Books Fake by Stephanie Wood review – unmissable tale of love, lies and revelationThe Guardian - Stephanie ConveryThe headlines pegged to Stephanie Wood’s book, Fake, focus on the sensational. Here is a story about a scammer, a man who seduced and manipulated women. Here is a story told from inside a relationship
Books 'I will never hear my father's voice': Ilya Kaminsky on deafness and escaping the Soviet UnionThe Guardian - Claire ArmitsteadPoems are like spells. They’re not just about an event. They become an event themselves He removes his hearing aids on trips back to Odessa, because only through lip-reading can he experience its familiarity
Books The best recent crime and thrillers – review roundupThe Guardian - Laura WilsonIf your idea of a cold war thriller is a “white saviour” hero with conservative values rescuing the world from the Soviet menace, think again: American Spy (Dialogue, £14.99), Lauren Wilkinson’s intelligent
Philip Pullman Philip Pullman's La Belle Sauvage to be adapted for London stageThe Guardian - Sian CainMore than a decade after Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy first dazzled theatre audiences, his prequel novel La Belle Sauvage is set to be adapted for the stage at London’s Bridge theatre in
Books Should books include credits like films?The Guardian - David BarnettWe writers lead a necessarily solitary life – at least, that’s what we like to think. Though the act of writing can involve lots of lonesome glaring at an open Word document (with occasional breaks for
Books Isolde by Irina Odoevtseva review – romance in BiarritzThe Guardian - Emily RhodesThis enthralling novel, translated into English for the first time, was originally published in Russian, in Paris in 1929 – a product of the remarkable flourishing of émigré culture in the French capital,
Books Lily Allen: ‘The book I wish I’d written? Harry Potter, for obvious reasons'The Guardian - Lily AllenGrowing up, I used to be very into books about wartime evacuees – I didn't want to be at home The book I am currently reading Conversations with Friends by Sally Rooney. I haven’t finished it yet, but
Beauty Not Speaking by Norma Clarke review – tight trousers and celebrity hairdressersThe Guardian - Kathryn HughesWhile Norma was formed in a moment of postwar liberal consensus, Nicky is the product of Thatcherism’s obsession with economic individualism When Rena Clarke was widowed in 2006 at the age of 83, her middle-aged
Books I Am Sovereign by Nicola Barker review – The Author strikes backThe Guardian - Toby LittNicola Barker is literary royalty. Her last novel, the visionary dystopiaH(a)ppy, won the Goldsmiths prize for innovative fiction. Her territories are large, fertile and expanding. She is Queen of the
Books Publisher accused of 'ripping off' best-selling book on racismThe Guardian - Lanre BakareThe publisher of a new book about racism in the UK has been accused of “ripping off” Reni Eddo-Lodge’s best-selling polemic Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race, after announcing a book
Taiwan Jerome Ch’en obituaryThe Guardian - Diana LaryThe early life of the historian Jerome Ch’en, who has died aged 99, ran in parallel with the upheavals in modern China that he went on to document. Once dynastic rule collapsed after 1911, the warlord
Charles Dickens Charles Dickens museum buys lost portrait 130 years after it went missingThe Guardian - Mark Brown Arts correspondentA portrait of Charles Dickens that was lost for more than 130 years is “coming home” after a successful fundraising campaign. The Charles Dickens Museum at 48 Doughty Street in London said the target raising
Play buttonBooks Goodbye, Alan Moore: the king of comics bows outThe Guardian - Sam ThielmanOne of the most significant fiction writers in English is retiring, to the greatest fanfare of his singular and titanically influential career. Alan Moore has promised that the (extremely late) final of
Opinion (UK) The Way to the Sea by Caroline Crampton review – the Thames, but no fond clichesThe Guardian - Aditya ChakraborttyEarly in the spring of 1984, four years before Caroline Crampton was born, her parents embarked on a journey that would shape her life and lead, several decades later, to this book. In a boat they had
