https://www.theguardian.com/books Latest books news, comment, reviews and analysis from the Guardian en-gb Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. 2026 Thu, 11 Jun 2026 22:32:42 GMT 2026-06-11T22:32:42Z en-gb Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. 2026 https://assets.guim.co.uk/images/guardian-logo-rss.c45beb1bafa34b347ac333af2e6fe23f.png https://www.theguardian.com https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/jun/11/womens-prize-virginia-evans-the-correspondent-fiction-lyse-doucet-the-finest-hotel-in-kabul-nonfiction <p>Evans’s The Correspondent and the BBC journalist’s ‘people’s history’ of modern Afghanistan, The Finest Hotel in Kabul, win £30,000 prizes</p><p>Debut novelist Virginia Evans has won this year’s Women’s prize for fiction, while the BBC’s chief international correspondent Lyse Doucet took home the nonfiction award, also for her debut.</p><p>Evans’s The Correspondent and Doucet’s The Finest Hotel in Kabul were announced as the winners at a ceremony in central London on Thursday evening, with each author awarded £30,000.</p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/jun/11/womens-prize-virginia-evans-the-correspondent-fiction-lyse-doucet-the-finest-hotel-in-kabul-nonfiction">Continue reading...</a> Books Women's prize for fiction Women's prize for nonfiction Women's prizes Fiction History books Culture Awards and prizes Thu, 11 Jun 2026 18:18:40 GMT https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/jun/11/womens-prize-virginia-evans-the-correspondent-fiction-lyse-doucet-the-finest-hotel-in-kabul-nonfiction Composite: Austin Joffe, Paula Bronstein Composite: Austin Joffe, Paula Bronstein Composite: Austin Joffe, Paula Bronstein Emma Loffhagen 2026-06-11T18:18:40Z https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/jun/11/frida-slattery-as-herself-by-ana-kinsella-review-will-they-wont-they-in-a-skilful-theatrical-romance <p>This impressive and charismatic debut novel revisits an actor and a director over various collaborations</p><p>The central characters of Frida Slattery As Herself, Ana Kinsella’s debut novel, are the eponymous Frida, 23 when the novel opens, and John Reddan, five years older. Both live in Dublin. Frida loves acting but has never had a significant role, and didn’t even get into drama school. John is a writer-director who has just had a play put on at a “real theatre”. What’s compelling about Frida is not necessarily what she says, thinks or does, but the way she is, and a&nbsp;large part of that lies in the physicality Kinsella writes into her. Frida, we learn, is “addicted” to the theatre. “Every time she came off stage she felt like a prizefighter. The curtain fell in the community theatre and there she was, rolling her neck, bobbing on her feet.”</p><p>However, Frida’s acting aspirations are going nowhere. She eventually confides in her friend Catherine, who&nbsp;at university was a much more&nbsp;successful actor in student productions, but now has a proper job&nbsp;(“She owned an espresso machine and Frida lived in a bedsit”). “I just want something to happen,” Frida says. Catherine introduces Frida to John. They meet in Kehoe’s pub, then he asks Frida to accompany him on an&nbsp;errand which turns into a long, mystifying walk through Dublin, during which he interviews her. She asks in return what he is working on: “Are there any roles for women in their&nbsp;early twenties?” To which he responds, “Is that how you think of yourself, Frida? As nothing more than ‘a woman in her early twenties’?”</p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/jun/11/frida-slattery-as-herself-by-ana-kinsella-review-will-they-wont-they-in-a-skilful-theatrical-romance">Continue reading...</a> Fiction Books Culture Thu, 11 Jun 2026 06:00:08 GMT https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/jun/11/frida-slattery-as-herself-by-ana-kinsella-review-will-they-wont-they-in-a-skilful-theatrical-romance Photograph: Sophie Davidson Photograph: Sophie Davidson Photograph: Sophie Davidson Anjali Joseph 2026-06-11T06:00:08Z https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/jun/11/the-artist-by-lucy-steeds-audiobook-review-a-sensory-feast-in-provence <p>A reclusive artist is the reluctant subject of a journalist’s attention in a rich world of scents, scenery and secrets</p><p>When a British journalist named Joseph Adelaide tracks down a reclusive artist to his remote farmhouse in the south of France, his plan is to interview him for a magazine profile. Edouard Tartuffe is a revered painter who was taught by Cézanne and is known on the Parisian art scene as the “Master of Light”. But then he retreated from the limelight amid rumours of a feud with his former mentor.</p><p>Tartuffe – known as Tata – now lives with his 27-year-old niece, Ettie, and is blind in one eye. Joseph quickly learns that Tata also has an explosive temper and rules the household with an iron fist. On meeting Joseph, he barks that he will not be giving an interview but that his guest can stay on one condition: that he model for him for a new portrait.</p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/jun/11/the-artist-by-lucy-steeds-audiobook-review-a-sensory-feast-in-provence">Continue reading...</a> Books Culture Fiction Thu, 11 Jun 2026 14:00:18 GMT https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/jun/11/the-artist-by-lucy-steeds-audiobook-review-a-sensory-feast-in-provence Photograph: Paul Stuart Photograph: Paul Stuart Photograph: Paul Stuart Fiona Sturges 2026-06-11T14:00:18Z https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/jun/10/sales-meta-whistleblowers-memoir-careless-people-soar-after-hay-festival-silencing <p>Sarah Wynn-Williams remained silent during her hour-long appearance, but sales of Careless People have since increased by more than 300%</p><p>Sales of the whistleblowing memoir Careless People increased by more than 300% in the UK the week after its <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/may/31/meta-legal-action-forces-facebook-whistleblower-to-stay-silent-at-hay-festival">author was “silenced”</a> during an appearance at Hay festival following legal action by Meta, the subject of the book.