The Sunday Supplement: #49

Sauces to get obsessed about, seventeen works of fiction from 2022, what it’s like to be a food critic who tastes color, and more

Illustration by Michael Houtz for GQ Magazine

In case you need to buy some books this season, the shortlist just dropped for Spring 2023’s Tournament of Books. The list has a terrific range of fiction from last year that you might have missed. Here are the titles. If you go to the actual list, there’s plot descriptions for each book.

• 2 A.M. in Little America by Ken Kalfus

• An Island by Karen Jennings

• Babel by R. F. Kuang

• The Book of Goose by Yiyun Li

• Dinosaurs by Lydia Millet

• Manhunt by Gretchen Felker-Martin

• Mercury Pictures Presents by Anthony Marra

• Mouth to Mouth by Antoine Wilson

• My Volcano by John Elizabeth Stintzi

• Nightcrawling by Leila Mottley

• Notes on Your Sudden Disappearance by Alison Espach

• Olga Dies Dreaming by Xochitl Gonzalez

• The Passenger by Cormac McCarthy

• The Rabbit Hutch by Tess Gunty

• Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel

• The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida by Shehan Karunatilaka

• Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin

• The Violin Conspiracy by Brendan Slocumb

Unrelated, a major thank you to everyone who wrote in and/or shared that recent GQ story about my friend Lars and Holland’s “total football.” The article blew up, which was a surprise, and one consequence was I heard from people who knew Lars, or played for him, or just connected with the story somehow, and it’s been really gratifying.

As compared to Friday’s penalty shootout against Argentina, which was horrible.