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The Rhyl Poster by Tom McCarthy review – is this avant-garde spy drama worth the riddles?
The hallucinatory crisis of a war-scarred jurist with a painkiller dependency makes for frustrating reading Of the cohort of experimental novelists whose renown grew in the wake of the 2008 financial crash – names include Deborah Levy , Eimear McBride and Claire-Louise Bennett –…
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Pay Attention by Laura Kuenssberg review – a BBC reporter’s howl of frustration
After more than two decades of studied neutrality, the journalist delivers some home truths about modern politics Laura Kuenssberg always swore she would never write a book. Amid all the vitriol hurled her way, the BBC’s political editor turned presenter has largely kept her…
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Why you should treat charisma as a red flag
Today’s crop of smooth talkers tap directly into a specific evolutionary vulnerability. Here’s how to defend yourself Recently, I was alone in a bar waiting for a friend. To pass the time, I started chatting to a stranger. He had an easy, confident way of speaking, which I…
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Like many authors, I’m bombarded by scam fan mail. I wasn’t prepared for what would happen when I wrote back
The novelist receives passionate AI-written emails almost every day – but when he decided to take up one sender’s offer to find him new readers, the story took a darker turn There’s no humble way to say it: I get a lot of fan mail. Almost every day, multi-paragraph emails arrive…
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What we’re reading: Ian Rankin, Louise Kennedy and Guardian readers on the books they enjoyed in October
Writers and Guardian readers discuss the titles they have read over the last month. Join the conversation in the comments I’m a huge fan of Muriel Spark, but wasn’t sure I needed another biography of her, yet James Bailey’s Like a Cat Loves a Bird was a winning blend of detail…
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‘Being hated is very bracing’: Helen Garner on surviving three marriages and being called a ‘rotten feminist’
Her unsparing fiction and true crime writing have made her one of Australia’s most controversial and celebrated authors. The author discusses relationships, resilience – and finding global recognition five decades into her career A few years ago, when Helen Garner had an idea to…
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The best recent translated fiction – review roundup
Minihorror by Barbi Marković; Paradise Burns by Pol Guasch; Hafni Says by Helle Helle; Googling for Soul by Hamid Ismailov Minihorror by Barbi Marković, translated by Jen Calleja (Faber, £14.99) This eccentric and fantastical collection of very short stories is bursting with…
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Philippa Gregory: ‘I read 100 of the 18th century’s most popular novels – the perfect author’s apprenticeship’
The British novelist on discovering Molly Keane, coming to Dickens late, and the books that taught her the importance of writing about history My earliest reading memory My mother always read me a bedtime story, but by around age three, I was not looking at the pictures but…
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Attention Seeking Behaviour by Aea Varfis-van Warmelo review – a slippery liar’s tale
Shortlisted for the Goldsmiths prize, this compelling interrogation of memory, justice and truth offers no easy answers The Goldsmiths prize-shortlisted debut from British-Greek author Aea Varfis-van Warmelo opens with a confession: “I have never told this story before.” The…
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Sarah Howe wins Forward poetry prize for best collection
Howe’s ‘exceptional’ Foretokens took the main £10,000 award, while Nur Turkmani, Tara Bergin and Biff Smith swept up the remaining categories Sarah Howe has won the Forward prize for best collection, one of the UK’s most prestigious poetry awards, for Foretokens, a collection…
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Bram Stoker’s Dracula audiobook review – cinematic horror with an A-list cast
Jonathan Bailey, Ella Purnell, Aimee-Lou Wood, Maggie Gyllenhaal and more bring shock and gore to an immersive retelling with real bite Do we really need another retelling of Bram Stoker’s fabled horror novel, which has already yielded multiple films, plays and radio dramas?…
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Are You With Me Now? by Hanif Kureishi review – a novelist unleashed
The constraints of Kureishi’s life after a devastating accident infuse his writing with a new and thrilling immediacy Some months after returning home, after a grim year in hospitals in Rome and London, Hanif Kureishi begins to rebel. Not against his family, or the physical…
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‘We sold out tickets within 13 minutes’: new novel from romantasy author Sarah J Maas sparks fan mania
Move over Oasis – 6,000 people tried to buy 220 tickets to a masquerade ball to celebrate the release of A Court of Splintered Harmony, while specialist bookshops catering for the genre report huge sales When The Spicy Librarian, a romance bookshop in Leamington Spa, announced a…
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In One Brief Moment All Eternity by Elif Shafak review – what Madame Bovary thought of Flaubert
This audacious portrait of the French author through the eyes of his women is Shafak’s love letter to literature in dark times In Frantumaglia , her collection of essays on writing and reading, Elena Ferrante writes that she has sometimes dismissed Gustave Flaubert as a…
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Is It Too Late to Make a Run for It? by Judi Dench review – whatever you do, don’t call her a ‘national treasure’
The actor waxes lyrical on directors, dildos and why she hates being referred to as though she’s a dusty old relic In the late 1950s, Judi Dench was invited to meet a major Hollywood producer about a possible career in the film business. The producer looked at her for a long…
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Time Being by Jude Cook review – a smart existential tale of midlife
A fatal mistake sparks this juicy melodrama, in which a philosophy professor navigates the guilt of being a survivor What if, battered by cancer and cancer treatment, you decided to end your life? And what if it went wrong and you lived, but a friend died in your place? Would…
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Michael Gambon: the authorised biography review – a brilliant actor, and a master deceiver
From the National Theatre to Harry Potter, Gambon’s shapeshifting life leaves many questions still unanswered Michael Gambon began his acting career with a preposterous bluff. Applying for a job at Dublin’s Gate theatre, the young toolmaker from the south-east London suburbs…
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War Is Interested in You by Gideon Rachman review – are we on the brink of world war three?
A foreign affairs expert’s bleak assessment of the state of global security Are we on the brink of a new world war? This bleak subject is increasingly invoked by leaders, soldiers and officials, from Donald Trump to Vladimir Putin to the heads of our military and intelligence…
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Music Against the Night by Yiyun Li review – a virtuosic interrogation of the power of art
What does it cost, to live your life in the hope of immortality? Li examines the gulf between talent and genius through the marriage of two real-life musicians In his recently published A History of the Novel in Britain , Philip Hensher makes a bold claim. Historical novels, he…
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‘Our third date was at Buckingham Palace’: Marlon James and Nicholas Boggs on life as a literary power couple
Shortlisted for the Booker and Baillie Gifford prizes respectively, the novelist and biographer talk about working and living together – and giving a voice to Black queer history The literary power couple is a historically seductive concept. Two writers sharing a life, their…