</p><p>Sarah Wynn-Williams – who between 2011 and 2017 served as the director of global public policy at what was then called Facebook – sat on stage but did not speak during her hour-long appearance on 31 May on the advice of her lawyer. She appeared alongside the journalist Carole Cadwalladr and academic Tim Wu.</p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/jun/10/sales-meta-whistleblowers-memoir-careless-people-soar-after-hay-festival-silencing">Continue reading...</a> Books Meta Facebook Technology Hay festival Festivals Culture Media Wed, 10 Jun 2026 16:51:36 GMT https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/jun/10/sales-meta-whistleblowers-memoir-careless-people-soar-after-hay-festival-silencing Photograph: Sam Hardwick Photograph: Sam Hardwick Photograph: Sam Hardwick Ella Creamer 2026-06-10T16:51:36Z https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/jun/10/pleasure-and-invigoration-diana-evans-wins-uks-jhalak-prose-prize <p>Awards for prose, children’s writing and poetry, for writers of colour in UK and Ireland, come with £1,000</p><p>Diana Evans has won this year’s Jhalak prose prize for I Want to Talk to You, a nonfiction collection on subjects ranging from Jean Rhys and Toni Morrison to lockdowns and the British monarchy.</p><p>The book, described as a “pleasure and an invigoration” by <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2025/feb/06/i-want-to-talk-to-you-by-diana-evans-review-sparkling-essays">the Guardian’s reviewer</a> Alex Clark, was announced as the 10th winner at a reception on Wednesday evening.</p><p>I Want to Talk to You by Diana Evans (Vintage Publishing, £18.99). To support the Guardian, order your copy at <a href="https://guardianbookshop.com/i-want-to-talk-to-you-9781784744243/?utm_source=editoriallink&amp;utm_medium=merch&amp;utm_campaign=article">guardianbookshop.com</a>. Delivery charges may apply.</p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/jun/10/pleasure-and-invigoration-diana-evans-wins-uks-jhalak-prose-prize">Continue reading...</a> Books Jhalak prize Diana Evans Poetry Children and teenagers Awards and prizes Culture UK news Ireland Wed, 10 Jun 2026 18:30:53 GMT https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/jun/10/pleasure-and-invigoration-diana-evans-wins-uks-jhalak-prose-prize Photograph: Linda Nylind/The Guardian Photograph: Linda Nylind/The Guardian Photograph: Linda Nylind/The Guardian Ella Creamer 2026-06-10T18:30:53Z https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/jun/10/peter-pan-christopher-robin-alice-the-unsettling-stories-of-the-children-behind-fictions-most-enduring-tales <p>Peter Pan, Christopher Robin and Alice in Wonderland … being the star of a classic story might seem like a dream, but there’s a dark side, argues the author of The Children</p><p>I’d loved the children for years before discovering they were <em>real</em>. I can almost summon the magic I felt when I first saw the photographs that proved it: the little boy clad in an approximation of hunters’ skins, posing victorious. The dark-haired girl with the offset gaze, her interior expression that of a person just growing used to being looked at.</p><p>And – this is the one that really kills me – the big-eyed, dimple-chinned seven-year-old in a soft sweater and tenderly mummish haircut, clutching the teddy bear that would end up even more famous than he would.</p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/jun/10/peter-pan-christopher-robin-alice-the-unsettling-stories-of-the-children-behind-fictions-most-enduring-tales">Continue reading...</a> Books Children Children and teenagers AA Milne JM Barrie Lewis Carroll Culture Wed, 10 Jun 2026 13:26:57 GMT https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/jun/10/peter-pan-christopher-robin-alice-the-unsettling-stories-of-the-children-behind-fictions-most-enduring-tales Photograph: Bettmann/Bettmann Archive Photograph: Bettmann/Bettmann Archive Photograph: Bettmann/Bettmann Archive Melissa Albert 2026-06-10T13:26:57Z https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/jun/10/stolen-revolution-by-bozorgmehr-sharafedin-and-yeganeh-torbati-review-irans-recent-history-explained <p>This account of the Islamic Republic and its discontents told via six contrasting lives should be required reading</p><p>It’s difficult in 2026 to talk about Iran without confronting a lot of&nbsp;crude certainty. The average non-Iranian gets their information in snippets, filtered by algorithms. The Iranian diaspora is too fractured and traumatised to educate everyone. And&nbsp;the regime has muffled the voices inside its borders, responding to every major uprising with internet blackouts that hide both the people’s rage and its own violent response. Meanwhile, its own network of misinformation spreads lies – that protesters are foreign instruments, that the unrest is manufactured by outsiders – exploiting legitimate western anxieties about intervention, Islamophobia, sanctions, oil and Israeli imperialism.</p><p>Bozorgmehr Sharafedin and Yeganeh Torbati’s powerful history of the Islamic republic is a badly needed corrective because it is at once an engrossing story and a balanced, meticulously researched primer on modern Iran (the clearest I’ve ever read). And it is dramatic, personal and often heartbreaking, told through six lives lived at the forefront of the Iranian people’s almost five-decade struggle with a corrupt regime that has stolen their freedoms, votes and many thousands of their lives.</p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/jun/10/stolen-revolution-by-bozorgmehr-sharafedin-and-yeganeh-torbati-review-irans-recent-history-explained">Continue reading...</a> History books Books Iran Culture Middle East and north Africa Wed, 10 Jun 2026 06:00:12 GMT https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/jun/10/stolen-revolution-by-bozorgmehr-sharafedin-and-yeganeh-torbati-review-irans-recent-history-explained Photograph: AP Photograph: AP Photograph: AP Dina Nayeri 2026-06-10T06:00:12Z https://www.theguardian.com/books/ng-interactive/2026/may/12/the-100-best-novels-of-all-time <p><em>The top 100 novels of all time published in English, as voted for by authors, critics and academics worldwide. How many have you read?