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Books

  • Samuel Barnett (left) and Mark Rylance in Twelfth Night at Shakespeare’s Globe.

    Book of the day
    Straight Acting by Will Tosh review – out on stage

    Kathryn Hughes
  • Joseph Coelho.

    News
    ‘Extraordinary’ Joseph Coelho novel wins Carnegie medal for children’s writing

    ‘Extraordinary’ novel The Boy Lost in the Maze takes prestigious honour while sister prize for illustration goes to Aaron Becker’s wordless The Tree and the River
  • Flooded streets in Porto Alegre, Brazil, earlier this year.

    Fiction
    Private Rites by Julia Armfield review – in deep water

    Lara Feigel
    Dysfunctional families and queer desire at the end of the world, in a compelling vision of climate breakdown
  • professor writing on the board while having a chalk and blackboard lecture

    Five of the best
    Books about maths

  • A man reading a book in bed at home.

    Tell us
    What have you been reading this month?

  • Arnold Schwarzenegger in The Terminator (1984).

    Computing and the net books
    The Atomic Human by Neil Lawrence review – return of the Terminator

    Adam Rutherford

  • Fiction
    Scaffolding by Lauren Elkin review – parallel lives in Paris

    Sarah Moss
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What to read

  • Composite image of best paperbacks February 2024

    Paperbacks
    This month’s best paperbacks: Zadie Smith, Matthew Perry and more

  • professor writing on the board while having a chalk and blackboard lecture

    Five of the best
    Five of the best books about maths

    • Read on

      100 best novels of all time
      From The Pilgrim's Progress to True History of the Kelly Gang

    • Books of the century so far

      The 100 best books of the 21st century

    • Composite for the 100 best nonfiction books of all time list

      100 best nonfiction books of all time
      From Naomi Klein to the Bible – the full list

Non-fiction reviews

  • The Vintage Of The Grapes Of The Vine<br>The Vintage of the Grapes of the Vine, from the Blockbook Apocalypse, 1465-70. Artist Unknown. (Photo by Heritage Art/Heritage Images via Getty Images

    History books
    God’s Ghostwriters by Candida Moss review – did enslaved scribes write the New Testament?

    Peter Stanford
  • Griffin Dunne with his best friend, the late Carrie Fisher.

    Autobiography and memoir
    The Friday Afternoon Club by Griffin Dunne review – a Hollywood insider with an outsider’s eye

    Rachel Cooke
    The actor’s star-studded memoir-cum-account of his sister’s murder could have been a clunky read, but his self-awareness, honesty and humour make the nephew of Joan Didion and son of Dominick Dunne an engaging narrator
  • Morning prayer on the banks of the Ganges in Haridwar during Kumbh Mela.

    Arundhati Roy
    The Architecture of Modern Empire review – two decades of fire

    Sukhdev Sandhu
    Arundhati Roy is as stringent in her criticism of India’s social injustices as she is of the self-absorbed west in this wide-ranging collection of interviews
  • Griffin Dunne and Brooke Adams in New York, 1985.

    Autobiography and memoir
    The Friday Afternoon Club by Griffin Dunne review – Hollywood tales

    Rebecca Nicholson
  • Aamna Mohdin.

    Autobiography and memoir
    Scattered by Aamna Mohdin review – the road to survival

    Nadifa Mohamed
  • Layal Liverpool.

    Science and nature books
    Systemic by Layal Liverpool review – the price of prejudice

    Farrah Jarral
  • Mishal Husain and her mother Shama on a trip to Uzbekistan in search of an ancestor.

    Biography books
    Broken Threads by Mishal Husain review – a spectacular family chronicle of partition

    Dina Nayeri
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Fiction & poetry reviews

  • Beatrice Salvioni

    Fiction
    The Cursed Friend by Beatrice Salvioni review – rebels with a cause

    Lucy Popescu
  • Hotel de Gouden Pollepel in Enschede. Exterior, December 16, 1963, exteriors, hotels. (Photo by: Sepia Times/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)

    Fiction
    The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden review – secrets and sex in postwar Europe

    Joe Moshenska
    This remarkable debut novel explores the Netherlands’ failure to reckon with the fate of Dutch Jews alongside one woman’s reckoning with herself
  • Alana Portero, escritora española que viene a a presentar su libro La Mala Costumbre

    Fiction in translation
    Bad Habit by Alana S Portero review – in search of acceptance

    Kathryn Bromwich
    Vividly bringing to life the everyday struggles of trans people, this Almodóvar-endorsed bestseller, set in 1980s Madrid, is affecting and evocative
  • María Bastarós

    Fiction in translation
    Hungry for What by María Bastarós review – darkly compelling tales from Spain

    Chris Power
  • Underwater view of two technical divers using rebreathers device to locate shipwreck, Lombok, Indonesia<br>GettyImages-585283665

    Thrillers of the month
    Crime and thrillers of the month – review

    Alison Flood
  • Tom has a fateful meeting with a palomino.

