books
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Ainehi Edoro reflects on Blackass, a novel that subjects Kafka’s classic to African literary conventions – and, in the process, gives an iconic European story ‘an extreme but necessary makeover’
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Online survey reveals public opinion is strongly in favour of protecting the library service, as protests take place against closures in London
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Civil-rights activist who made headlines last year after her white heritage was exposed says the book will be about people ‘caught between boundary lines of race or culture or ethnicity’
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History This Orient Isle by Jerry Brotton – spies, merchants and chancers
David ShariatmadariSpies, merchants and chancers: this sparkling book sets out Elizabethan England’s complex and extensive relationship with the Islamic world -
Stephen Hawking’s plan to launch a nanoship to Alpha Centauri sounds like science-fiction precisely because we’ve been imagining this in books for eons
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In her latest imaginative tour de force, the tale of a 19th-century guru, Barker lobs a literary hand grenade at the historical novel
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Using handwriting analysis technology, team found that a famous hoard of ancient Hebrew inscriptions were written by at least six different authors
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Brontë’s novel reveals a whirlwind of ideas on religion and gender – but can we honestly apply a 21st-century mindset to an 18th-century gothic classic?
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Your space to discuss the books you are reading and what you think of them
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regulars
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Top 10sTop 10sTop 10 books about freedomFrom Orwell’s satire to Woolf’s room of her own, great writers have shown us the personal and political freedoms that must be fought for and cherished
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Reading groupReading groupReading Jane Eyre: can we truly understand Charlotte Brontë or her heroine today?Brontë’s novel reveals a whirlwind of ideas on religion and gender – but can we honestly apply a 21st-century mindset to an 18th-century gothic classic?
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100 Best Nonfiction Books of All Time100 Best Nonfiction Books of All TimeThe 100 best nonfiction books: No 11 – North by Seamus Heaney (1975)This raw, tender, unguarded collection transcends politics, reflecting Heaney’s desire to move ‘like a double agent among the big concepts’
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PodcastPodcastRussian poetry and poison with Luke Harding and Pussy Riot - books podcastGuardian journalist Luke Harding and filmmaker Peter Pomerantsev discuss the assassination of Aleksander Litvinenko, and Masha Aloykhina of Pussy Riot shares the poetry that helped her survive prison
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A chilling warning that we’re in danger of wiping out all wildlife on Earth
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History The Age of Genius: The Seventeenth Century and the Birth of the Modern Mind by AC Grayling
Julian BagginiAC Grayling’s claims for the impact of the Enlightenment are overstated
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Nothing is off-limits in Decca Aitkenhead’s unforgettable account of her partner’s drowning on a family holiday
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History The Bitter Taste of Victory by Lara Feigel – writers and artists respond to the camps and Nuremberg
Anthony QuinnLee Miller, Billy Wilder, Martha Gellhorn and Evelyn Waugh were among the cultural stars who travelled to a nation destroyed and disgraced at the end of the second world war. Many were part of a project of cultural re-education -
This fine social history charts the changing patterns of using poison – from arsenic to strychnine – but also shines a light on domestic desperation in Victorian times
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Miserabilists, parasites, thwarted practitioners? In an energetic defence of his profession, Scott argues that good art and good criticism go hand in hand
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Nicholas Lezard’s paperback of the week: Shakespeare, Donne and Jonson are all represented in this punchy and sinuous anthology, chosen by Stoner author John Williams
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Fiction Everyone Brave Is Forgiven by Chris Cleave – a story about the nature of courage
Helen DunmoreThe stakes are high in a sharply paced novel set in London and Malta during the second world war -
A young man goes back in time to solve his wife’s murder in Clowes’s first graphic novel in five years
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Fiction The Shore by Sara Taylor – harrowing debut
Anthony CumminsThis time-travelling novel of patriarchy and female vengeance in rural Virginia is horrifying but highly readable -
This unhurried story of an unhappy Kentucky poet and a Bulgarian rent boy contains both psychological depth and moments of breathtaking drama
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Book of the day All That Man Is by David Szalay – a kaleidoscopic portrait of masculinity
Edward DocxFrom billionaire to bodyguard to father-to-be, these stories about existentially marooned men are the work of a first-rate writer -