</em></p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/ng-interactive/2026/may/12/the-100-best-novels-of-all-time">Continue reading...</a> Fiction Books Culture Fiction in translation Sat, 16 May 2026 05:00:40 GMT https://www.theguardian.com/books/ng-interactive/2026/may/12/the-100-best-novels-of-all-time Illustration: Lisa Sheehan/The Guardian Illustration: Lisa Sheehan/The Guardian Illustration: Lisa Sheehan/The Guardian As voted for by authors, critics and journalists 2026-05-16T05:00:40Z https://www.theguardian.com/books/ng-interactive/2026/may/23/the-best-books-to-read-in-may-new-paperbacks-from-ocean-vuong-rf-kuang-and-nick-clegg <p>Looking for a new reading recommendation? Here are some must-read paperbacks, from a campus novel to a history of language</p><p>***</p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/ng-interactive/2026/may/23/the-best-books-to-read-in-may-new-paperbacks-from-ocean-vuong-rf-kuang-and-nick-clegg">Continue reading...</a> Books Culture Paperbacks Nick Clegg Sarah Moss Ocean Vuong Sat, 23 May 2026 09:32:41 GMT https://www.theguardian.com/books/ng-interactive/2026/may/23/the-best-books-to-read-in-may-new-paperbacks-from-ocean-vuong-rf-kuang-and-nick-clegg Composite: Guardian Composite: Guardian Composite: Guardian Guardian Staff 2026-05-23T09:32:41Z https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/jun/02/what-were-reading-writers-and-readers-on-the-books-they-enjoyed-in-may <p>Madeleine Thien, Sufiyaan Salam and Guardian readers discuss the titles they have read over the last month. Join the conversation in the comments</p><p>Lately I have loved Dorothy Tse’s <strong>City Like Water</strong>, translated from Chinese by Natascha Bruce. It is an unclassifiable, sharp, ingenious, passionate novel in which the city that is dissolving is also one’s only home. I have been telling everyone to read Karen Hao’s <strong>Empire of AI</strong><strong> </strong>so that we can understand the cost of the tools we’ve been told that we need. I re-read Hsiao-Hung Pai’s <strong>Scattered Sand: The Story of China’s Rural Migrants</strong> because it has stayed with me for more than a decade now. And I am reading Hannah Lillith Assadi’s moving novel, <strong>Paradiso 17</strong>, written in the weeks before and the year after her father, who was born in Palestine, passed away. Finally, Michael Ondaatje’s selected poems, <strong>The Distance of a Shout</strong>. This is a life’s work and a book to hold close.</p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/jun/02/what-were-reading-writers-and-readers-on-the-books-they-enjoyed-in-may">Continue reading...</a> Books Michael Ondaatje Madeleine Thien Francis Spufford Culture Tue, 02 Jun 2026 10:39:16 GMT https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/jun/02/what-were-reading-writers-and-readers-on-the-books-they-enjoyed-in-may Photograph: PR Photograph: PR Photograph: PR Guardian Staff 2026-06-02T10:39:16Z https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/jun/09/flamboyance-by-jack-parlett-review-a-serious-study-of-the-spectacular <p>What does it mean to push the boat out, and can peacocking be more than just a beautiful gesture?</p><p>A friend’s mother once told me that for a couple of years in the 1980s – as the Conservatives were waging war on the miners and she spent late nights at Marxist-feminist reading groups – she wore an almost daily uniform of jeans and a white T-shirt. On her wedding day she broke with habit and put on a dress she had bought, at great expense to her, that was fun, sexy and, although she didn’t use this word, flamboyant. The next week at the school she taught in she saw a colleague wearing it. “Nice dress,” she said. “It’s&nbsp;OK for work,” her colleague replied, “but I wouldn’t wear it <em>out</em>.”</p><p>I found myself recalling this anecdote as I read Jack Parlett’s memoir-cum-cultural history of our attempts to push the boat out. To make any effort is to risk embarrassment, to&nbsp;be seen either as ridiculous or hopelessly naive. One way to avoid those charges is to use playful or cynical irony. Parlett finds examples of this in Oscar Wilde and what the cultural critic Susan Sontag once described as camp, a worldview obsessed with artifice and performance. Although Flamboyance is not a polemic, it’s clear that its author sees something lacking in these efforts at self-fashioning. The book is couched as an alternative; Parlett presents flamboyance as a model for how to live a life that not only “burns with a resistant energy” but “puts politics back into the picture”. In practice, this means that he has little patience for the notion of&nbsp;art for art’s sake; he insists, for example, that there is no making sense of flamenco without understanding the history of fascism in Spain.</p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/jun/09/flamboyance-by-jack-parlett-review-a-serious-study-of-the-spectacular">Continue reading...</a> Biography books History books Autobiography and memoir Books Culture Tue, 09 Jun 2026 08:00:49 GMT https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/jun/09/flamboyance-by-jack-parlett-review-a-serious-study-of-the-spectacular Photograph: Angela Weiss/AFP/Getty Images Photograph: Angela Weiss/AFP/Getty Images Photograph: Angela Weiss/AFP/Getty Images John-Baptiste Oduor 2026-06-09T08:00:49Z https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/jun/08/a-british-childhood-by-frank-cottrell-boyce-review-are-we-raising-a-bookless-generation <p>This clarion call about the impoverishment of children’s lives is also a reminder of the sheer magic of reading</p><p>Every day, on my walk to work, I pass a primary school. A group of little people are being dropped off by parents. They are met at the gates by a teacher who greets them all by name before leading them up the steps to breakfast club. In the cold and dark of winter, with the school’s windows glowing invitingly, I sometimes envy these children their warm, welcoming cocoon.