The dopamine hit of smartphone scrolling makes reading a book feel more effortful — but the rewards are worth the extra effort
Susan Minot’s first novel in a decade explores familiar themes with a pared-back tale of mid-life female desire
The lauded author’s Booker-longlisted novel follows a secret agent as she monitors green activists in deepest France
Eva Baltasar’s third novel in her triptych is an often uncomfortable story of a gay woman’s rejection of the city in her quest to be a mother
A clutch of new memoirs and novels draws on female authors’ lived experience of marital discord
How movies and books are flipping the script on the older woman/younger man relationship
Four stories about authorship and identity within the visual arts are interspersed with observations from a shape-shifting narrator
Author Jenny Erpenbeck and translator Michael Hofmann on beating the bookies for ‘Kairos’, the first German novel to win the prize
The writer and filmmaker rewrites the sex novel with a provocative exploration of sexuality in perimenopause
After novels about obesity and Brexit, the author’s new satire posits an alternative US where the word ‘dumb’ is banned
How do we conduct a meaningful conversation? This latest book by ‘The Power of Habit’ author struggles to provide inspiration
For all the S&M and kink, this late-period novel is a unashamedly romantic paean to the power of love
Forced friendships and creativity in an era of multiplying crises come under the spotlight in this new novel
The reissue of Pierre Drieu la Rochelle’s cult 1930s novel of angst and ennui-driven drug use doesn’t quite make the case for the book
Tobias Becker’s thought-provoking book explores the power — and dangers — of nostalgia
Guy Standing’s new book makes a powerful if utopian case for time as an emancipatory measure of inequality
Two books — Is It Ever Sex? and The Joy of Consent — explore love, lust and the body politic
Set onboard the International Space Station, Samantha Harvey’s novel makes a clarion call for our planet
Anne Berest explores the Jewish experience of occupied France in a novel based on her own family’s story
How confusion with ‘Other Naomi’ led the author to explore the bizarre mirror world of conspiracy theories and polarised politics
A page-turner about the conspiracy of silence and corrosive nature of skeletons in the closet
Jen Beagin’s new novel is a brilliant satire of therapy-speak and wellness
Author Georgi Gospodinov and translator Angela Rodel on ‘Time Shelter’, the first Bulgarian book to win the prize
The story of the fight for equality at MIT in the 1990s is a reminder of the stubborn persistence of gender bias
An allegory of East Germany that explores the optimism and failure of the socialist experiment