Morrissy recalls Joyce’s Dubliners in these compassionate stories of sex, death and temps perdu in Irish middle-class suburbia
people
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The author of Chasing the Scream on his anxiety about writing a book, and the 30,000-mile journey of recognition and shared stories it took him on, from the drug war ‘ground zero’ in Baltimore to Colombia and Mexico
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Former drug smuggler turned writer and performer, who came to prominence following publication of his autobiography in 1996, has died of cancer
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Botanist Hope Jahren’s new memoir tells how a lifelong passion for science sustained her in the male-dominated world of the research laboratory
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Charlotte Brontë A national treasure for 200 years
Tracy ChevalierTracy Chevalier on her role as curator in the celebrations marking the author’s bicentenary in Haworth
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Doctors are goiong to recommend the reading of certain books for teenagers suffering mental health issues. We want to know what you think of these ‘prescription books’, and if any you think have been missed off the list
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Hooked on the Hunger Games? Potty about Potter? Devoted to Divergent? Yup. You’re a fan. And whether it’s midnight reading sessions or full on cos-play conventions, we all sit somewhere on the spectrum of fandom – find out which level you are here
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Entries for the Dylan’s Great Poem competition open 28 April and you only need to write four lines to be in with a chance of winning
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I didn't see working class identity in books when I was growing up, and I don't see enough now
Natasha CarthewWhen author Natasha Carthew was growing up in rural Cornwall she was a ferocious reader but also a frustrated one, where were all the other poor working-class gay girls? And why is class still the forgotten corner of diversity? -
What’s the point of having another shoddily-realised feisty girl or two-dimensional token wheelchair sidekick to add to the massive pile of rubbish attempts at diversity? Author Ross Montgomery on why it’s hard to write diverse – but that’s no excuse not to
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Mobots at the ready everyone! As seven times world champion, double Olympic gold medalist and reading fan, Mo Farah brings us Ready, Steady, Mo!
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She’s the writer behind the gloriously mischievous Ramona Quimby, has sold over 91 million books worldwide and on top of all that, Beverly Cleary has just turned 100 years old! As she celebrates an exuberant centenary, we take a look at her greatest ever quotes. Happy birthday Beverly!
A selection of our favourite literary content from around the world
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The Little Library CaféThe Little Library CaféFood in books: fish and chips from The Bear Nobody Wanted by Janet and Allan AhlbergKate Young recalls her days working at a fish and chip shop as she makes this British cuisine staple in honour of the kids’ book by Janet and Allan Ahlberg
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Interview with a Bookstore by Literary HubInterview with a Bookstore by Literary HubInterview with a Bookstore: The Last Bookstore in Los AngelesWhich books would you like to find in the last bookstore on a post-apocalyptic earth? This was the premise behind the birth of The Last Bookstore in California
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pictures, video & audio
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Each day, artists illustrate a scene from Rudyard Kipling’s classic The Jungle Book. Here Kevin Waldron has made the fearsome Shere Khan from hand-torn paper, depicting the scene where he lies in wait for Mowgli at the mouth of the wolves’ cave
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Each day, artists illustrate a scene from Rudyard Kipling’s classic The Jungle Book. Here Jill Calder has created the scene where Mowgli and Bagheera discuss fire (the ‘red flower’), brought to life with ink and digital artwork
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Guardian journalist Luke Harding and filmmaker Peter Pomerantsev discuss the assassination of Aleksander Litvinenko, and Masha Aloykhina of Pussy Riot shares the poetry that helped her survive prison
you may have missed
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Time on the US publicity trail with British author Sarah Bakewell revealed enduring angst about Sartre, de Beauvoir and the meaning of freedom itself
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A new survey has found that living writers are not much favoured in Russia, and there are many reasons why, but readers are missing out
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William Shakespeare: a quintessentially American author
Robert McCrumFrom Abraham Lincoln’s White House readings to Hollywood westerns and West Side Story, Shakespeare’s plays are an integral part of the American dream. So how did this icon of Englishness become a US phenomenon? -
Why is the history of Chinese philosophy now the most popular course at Harvard? Top tips on how to become a better person according to Confucius and co
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Game of Thrones author George RR Martin misses last TV deadline for new book
This article is 3 months old
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Top 10 Books about freedom