</p><p>I thought of that daily scene often when reading this book, which is inspired by Frank Cottrell-Boyce’s time as Waterstones children’s laureate. During his laureateship he ran a campaign with the literary charity BookTrust called Reading Rights, addressing literacy inequality for children in poverty. It was prompted by the discovery that nearly half of children were arriving at school without having been read to. Many had no clue how books worked. They were trying to swipe rather than turn pages, or expand illustrations by pinching them with their fingers.</p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/jun/08/a-british-childhood-by-frank-cottrell-boyce-review-are-we-raising-a-bookless-generation">Continue reading...</a> Frank Cottrell-Boyce Children Society books Books Children's laureate Culture Mon, 08 Jun 2026 06:00:18 GMT https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/jun/08/a-british-childhood-by-frank-cottrell-boyce-review-are-we-raising-a-bookless-generation Photograph: Catherine Falls Commercial/Getty Images Photograph: Catherine Falls Commercial/Getty Images Photograph: Catherine Falls Commercial/Getty Images Joe Moran 2026-06-08T06:00:18Z https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/jun/04/the-traveller-an-18th-century-explorer-far-ahead-of-his-time <p>A revelatory account of the life of George Forster, whose rejection of racial hierarchies stood out amongst his peers</p><p>George Forster was 10 when he left his home in present-day Poland and travelled to Russia with his naturalist father. During the expedition, which began in 1765, Forster collected plant specimens and helped with botanical research. Wide-eyed, he journeyed along the Volga river, encountering Muslim Tartar traders and Cossack warriors. There were also the emaciated figures of German settlers, who lived in poverty under the territory’s despotic governor, their campsites little more&nbsp;than holes burrowed into the riverbanks. The experience of cultures so distinct from his own stirred a lifelong enthusiasm for travel and exploration in Forster. It also awakened his compassion for others – irrespective of&nbsp;culture and, especially, race.</p><p>At a time when racism pervaded public opinion as well as the philosophical texts of luminaries such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Immanuel Kant, Forster moved brazenly to critique and correct them. How he was able to transcend the conventional beliefs of his day is the central question of Andrea Wulf’s new book – and the answer is in its title.</p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/jun/04/the-traveller-an-18th-century-explorer-far-ahead-of-his-time">Continue reading...</a> Books Culture Travel Exploration Captain Cook Thu, 04 Jun 2026 06:00:27 GMT https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/jun/04/the-traveller-an-18th-century-explorer-far-ahead-of-his-time Photograph: Brian A Vikander/Getty Images Photograph: Brian A Vikander/Getty Images Photograph: Brian A Vikander/Getty Images Nick Bartlett 2026-06-04T06:00:27Z https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/jun/03/ambivalence-by-brian-dillon-review-an-odd-man-out <p>The critic’s memoir’s is a portrait in determination to go against the grain and ‘pursue a life in words and ideas’</p><p>Brian Dillon lost his parents early, his mother when he was 16, his father at 21. He writes of them in passing here, as he did in his first book, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2006/oct/14/featuresreviews.guardianreview28">In the Dark Room</a>, but with little overt display of grief. Narrated in the third person, with young Dillon a removed <em>he</em> rather than an emotionally manipulative<em> I</em>, this isn’t a weepy orphanhood memoir. It describes instead his awkward Dublin education, as he struggles to carve out an identity for himself and to accommodate his passion for avant garde music and literature within academe.</p><p>He grows up surrounded by the books acquired by his father, who left school early and went to university late. He reads them avidly and adds to them with library borrowings and purchases of his own. But, to begin with, his greater attachment is to music magazines and to David Bowie, whose excitingly ambivalent sexuality echoes his own. His father speaks of duty – to homework, weekly mass and getting a decent job. But his commitment is to <em>jouissance</em>, if only he can find it.</p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/jun/03/ambivalence-by-brian-dillon-review-an-odd-man-out">Continue reading...</a> Autobiography and memoir Books Culture Wed, 03 Jun 2026 08:00:46 GMT https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/jun/03/ambivalence-by-brian-dillon-review-an-odd-man-out Photograph: Martina Bocchio/Awakening/Alamy Photograph: Martina Bocchio/Awakening/Alamy Photograph: Martina Bocchio/Awakening/Alamy Blake Morrison 2026-06-03T08:00:46Z https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/jun/09/the-end-of-everything-by-m-john-harrison-review-near-future-visions-from-an-sf-master <p>This bleak but brilliant tale of enigmatic alien entities and slow social collapse exposes the terrifying insecurity of life right now</p><p>M John Harrison’s prose has thrilled me since I was a teen. It has thrilled others, too, including Angela Carter, Deborah Levy and Robert Macfarlane, but snobbery about the genres in which he made his mark – science fiction and fantasy – has hindered the respect his achievement deserves. His rigorously realistic novel Climbers, published in 1989, looked as though it might change that, but subsequent work has remained genre-fluid and uncompromisingly peculiar.</p><p>In the 1970s and 80s, he wrote stories about Viriconium, a fabled city crumbling into decadence and anarchy. These swashbuckling yet sinister tales functioned as escapist adventures for readers who preferred a far-flung nightmare to the contemporary humdrum. But in the 21st century, the world we inhabit has become utterly fantastical and Harrison has no need to revisit Viriconium; his anarchic, disintegrated metropolis is London and The End of Everything is set in an unnamed town on the Kent coast.