    Fiction
    The Heart in Winter by Kevin Barry review – a wild western

    Sandra Newman
  • Lauren Elkin at the Cheltenham Literature Festival

    Fiction
    Scaffolding by Lauren Elkin review – an erudite first novel with horny energy

    Anthony Cummins
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Children's and YA books

  • Adiba Jaigar author photo to be used with collab with Faridah credit Aleksandria Rudenko

    Children's book reviews round-up
    Young adult books roundup – reviews

  • Raymond Antrobus’s Terrible Horses, illustrated by Ken Wilson-Max.

    Children and teenagers
    Children’s and teens roundup – the best new picture books and novels

    Imogen Russell Williams
    Golden numbers; an intergalactic snail trail; an immersive guide to art; a tale of hope amid poverty; and a girl who can’t lie
  • Detail from The Whisperwicks: The Labyrinth of Lost and Found by Jordan Lees.

    Children's book reviews round-up
    The best new chapter books

    Kitty Empire
    Lauren Child brings a light touch to big issues, Elle McNicoll explores autism – and a secret society is at work in Paris’s sewers
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Interviews

  • Sulaiman Adonnia<br>20240530 Brussels, Belgium: Author Sulaiman Adonnia in his home

    Sulaiman Addonia
    I’m taking writing back to the rock’n’roll era!

  • Naomi Klein.

    Naomi Klein
    Nobody’s perfect – but that’s not an excuse for doing nothing

    The Doppelganger writer and winner of the Women’s prize for nonfiction on the war in Gaza, current credibility of the left and posters for her book being torn down in London
  • VV Ganeshananthan: she is pictured standing outdoors in a park with trees in the background; she is in her mid-40s and has shoulder-length dark, wavy hair; she wears a black dress with a lighter pattern plus a gold pendant necklace.

    ‘Don’t read just one book about Sri Lanka’
    VV Ganeshananthan on her civil war novel

    Women’s prize for fiction winner tells story of a family caught up in conflict in her second novel, Brotherless Night
  • Investment management firm Baillie Gifford no longer sponsors Hay festival.

    ‘I wouldn’t call it a victory’
    Fossil Free Books organisers on Baillie Gifford’s exit from literary festival funding

  • Lorrie Moore.

    Lorrie Moore
    I identify with Beth in Little Women, who dies

  • Shehadeh reads his Orwell prize-winning book, Palestinian Walks, outside Ramallah, in the West Bank, 2014.

    Palestinian author Raja Shehadeh
    All this solidarity from the world – yet nothing has changed

  • Author Rose Tremain, at home. 22/5/24 Norwich Ali Smith for The Guardian

    Rose Tremain
    Sex scenes are like arias in opera. They have to move the story forwards

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Regulars

  • Caroline Lucas

    The books of my life
    Caroline Lucas: ‘Rory Stewart finds Westminster as dysfunctional as I do’

  • A woman wearing a necklace with a camera instead of a pendant

    Big idea
    The big idea: can you inherit memories from your ancestors?

    The science of epigenetics suggests we can pass on trauma – but trust and compassion too
  • Rachel Cusk.

    Where to start with
    Where to start with: Rachel Cusk

    From a novel sequence that dispenses with much of what we expect from fiction to fearlessly honest memoirs of motherhood and divorce, Cusk is a challenging writer. But also a genius
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You may have missed

  • illustration of people using mobile phones

    Adolescence expert Lucy Foulkes
    Here’s why a smartphone ban isn’t the answer, and what we should do instead

  • Ingrid Persaud

    ‘I believed I was one of the cool kids’
    Ingrid Persaud on her journey from legal academic to artist to novelist

  • Martin Amis at his London home in 1987.

    ‘He made every sentence electric’
    Martin Amis remembered by Tina Brown, his old friend and devoted editor

  • Bernard Wright, Ralph Fiennes, Simon Russell Beale and Paterson Joseph in a Royal Shakespeare Company production.

    ‘He queered the hell out of it’
    The man behind Shakespeare’s same-sex love sonnets

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