Vaccination 'Vaccine hesitant': a gentler label than anti-vaxxer, but just as scaryThe Guardian - Steven PooleThis week we learned that parents who are unsure whether to have their children vaccinated against dangerous diseases are in the grip of “vaccine hesitancy”, a term that first appeared in print in 2008
Poetry 'A unique and slightly mad effort': mapping Britain in poetryThe Guardian - Alison FloodPinned just west of Marsden, Yorkshire on a 17th-century map of the UK, is a poem by the UK’s new poet laureate, Simon Armitage. “The sky has delivered / its blank missive. / The moor in coma.” Move west,
Books My Name Is Monster by Katie Hale review – post-apocalyptic debutThe Guardian - Sandra NewmanKatie Hale’s debut novel is a post-apocalyptic tale narrated by two female characters, both called Monster. The first Monster is an adult woman who, by her own account, is monstrous because she is a natural
Books Train Man by Andrew Mulligan review – when life hits the buffersThe Guardian - Suzi FeayCarefully crafted and with an undertow of melancholy, Train Man is reminiscent of Nick Hornby’s high-concept scenarios Up to now “Andy” Mulligan has been known for his imaginative and challenging range
Michael Gove Michael Gove by Owen Bennett review – did this book end his leadership bid?The Guardian - Stephen BushI know of no candidate to the Oxford Union who managed to reach the presidency 'without resorting to dark tactics' as Bennett claims Gove did “Political biographers who choose to write about a figure yet
Books After falling for a con artist, I lost trust in the world – but I am anything but a damaged soulThe Guardian - Stephanie WoodOur society has strong feelings about women who do not have children In 2013, I wrote my first “personal essay”. I told the world that I frequently felt acutely lonely. Even then, two years before Slate
Rosewater Tade Thompson's 'gritty' alien invasion tale wins Arthur C Clarke awardThe Guardian - Sian CainBritish Yoruba author Tade Thompson has won the Arthur C Clarke award, the UK’s most prestigious prize for science fiction novels, for Rosewater, his alien invasion novel set in a future Africa. Opening
Books Andrea Camilleri had the latest, but greatest, career in crime writingThe Guardian - Mark LawsonAndrea Camilleri, who has died aged 93, was one of the latest starters and latest finishers in crime fiction. He was almost 70 – after a rich career as a theatre director, TV producer, playwright and in
Books Andrea Camilleri obituaryThe Guardian - John HooperHad Andrea Camilleri died in his 50s, his obituary would certainly not have been published in the Guardian. His death might have been noted in the cultural sections of the odd Italian newspaper and it
Books Andrea Camilleri, beloved creator of Inspector Montalbano, dies aged 93The Guardian - Alison Flood and Angela Giuffrida in RomeOne of Italy’s most popular authors and creator of the Inspector Montalbano series, Andrea Camilleri has died at the age of 93. Camilleri, who was born in Sicily in 1925, was taken to hospital in Rome
Books Top 10 queer rural booksThe Guardian - Mike ParkerIf the countryside appears at all in LGBT+ stories, it is usually only as somewhere to escape from. For many of us, this is a pattern that never fitted, and though we did the urban thing to burst (or from
Books Me, Me, Me? by Jon Lawrence review – nostalgic for community? Think againThe Guardian - Selina ToddRemember when everyone left doors unlocked and borrowed cups of sugar? No? Then this richly researched history of community may well appeal. Jon Lawrence uncovers the reality behind romantic cliches of
Kurdistan Turkish translation of Paulo Coelho 'removed mention of Kurdistan'The Guardian - Sian CainA Turkish publishing house is pulling its translation of the Brazilian author Paulo Coelho’s Eleven Minutes after readers discovered that the translation had removed a reference to Kurdistan and changed
Brexit The Great Betrayal by Rod Liddle review – a disingenuous, dishonest Brexit polemicThe Guardian - Fintan O'Toole“Never,” Rod Liddle writes in his jeremiad on the “betrayal” of Brexit, “have so many blameless people in this country been held in such contempt, or been subject to such vilification by an elite.” Really?
Boris Johnson What does Boris Johnson’s terrible novel Seventy-Two Virgins tell us about him?The Guardian - Mark LawsonIf Johnson attends a G20 summit, he'll have to hope the French president hasn't been briefed about the role played by the French in the novel The book's attitude to women is such that if he fails to become
