books
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Short story collection The High Places, which skips continents, eras and genre, takes £30,000 award
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Freud’s work changed fiction and philosophy as well as ideas of psychology and sexuality. From Michel Foucault to Philip Roth, here is some great writing about the talking cure
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The Canadian-American writer has produced a fragmentary set of observations about new motherhood that lodges in the memory
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The writer’s brief disappearance in 1926 is unlikely ever to be explained, but as I’ve discovered, people have been inventing solutions ever since – and still are
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Nicholas Lezard’s paperback of the week: the bestselling author pens vivid portraits from his time in MI6 and of his unreliable father
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This vivid debut from a former soldier, about the capture of marines by an Islamist militia, captures the valour, horror and absurdity of conflict
news
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Sarah Perry crowns a much-garlanded year for her gothic romp, honoured alongside authors including Kiran Millwood Hargrave and JK Rowling
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Bill Clinton and James Patterson are collaborating, but who do we really want to team up? Neil Gaiman and Philip Pullman? What if Emma’s author cut up with Mr Naked Lunch?
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One Hundred Years of Solitude’s author took cues from Kafka – and his grandmother – to tell an impossible story that disarms the reader’s scepticism
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regulars
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Book of the dayBook of the dayDismembered review – how the attack on the state harms us allPolly Toynbee and David Walker ask if voters understood how they would benefit from social democracy, would they come to support it again?
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PodcastPodcastTony Harrison at 80 - books podcastVanessa Redgrave, Blake Morrison and Melvyn Bragg are among the stars of page and stage who celebrate one of the UK’s most versatile – and angry – poets
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The Little Library CaféThe Little Library CaféNovel recipes: Potted beef from The Wind in the WillowsWarm weather means picnics, so Kate Young recreates a recipe enjoyed by Ratty and Mole in Kenneth Grahame’s classic children’s tale
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Reading groupReading groupGabriel García Márquez: working magic with 'brick-faced' realismOne Hundred Years of Solitude’s author took cues from Kafka – and his grandmother – to tell an impossible story that disarms the reader’s scepticism
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Memoir Where the Line Is Drawn – can a friendship survive the occupation of Palestine?
Ben EhrenreichThe West Bank writer and lawyer Raja Shehadeh documents his troubled relationship with an Israeli with typical grace and power -
Politics How Trump Thinks: His Tweets and the Birth of a New Political Language by Peter Oborne and Tom Roberts
Peter ConradThis trawl through the US president’s Twitter account reveals how he bigs himself up while trashing his rivals
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A profound account of a life changed by deafness – and what it was like to come out on the other side
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The acclaimed neurosurgeon exudes humility in this fine second memoir, which sees his retirement after 40 years in medicine
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The story of the mission to find the wrecks of two long-lost ships from Sir John Franklin’s 1845 Arctic expedition is timely and compelling
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Essays The Inky Digit of Defiance – Tony Harrison turns 80
Robert CrawfordThe arts are never far from politics in this collection of Harrison’s prose from the past half-century, edited by Edith Hall
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Poetry Night Sky with Exit Wounds by Ocean Vuong – violence, delicacy and timeless imagery
Kate KellawayThe poet’s debut reveals a master of juxtaposition willing to tell difficult stories with courage -
Fiction The Nothing by Hanif Kureishi
Sukhdev SandhuThe tormented revenge fantasies of a cuckolded film-maker are told with Kureishi’s customary relish -
Short stories Granta: Best of Young American Novelists 3
William SkidelskyBen Lerner, Jen George and Mark Doten stand out in an impressive, largely avant-garde collection of stories
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With this playful fantasy about the death of the celebrated French critic, Binet delivers a second novel as engaging as his first
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Fiction The Children of Jocasta by Natalie Haynes – an Oedipus myth for the 21st century
Sarah CrownSidelined by Sophocles, two women find their voice in this reimagining of his three plays -
There are shades of Hemingway in these stories about men who choose loneliness in the avoidance of pain
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Fiction Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman – a debut with warmth and wit
Jenny ColganFrom pop-star crushes to meals for one, the life of an outsider is vividly captured in this joyful debut, discovered through a writing competition and sold for huge sums worldwidee
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A stowaway discovers the truth about a feared mountain in Todd-Stanton’s magical follow-up to last year’s Arthur and the Golden Rope
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In classics from Eve Garnett to Arthur Ransome, there are always enough kids to form a world without adults – and a hardcore tomboy can have a place in the gang
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Mole’s missing specs, a new outing for the Little Mermaid, a love song to the planet and Beetle Boy returns
from the archive
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In an exclusive extract from his memoir, Britain’s greatest living spy novelist talks family, foes and famous friends
people
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He is a master of comedy, a father of cyberpunk, alert to the politics of his time … the author turns 80 today
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The poet on why he writes on the hoof, the importance of rock music to the creative process and why he likes nothing more than ‘a few tiffs’ with a poem
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The Frenchman’s novel about the blurred line between fiction and reality, The 7th Function of Language, is all the more poignant in the era of fake news
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The barrister explains how he took the voice of his inner-city clients to create a novel that challenges comfortable certainties
pictures, video & audio
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Vanessa Redgrave, Blake Morrison and Melvyn Bragg are among the stars of page and stage who celebrate one of the UK’s most versatile – and angry – poets
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Irish author McInerney talks about writing working class characters in her novel The Blood Miracles, while social historian Hanley talks about Richard Hoggart’s groundbreaking study, The Uses of Literacy
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The much-loved author talks about seeing American Gods adapted for TV, his love for Norse mythology – and his many other projects
you may have missed
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When Scott Carney set out to debunk the health benefits of extreme cold, a strange thing happened. He tells Tim Adams about lighting his ‘inner fire’
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Covering subjects from Einstein to Audubon, the graphic form is tempting more and more biographers. They explain why ‘reality beats the made-up stuff’
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New adaptations of novels, such as The Handmaid’s Tale and American Gods, have begun using their sources as springboards for even richer invention
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The poet and author, best known for her long poem Rape Joke, talks about her extraordinary memoir, Priestdaddy, and growing up in the midwest
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Book of the day Dismembered – how the attack on the state harms us all