The Roman general Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa was one of the most fearsome and effective generals in the dying days of the Roman Republic. He was also no mean engineer – we have him to thank for the Pantheon. Yet the right-hand man and erstwhile confidante of Octavius Caesar – nephew of Julius and later Rome’s first Emperor, Augustus – has remained a shadow of history, unacknowledged in the official record by Augustus himself.

It’s manna for Robert Harris, who fills in the gaps with propulsive flair in this speculative memoir as an ailing 50-year-old Agrippa looks back on a life shaped by the realpolitik of the Roman empire – territorial expansion, ruthless brutality, endless wargames plus his combative friendship with Augustus. A slow burn portrait of psychological embitterment – but a story too of complicit silence as Rome slides into dictatorship.

There are shades of Elena Ferrante in Marie Darrieussecq’s absorbing portrait of two French teenagers negotiating their journey into adulthood – although Darrieussecq is a much wittier writer.

Rose, 15, middle class, can’t understand why sex with her boyfriend Christian is such a disappointment. Solange, who comes from a less wealthy background, already has a child. Rose becomes a psychologist; Solange, eventually a famous actress.

For the most part we see the girls separately; it’s significant that, when the pair finally come together as adults, the novel deflates. But this is still a thrillingly alive depiction of sex, love and the perpetually unfinished business of selfhood even as our perspective on each girl shifts.

Indian novelists are particularly good at state-of-the-nation novels that seethe with political and domestic intrigue. (Unlike British writers who are currently stuck in a more modest, insular groove.)

We’re in a 1980s Delhi apartment block, inhabited by the various sons of its builder, a formidable politician, and who, in the wake of his death, are struggling to forge their own path. Yet it is the wife of one of them, Gita, who commands this story. She moves to Michigan with her husband but remains utterly traumatised by an act of sexual violence inflicted upon her in Delhi.

This act and its ramifications ripple throughout a novel that is sharply alert to the poisonous gender relations at the centre of Indian life. Mahajan’s Delhi is summoned with a certain grimness, although the relentless tone might grind some readers down.