</p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/jun/09/the-end-of-everything-by-m-john-harrison-review-near-future-visions-from-an-sf-master">Continue reading...</a> Science fiction books Fiction Goldsmiths prize Michel Faber Tue, 09 Jun 2026 06:00:47 GMT https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/jun/09/the-end-of-everything-by-m-john-harrison-review-near-future-visions-from-an-sf-master Photograph: Greg Funnell Photograph: Greg Funnell Photograph: Greg Funnell Michel Faber 2026-06-09T06:00:47Z https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/jun/08/villa-coco-by-andrew-sean-greer-review-fun-in-the-tuscan-sun <p>The Pulitzer-winning author of Less has crafted a breezy confection of fish-out-of-water wit, insecurity and self-discovery set in an Italian paradise</p><p>‘There’s a place in Italy in need of someone. Why don’t you look into that?” Inspired by his two-year stint directing a writers’ residency, the Santa Maddalena Foundation outside Florence, with these words American author Andrew Sean Greer launches a hapless, clueless innocent into the Tuscan hills and the embrace of its eccentric aristocracy, in the person of the eponymous Coco, Baronessa Lisabetta.</p><p>Variously known as “our young man”, Gio and Giovedi, Villa Coco’s narrator is here to fill the post of “adjutant” for the Baronessa. His duties include pruning roses, emptying drains, hunting the Baronessa’s mortal&nbsp;enemy, the pine marten, and cataloguing the dilapidated Villa Coco’s contents. Among the camel saddles and hat racks, he is assured, lurk priceless works of art, including a Picasso and a Botticelli. He joins a staff consisting of a Sri Lankan cook, her husband and a Lebanese factotum; they share in the sisyphean task of keeping Villa Coco going, and the Baronessa out of harm’s way.</p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/jun/08/villa-coco-by-andrew-sean-greer-review-fun-in-the-tuscan-sun">Continue reading...</a> Fiction Mon, 08 Jun 2026 08:00:03 GMT https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/jun/08/villa-coco-by-andrew-sean-greer-review-fun-in-the-tuscan-sun Photograph: Scott Wilson/Alamy Photograph: Scott Wilson/Alamy Photograph: Scott Wilson/Alamy Christobel Kent 2026-06-08T08:00:03Z https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/jun/05/the-children-by-melissa-albert-review-intriguing-fairytale-of-creativitys-dangers <p>In her first novel for adults, the YA author explores the dark side of writers who fictionalise their children’s lives</p><p>Children’s writers are sometimes cruel, and often damaged. And, as AS Byatt put it crisply when talking about her 2009 novel The Children’s Book: “Writing children’s books isn’t good for the writer’s own children.” Think of Christopher Milne, raging at having been Christopher Robin; Vivian Burnett, dragging Little Lord Fauntleroy behind him; Alastair Grahame, lying down on train tracks.</p><p>This is fertile material, as Byatt recognised, for a grown-up book. The American author Melissa Albert, herself a very successful children’s writer, has made it the theme of her first adult novel. The Children’s protagonist is Guinevere Sharpe, who as a grown woman is trapped by a very public version of her childhood. Her mother, Edith, a sort of JK Rowling/Enid Blyton composite, wrote an era-defining run of children’s portal fantasies called the Ninth City series, in which Guin and her older brother Ennis appeared as the named protagonists.</p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/jun/05/the-children-by-melissa-albert-review-intriguing-fairytale-of-creativitys-dangers">Continue reading...</a> Fiction Books Culture Fri, 05 Jun 2026 06:00:27 GMT https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/jun/05/the-children-by-melissa-albert-review-intriguing-fairytale-of-creativitys-dangers Photograph: Laura Etheredge Photograph: Laura Etheredge Photograph: Laura Etheredge Sam Leith 2026-06-05T06:00:27Z https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/jun/05/the-best-recent-poetry-review-roundup <p>Haunting the Black Air by Anthony Joseph; Selected Poems by Leontia Flynn; Sparrow on the Rooftop by Rachel Long; You Must Live: New Poetry from Palestine, edited by Jorie Graham; Melete by Jennifer Lee Tsai; Somebody Should Have Pressed Record by Galia Admoni</p><p><strong><a href="https://guardianbookshop.com/haunting-the-black-air-9781526683380/?utm_source=editoriallink&amp;amp;utm_medium=merch&amp;amp;utm_campaign=article">Haunting the Black Air</a></strong><strong> by Anthony Joseph</strong><strong> (Bloomsbury, £12.9</strong><strong>9)</strong><br> Joseph’s follow-up to the TS Eliot prize-winning <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/jan/18/ts-eliot-prize-winner-anthony-joseph-how-poetry-helped-me-love-my-absent-father">Sonnets for Albert</a> sees his poetic approach become more radical. He pays homage to avant garde writers such as Will Alexander and Nathaniel Mackey, while exploring “Nostalgia, mostly grief, / a haunting sound – / the frequency of some / magnetic feeling.” That makes for challenging syntax on first reading the poems. Persist, and Joseph’s unabashed lyricism shines through, finding beauty on dancefloors, city streets and in Trinidadian landscapes: “the way music fills the room, how we embrace until / we become flare bright, light as the white refraction / of the sun upon the summit of hills.”</p><p><strong><a href="https://guardianbookshop.com/selected-poems-9781800175501//?utm_source=editoriallink&amp;utm_medium=merch&amp;utm_campaign=article">Selected Poems</a></strong><strong> by </strong><strong>Leontia Flynn (Carcanet, £14.99)</strong><br> She was a Next Generation poet and Forward prize winner; it’s a shock to remember that Flynn has been publishing for more than 20 years, so fresh do her poems remain. This assembly is a glorious reintroduction to her mordant wit, imaginative image-making and unerring ability to puncture pretension. Letter to Friends from 2011 is a brilliant, Auden-esque dissection of the early 21st century, worth a library of political analyses: “daily threats brought to our Way of Life / by man-made imminent apocalypse / though neither really outweighs private grief”. There are pleasures on every page.