Little, by David Treuer, (Granta, £9.99 in UK).

Set on an Indian reservation in Minnesota, Treuer's novel is a powerful and evocative piece of work, beautifully written, full of larger-than-life characters, and conveying a feel for nature as wonderfully realised as that ol' say, Steinbeck's. The story is told through the eyes, ears and emotions of the cast: Grandmother Jeanette and her, ex-lovers, the twins Duke and Ellis; maimed Vietnam veteran Stan and his sister Violet; some more peripheral characters; and Donovan, the Indian child found by the twins during a snowstorm. More harsh and trenchant than Sherman Alexi, the other native American magic-realist writer currently popular, Treuer seeks out the downbeat nature of the Indian way of life, portraying Itis people as once proud warriors now reduced to depending on a dream world of the old ways for their spur in life. Savage, violent, but with an overlay of aching tenderness, Little is as fine a novel as has come my way in a long time.