Books
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Only a fraction of the world’s stories have survived. What might we be missing?
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Three different viewpoints on the UK’s system of incarceration – by Jacob Dunne, Angela Kirwin and Andy West – examine the human cost of our investment in punishment rather than rehabilitation
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As a child star, the actor suffered trauma and neglect. Now an acclaimed director, she is confronting the ghosts of her past with a frank new book
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Children’s author says she told her elderly mother to get rid of it as she was terrified of being mistakenly shot
What to read
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From Ukrainian history to Putin’s kleptocracy and Gogol’s stories, author and former Russia correspondent Oliver Bullough chooses the best titles
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Looking for a new reading recommendation? Here are some exciting new paperbacks, from brilliant non-fiction about sex and gender to acclaimed novels
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A new biography of Jean Rhys explores the relationship between her turbulent life and her brilliant work
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Clearing out his loft gives the former Pulp frontman a chance to look back at his formative years, and the objects that shaped him
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His personal life remains an enigma, but this is a valuable primer for anyone looking to get up to speed on Xi Jinping’s rise to global power
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In the followup to the International Booker winner Celestial Bodies, a student reflects on her roots in Oman
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This clever, engrossing debut about an ageing English literature professor explores female creativity, rage and desire
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From a meditation retreat via the Charlie Hebdo massacre to a catastrophic personal breakdown, this is a devastating portrait of the western capitalist everyman in crisis
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This intelligent and knowing debut about a female academic’s dangerous obsession with a younger professor is less risk-taking than it thinks it is
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A call to embrace wildness, a guide to shells, a tall tree tale, wishing candles, paper spirits, and a tough apology to make
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Astral phenomena, Greek goddesses, deadly family curses and the best new YA fiction
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As an adaptation of her bestselling novel comes to screens, Sarah Perry describes the joys of being on set – and how the production restored her faith in storytelling
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The American author on feminist utopias, surviving the apocalypse and who is really responsible for the scourge of electric bikes on the pavement
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The American author on how his own experience of psychedelic therapy sparked his debut novel, and his poems about the opioid epidemic
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The DJ and writer on coming to terms with being a novelist, the appeal of middle-aged men and the book that broke her heart
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The author of the acclaimed The Secret Life of Church Ladies on the Black American Christian community, sexual shame and coming to terms with her queerness
Regulars
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The novelist on adoring Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, being inspired by Jean Rhys’s Voyage in the Dark and crying at Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina
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Only a fraction of the world’s stories have survived. What might we be missing?
You may have missed
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Mounting tensions with Russia, a global pandemic and a reckless scramble for nuclear energy: the echoes of 1957 are alarming – we would do well to heed them
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From the ad executive turned charcoal burner to the woman who built a new life in the woods, a new genre of books about radical reinventions is proving a runaway success
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Monique Roffey, the Costa-winning author of The Mermaid of Black Conch, on the lit-boom that’s happening on the Caribbean island
Most viewed
Carol Rumens's poem of the week Last Hope by Ben Wilkinson