</p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/jun/05/the-best-recent-poetry-review-roundup">Continue reading...</a> Poetry Books Culture Fri, 05 Jun 2026 11:00:33 GMT https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/jun/05/the-best-recent-poetry-review-roundup Photograph: Naomi Woddis/PA Photograph: Naomi Woddis/PA Photograph: Naomi Woddis/PA Rishi Dastidar 2026-06-05T11:00:33Z https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/may/22/children-and-teens-roundup-the-best-new-picture-books-and-novels <p>A bunny who loves to bake, illustrated poems about amazing animals and a YA verse novel of dancefloor salvation</p><p><strong><a href="https://guardianbookshop.com/ban-bans-bakery-9781917933032/?utm_source=editoriallink&amp;utm_medium=merch&amp;utm_campaign=article">Ban Ban’s Bakery</a> by Elena Hiroko Magee, Do Re Mi, £12.99</strong><br> Ban Ban the bunny loves baking with Grandma – but will she be able to turn Dusty Cottage into a bakery of her very own? A cute, enticing picture book full of mouthwatering, pastel-hued treats.</p><p><strong><a href="https://guardianbookshop.com/daddy-is-cleaning-9781839946370/?utm_source=editoriallink&amp;utm_medium=merch&amp;utm_campaign=article">Daddy </a></strong><strong><a href="https://guardianbookshop.com/daddy-is-cleaning-9781839946370/?utm_source=editoriallink&amp;utm_medium=merch&amp;utm_campaign=article">Is Cleaning</a> by Angel Dike</strong><strong>, illustrated by Ebony Glenn, Nosy Crow, £12.99</strong><br> Baby is helping with laundry, cooking and planting – so Daddy is cleaning, a lot! This tender picture book perfectly evokes the love, humour and exhaustion of managing a day’s chores with an enthusiastic toddler.</p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/may/22/children-and-teens-roundup-the-best-new-picture-books-and-novels">Continue reading...</a> Young adult Children and teenagers Fri, 22 May 2026 11:00:58 GMT https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/may/22/children-and-teens-roundup-the-best-new-picture-books-and-novels Photograph: PR Photograph: PR Photograph: PR Imogen Russell Williams 2026-05-22T11:00:58Z https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/apr/24/children-and-teens-roundup-the-best-new-picture-books-and-novels <p>An imposter monkey, an underworld princess, art’s female trailblazers, and YA tales of fear, family and friendship</p><p><strong><a href="https://www.guardianbookshop.com/our-world-nigeria-9781646866311?utm_source=editoriallink&amp;utm_medium=merch&amp;utm_campaign=article">Our World: Nigeria</a> by Bunmi Emenanjo and Diana Ejaita, Barefoot Books, £7.99</strong><strong><br></strong>Part of a delightful educational series from a brilliant inclusive publisher, this colourful, joyous board book whisks babies away to spend a day in Nigeria, learning to say hello in three languages and feasting on porridge, akara and plantain.</p><p><strong><a href="https://guardianbookshop.com/monkeypig-9780241684412/?utm_source=editoriallink&amp;utm_medium=merch&amp;utm_campaign=article">Monkeypig</a> by Huw Aaron, </strong><strong>Puffin, £7.99</strong><strong><br></strong>What makes a <em>real</em> monkey? This rapturously silly picture book from the Waterstones prize winner follows Molly, a pig who blends in with her simian friends – despite head monkey Norman’s best efforts to detect the impostor.</p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/apr/24/children-and-teens-roundup-the-best-new-picture-books-and-novels">Continue reading...</a> Books Culture Young adult Fri, 24 Apr 2026 11:00:39 GMT https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/apr/24/children-and-teens-roundup-the-best-new-picture-books-and-novels Photograph: PR Photograph: PR Photograph: PR Imogen Russell Williams 2026-04-24T11:00:39Z https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/feb/27/children-and-teens-roundup-the-best-new-picture-books-and-novels <p>A mission to grow plants in the desert; a potato’s adventures; a film-maker’s dreams; wartime bravery; a feminist fantasy and more</p><p><strong><a href="https://guardianbookshop.com/the-wonder-9781398515123/?utm_source=editoriallink&amp;utm_medium=merch&amp;utm_campaign=article">The Wonder</a> by Tom Percival, </strong><strong>Simon &amp; Schuster, £12.99</strong><strong><br></strong>Daniel’s wet grey day seems like it will never get better – until he hears music and everything changes. A subtly beautiful picture book about finding small moments of joy and wonder.</p><p><strong><a href="https://guardianbookshop.com/the-big-green-9781915659651/?utm_source=editoriallink&amp;utm_medium=merch&amp;utm_campaign=article">The Big Green</a> by Ken Wilson-Max, Otter-Barry, £12.99</strong><strong><br></strong>Heading into the desert to plant seedlings with their family and neighbours, Maryam and Issa help to build the Great Green Wall of Africa in this rhythmic, colourful picture book, a rich celebration of community environmental action.</p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/feb/27/children-and-teens-roundup-the-best-new-picture-books-and-novels">Continue reading...</a> Children and teenagers Books Culture Young adult Fri, 27 Feb 2026 12:00:16 GMT https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/feb/27/children-and-teens-roundup-the-best-new-picture-books-and-novels Photograph: PR Photograph: PR Photograph: PR Imogen Russell Williams 2026-02-27T12:00:16Z https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/jan/23/children-and-teens-roundup-the-best-new-picture-books-and-novels <p>Caring canines; daring donuts; a golden monkey; a boy from another planet; a dark take on Little Women and more</p><p><strong><a href="https://guardianbookshop.com/the-good-deed-dogs-9781529533170/?utm_source=editoriallink&amp;utm_medium=merch&amp;utm_campaign=article">The Good Deed Dogs </a>by Emma Chichester Clark, Walker, £12.99</strong><strong><br></strong>Three <em>very</em> good dogs’ attempts to help others keep backfiring with chaotic consequences – until they pull off a successful kitten rescue in this exuberantly charming picture book.