Of course, there are lots of things that should be happening this June but aren’t. There should be summer terms and sports’ days and weddings and parties. The sun should be pouring through the window as I write this. But we’re not going anywhere, and the rain is pouring down and the Women’s Prize for Fiction is not being announced this month as it should be.

Although that is hardly the most serious casualty of this horrible situation, it’s still a bit of a shame because the Women’s Prize is always a sound judge of the best books of the year and sets the reading weather for the rest of the summer. This year, we have to live without till the autumn. But if you missed last year’s winner, now is your time to catch up.

Tayari Jones’ An American Marriage is brilliant, timely and important – an exploration of the difficulties of marriage, and the everyday nightmare of the American dream. Celestial and Roy are young newly-weds; optimistic and ambitious. He’s an executive, she’s an artist and they are both African American. On a trip home for Thanksgiving, Roy is arrested and charged for a rape he did not commit, and their whole future is overturned. Instead of building a family and a life together, they’re thrust apart by a world of wrongful conviction, racism and the American prison system.

An American Marriage is certainly rich with all the complex, moral questions and answers that are so vital and relevant to the current conversation. But there’s more to it even than that. Jones’s triumph is that through her characters – complex, credible, so alive on the page – she perfectly illustrates the human factor of systemic injustice. Read it, and increase your own understanding.