comedy Awards for his show Millennial, in which, said one critic, “he regales us with tales of smart-arsery and backchat”. He has since toured with more of his clever and erudite observational comedy in Everything Handed to You and Just For Us, as well as performing them in the West End.