</p><p><strong><a href="https://guardianbookshop.com/aunties-bangles-9781408370599/?utm_source=editoriallink&amp;utm_medium=merch&amp;utm_campaign=article">Auntie’s Bangles</a> by Dean Atta and Alea Marley, Orchard, £12.99</strong><strong><br></strong>Everyone misses Auntie, especially the jingle of her jewellery; but eventually Theo and Rama are ready to put on her bangles and dance to celebrate her memory. A sweet, poignant picture book about loss, joy and remembrance.</p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/jan/23/children-and-teens-roundup-the-best-new-picture-books-and-novels">Continue reading...</a> Children and teenagers Books Culture Fiction Fri, 23 Jan 2026 12:00:11 GMT https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/jan/23/children-and-teens-roundup-the-best-new-picture-books-and-novels Photograph: PR Photograph: PR Photograph: PR Imogen Russell Williams 2026-01-23T12:00:11Z https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/may/21/yang-shuang-zi-interview-lin-king-taiwan-travelogue-international-booker <p>The author of historical novel Taiwan Travelogue, and its translator Lin King, discuss the threat from Beijing, LGBTQ+ rights and the island’s culinary delicacies</p><p>As Yáng Shuāng-zǐ accepted the 2026 International Booker prize at the Tate Modern on Tuesday night for Taiwan Travelogue, alongside her translator Lin King, she used her speech to speak frankly about the political questions at the centre of her novel, set in 1930s Japan-occupied Taiwan. “Some people believe that art and literature must be kept far from politics,” Yáng told the audience. “But I believe that literature cannot be separated from the soil in which it has grown.”</p><p>When we speak the following morning, the 41-year-old writer returns quickly to the same theme. “Taiwanese people are suffering from an identity crisis,” she tells me. “Some of us believe ourselves to be Chinese and then others believe that we are Taiwanese, and I wanted to express that somehow through my book. As Taiwanese people, we need to ask ourselves now – do we want to go back to being colonised? Do we want to have to live like that again? Be second-class citizens in our own land? I refuse.”</p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/may/21/yang-shuang-zi-interview-lin-king-taiwan-travelogue-international-booker">Continue reading...</a> International Booker prize Books Culture Awards and prizes Thu, 21 May 2026 17:50:32 GMT https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/may/21/yang-shuang-zi-interview-lin-king-taiwan-travelogue-international-booker Photograph: Alicia Canter/The Guardian Photograph: Alicia Canter/The Guardian Photograph: Alicia Canter/The Guardian Emma Loffhagen 2026-05-21T17:50:32Z https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/may/16/im-so-grateful-i-got-to-live-these-days-a-ghost-in-the-throat-author-doireann-ni-ghriofa-on-recovering-from-depression <p>The acclaimed author and poet talks about her new book, telling the true stories of patients at a derelict Victorian psychiatric hospital – a place in which she might have found herself at a different time</p><p>Doireann Ní Ghríofa wrote much of her first book of prose, A Ghost in the Throat, sitting in her car on the top floor of a multistorey car park,&nbsp;having dropped her children off at school in Cork city. Whatever works: her imaginative journey into the life and mind of 18th-century Irish poet Eibhlín Dubh Ní Chonaill was so convincing and original that it captivated readers and won the James Tait Black biography prize and, in Ireland, the An Post book of the year award. Having published several well-regarded collections of poetry, it seemed as if this blend of biography, memoir and meditation had enlarged the way in which she could write about her abiding preoccupation: the ever-present past.</p><p>She returned to her car to work on her new book, Said the Dead. But this time, it was parked in front of a vast building high on a hill overlooking the river Lee, one half of it derelict and the other half transformed into apartments. Its history was long: originally referred to simply as the district asylum at the end of the 18th century, a grand gothic-revival building had been constructed during the 1840s, and named, after Ireland’s Lord Lieutenant, the Eglinton Lunatic Asylum; in the 20th century, it became the Cork District Mental Hospital and, in its last incarnation before closing in 1992, Our Lady’s Psychiatric Hospital. Many such institutions existed across Ireland, a patchwork of private and public mental health provision that operated against the backdrop of colonial rule, poverty and famine.</p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/may/16/im-so-grateful-i-got-to-live-these-days-a-ghost-in-the-throat-author-doireann-ni-ghriofa-on-recovering-from-depression">Continue reading...</a> History books Biography books Books Culture Autobiography and memoir Sat, 16 May 2026 08:01:04 GMT https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/may/16/im-so-grateful-i-got-to-live-these-days-a-ghost-in-the-throat-author-doireann-ni-ghriofa-on-recovering-from-depression Photograph: Clare Keogh Photograph: Clare Keogh Photograph: Clare Keogh Alex Clark 2026-05-16T08:01:04Z https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/may/10/i-dont-know-what-could-top-that-debut-author-jem-calder-on-being-discovered-by-sally-rooney <p>His first story collection, Reward System, was a cult hit. Now comes a novel that’s a bleakly funny appraisal of millennial relationships, technology and ennui. He talks about love, precarity and being called the ‘voice of a generation’</p><p>Jem Calder’s writing career&nbsp;had a fairytale start. Sally&nbsp;Rooney emailed him, impressed with a short story he’d submitted to the literary magazine she was editing soon after Conversations with Friends came out. It was the first story he’d ever completed. Calder was already “a huge fan” of Rooney’s, so the whole thing was surreal, he tells me. “I can’t really imagine what could&nbsp;top that, to be honest.”