books
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The actor, who has played the president on Saturday Night Live, will work with novelist Kurt Andersen on You Can’t Spell America Without Me
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Royal Society of Literature survey finds people place high value on books’ ability to promote empathy, but their choices are far from diverse
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Biography Cold War Freud and Freud: An Intellectual Biography – two excellent new takes
Lisa AppignanesiA pair of rich, illuminating studies epitomise a new wave of thinking about the father of psychoanalysis -
Novelist and biographer who confronted his father’s notoriety in his two-volume study of Sir Oswald Mosley, the founder of the British Union of Fascists
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A profound human experience – and also a brilliant plot device – adoption has inspired endless stories, from Shakespeare to Jeanette Winterson
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Lowell’s confessional work of the 1960s marked a sea change in American letters – then he fell out of favour. But on the eve of his centenary, his work offers an urgent political message in a time of Trump
news
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Australian writer who lives in a caravan in Adelaide says surprise Windham-Campbell award will ‘change my life completely’
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Where have all the female travel writers gone?
Sara WheelerOnly a quarter of the titles submitted to this year’s Dolman Travel Book award were women, despite Mary Kingsley and Matha Gellhorn demonstrating that women make excellent travellers -
The obvious choice may be A Clockwork Orange, but we have plenty of poetry and non-fiction to pick from his 40-year career
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books in 2017
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Jane Austen’s bicentenary, Arundhati Roy’s first novel in 20 years, and unpublished F Scott Fitzgerald ... the literary year ahead
regulars
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PodcastPodcastFact or fiction: autobiographical novels with Édouard Louis – books podcastLouis’s acclaimed debut The End of Eddy sparked a media hunt for the truth in France due to its blend of narrative and autobiographical fact. We speak to him about his novel’s reception, plus discuss the best and worst of autofiction
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Reading groupReading groupReading group: which Anthony Burgess book shall we read to mark his centenary?The obvious choice may be A Clockwork Orange, but we have plenty of poetry and non-fiction to pick from his 40-year career
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The first book interviewThe first book interviewAlice Broadway: 'I guess it's inevitable that I became a bit death-obsessed'Ink’s heroine loses faith in a culture where people’s histories are etched on their skin – reflecting its author’s own disaffection from evangelical Christianity
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Book of the dayBook of the dayThe World-Ending Fire: The Essential Wendell Berry review – how America’s farmers betrayed the landThese prescient essays are drawn from a 50-year campaign on behalf of old-style US agrarianism
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A graphic novel based on the real-life investigation into the CIA’s treatment of suspected terrorists makes chastening reading
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Mick Hume’s ‘defence of democracy’ in the wake of the Brexit vote is little more than a Daily Mail column extended to book length
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The extraordinary story of the man who risked his career to create vaccines against our worst diseases
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Shannon Leone Fowler and Clover Stroud have both produced compelling, heart-rending memoirs about their responses to the death of a loved one
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History Reformation Divided: Catholics, Protestants and the Conversion of England by Eamon Duffy
Ian ThomsonA superb collection of essays reveal the bloody theological tussles of the 16th century in all their nuance -
Science and nature Irresistible: Why We Can’t Stop Checking, Scrolling, Clicking and Watching
Gavin FrancisA fascinating study by Adam Alter explains why many of us find our smartphones and computers so addictive
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Fiction Swimming Lessons by Claire Fuller – in at the deep end
Hannah BeckermanThe follow-up to Fuller’s celebrated debut novel dives skilfully into delicate family dynamics and mysterious disappearances -
Real-life historical figures are among the jailbreakers, prig-nappers and bawds in this vivid portrait of 1720s London
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A brilliant, genre-bending French bestseller uses the story of the early church as a parable for the author’s own life
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Short stories Whatever Happened to Interracial Love? by Kathleen Collins – black power and pathos
Colin GrantWritten during the 1960s and 70s, these posthumously published stories from the civil rights activist and film-maker seem startlingly prescient -
A gay Slovakian heroine makes a new life in rural England in this quirky debut novel
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There are shades of Jeanette Winterson and Ian McEwan in this atmospheric follow-up to The Girl in the Red Coat
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New York’s East Village is the setting for this brilliantly kaleidoscopic story about the city’s haves and have‑nots, both brought together and torn apart by an epidemic
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Children's book of the week Uncle Shawn and Bill and the Almost Entirely Unplanned Adventure by AL Kennedy
Sarah DonaldsonIn her first book for children, AL Kennedy conjures up a vividly imagined world with delightful prose -
Protesting chickens, a mischievous bear, hunt the ballerinas and a Swedish horror story
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When we read to a child we are also reading to ourselves – and, in our increasingly polarised society, small choices make a big difference
people
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As the father of a non-verbal autistic boy, author Jem Lester recalls what it has been like to see his novel Shtum adopted by other parents of autistic children
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Could this young Dutchman, hailed as a visionary, galvanise the left with his radical plan for a borderless future in which we are all paid for working less?
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The author of Stay With Me on child-free marriage, how sickle cell disease affects life in Nigeria and how she got started
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AL Kennedy celebrates a craftsman who viewed his work as a lifelong apprenticeship
A selection of our favourite literary content from around the world
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The Little Library CaféThe Little Library CaféFood in books: pig cheeks from Fingersmith by Sarah WatersUnctuous and tender, pig cheeks are less popular now as a cut than past times. Kate Young brings them back in style, to celebrate a meal from Sarah Waters’s Victorian novel
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Interview with a Bookstore by Literary HubInterview with a Bookstore by Literary HubInterview with a Bookstore: Blue Willow Bookshop in HoustonCelebrating 20 years since owner Valerie took over, Blue Willow Bookshop is equally split between adults and children’s books, and staffed with knowledgable booksellers who can do anything - including fixing vacuum cleaners
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pictures, video & audio
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Louis’s acclaimed debut The End of Eddy sparked a media hunt for the truth in France due to its blend of narrative and autobiographical fact. We speak to him about his novel’s reception, plus discuss the best and worst of autofiction
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The authors of two buzzy new novels, Homegoing and Welcome to Lagos, explore ancient and modern stories of west Africa
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The Pulitzer prize-winning novelist looks back on a modern classic at a Guardian book club event
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The Chinese-American author discusses her breakdown and facing up to the trauma of her past
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The first short stories smuggled out of North Korea represent a unique challenge for their translator, Deborah Smith
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In hospital in 1972, Paula Keogh fell in love with the poet Michael Dransfield. In her new memoir she captures the voice of her illness and the man she loved
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A new exhibition charts the changing place of electricity in our lives, our homes and in literature
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News Obamas sign record book deals with Penguin Random House