</p><p>That story ultimately ended up in&nbsp;Reward System, Calder’s 2022 collection of six interconnected tales following a cast of sad young things living in an unnamed city. It was hailed as a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2022/dec/03/best-fiction-of-2022">book of the year</a>; a review <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2022/may/14/reward-system-by-jem-calder-review-slaves-to-the-algorithm">in&nbsp;this paper</a> placed Calder among “the&nbsp;most talented young writers of fiction at work today”. Now, his debut novel, I Want You to Be Happy, picks up some of the themes of the first book: the trials of modern love, millennial ennui, consumer culture, technology, political and ecological doom. And it’s already got some famous fans: David Szalay has sung its praises, while Andrew O’Hagan says Calder is&nbsp;his “new favourite writer”.</p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/may/10/i-dont-know-what-could-top-that-debut-author-jem-calder-on-being-discovered-by-sally-rooney">Continue reading...</a> Fiction Books Culture Sally Rooney Sun, 10 May 2026 11:00:25 GMT https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/may/10/i-dont-know-what-could-top-that-debut-author-jem-calder-on-being-discovered-by-sally-rooney Photograph: Kat Green Photograph: Kat Green Photograph: Kat Green Ella Creamer 2026-05-10T11:00:25Z https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/may/29/virginia-evans-i-loved-books-about-things-that-cant-exist <p>The Women’s prize-shortlisted novelist on taking inspiration from John Steinbeck, Joan Didion and Jhumpa Lahiri, and weeping through Little Women in her 30s</p><p><strong>My earliest reading memory</strong><br> I’m not sure what we were reading – The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams or the poems in Where the Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein – but I was undoubtedly with my sister, two years older, who set the example for me to be&nbsp;a reader. I picture us in the back of our family car or laying across our twin beds in the room we shared.</p><p><strong>My favourite book growing up</strong><br> I loved mysteries and fantasy worlds. I read so many of the Nancy Drew books, and The Boxcar Children by Gertrude Chandler Warner. And I loved the Narnia stories and The Wind in the Willows. I loved books about things that can’t exist. I suppose it’s all escapism – crimes solved by children, talking animals, time travel, people two inches tall. I always loved to slip into another, better world.</p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/may/29/virginia-evans-i-loved-books-about-things-that-cant-exist">Continue reading...</a> Fiction Books Culture Fri, 29 May 2026 09:00:46 GMT https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/may/29/virginia-evans-i-loved-books-about-things-that-cant-exist Photograph: Austin Joffe Photograph: Austin Joffe Photograph: Austin Joffe Virginia Evans 2026-05-29T09:00:46Z https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/jun/07/should-we-ditch-the-idea-of-three-meals-a-day <p>Our rigid eating habits date to the Industrial Revolution – it’s time to embrace culinary spontaneity</p><p>‘One of the stupidest things in an earnest but stupid school of culinary thought is that each of the three daily meals should be ‘balanced’.” So argues American food writer MFK Fisher in her 1942 book How to Cook a Wolf. She goes on: “In the first place not all people need or want three meals each day. Many of them feel better with two or one and one-half, or five.”</p><p>Fisher wrote her book ostensibly as a guide on how to feed yourself pleasurably and nourishingly during a period of food shortages caused by war, but there is much in her insightful advice to inspire and provoke us today. More than 80 years later, threats to the sacred breakfast-lunch-dinner mode of eating can still make the news: “A nation of snackers: Britons no longer eat three meals a day”, gasped one recent headline in the Times. Deviations from the “standard” model are the subject of research by <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0748730419892105">academics</a> and health professionals, and food retailers commission studies in an attempt to understand (and shape?) when and how customers consume their food.</p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/jun/07/should-we-ditch-the-idea-of-three-meals-a-day">Continue reading...</a> Books Culture Food Nutrition Nutrition Society books Sun, 07 Jun 2026 11:00:33 GMT https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/jun/07/should-we-ditch-the-idea-of-three-meals-a-day Illustration: Elia Barbieri/The Guardian Illustration: Elia Barbieri/The Guardian Illustration: Elia Barbieri/The Guardian Eli Davies 2026-06-07T11:00:33Z https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/may/08/readers-tribute-to-carol-rumens-poem-of-the-week-columnist <p>Rumens, whose column ran for nearly 20 years and developed a loyal readership, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/may/05/carol-rumens-poet-and-the-guardians-poem-of-the-week-columnist-dies-aged-81">died this week aged 81</a></p><p>Carol was an excellent commentator on poetry, shrewd and deep-thinking but able to express her thoughts in plain English rather than academic jargon. Her taste in poems was eclectic and very original; one didn’t always share it, but it was never predictable or dull. <em><strong>Sheenagh Pugh, Shetland</strong></em></p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/may/08/readers-tribute-to-carol-rumens-poem-of-the-week-columnist">Continue reading...</a> Poetry Books Culture Fri, 08 May 2026 13:01:30 GMT https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/may/08/readers-tribute-to-carol-rumens-poem-of-the-week-columnist Photograph: Rowan Righelato Photograph: Rowan Righelato Photograph: Rowan Righelato Guardian readers 2026-05-08T13:01:30Z