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Books

  • Robin Wall Kimmerer.

    Interview
    ‘We’ve become distrustful of each other’: Braiding Sweetgrass author Robin Wall Kimmerer on Trump, rural America and resistance

  • Philippa Brewster (left) and Jeanette Winterson.

    Feature
    ‘She gave me the chance that became my life’: Jeanette Winterson on her first editor, Philippa Brewster

    The pioneering feminist editor and publisher died in October. The Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit author looks back on the close friendship they shared
  • Bob Woodward in 1973.

    Book of the day
    War by Bob Woodward review – the Watergate veteran on Gaza, Ukraine and Trump

    Woodward’s latest page turner takes you inside the room – but can he still claim to be an impartial fly on the wall?
  • Garth Greenwell

    The books of my life
    Garth Greenwell: ‘I didn’t read Middlemarch until my late 30s. Why didn’t someone intervene? ’

  • A wild eastern screech owl camouflaged in the hollow of a tree

    Science and nature books
    The Genetic Book of the Dead by Richard Dawkins review – the great biologist’s swansong

    Adam Rutherford
  • ‘The world she wrote about has not stopped with her observation of it’ ... Elizabeth Jane Howard in 1964.

    News
    ‘Uniquely qualified’: Elizabeth Jane Howard’s niece to continue her Cazalet Chronicles novels

  • Circular pond with autumn leaves at a manor house

    Crime and thrillers roundup
    The best recent crime and thrillers – review roundup

    Laura Wilson
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What to read

  • Haruki Murakami, Cher, Neneh Cherry, Angela Merkel and Alan Hollinghurst Autumn Books

    Autumn books
    From a new Murakami to a memoir by Cher: the best books of the autumn

  • Composite image of best paperbacks November and December 2024

    Paperbacks
    This month’s best paperbacks: Leonard Cohen, Sigrid Nunez and more

    • Alan Garner.

      Where to start with
      Where to start with: Alan Garner

    • Death at the Sign of the Rook by Kate Atkinson; The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden; Missing Person: Alice by Simon Mason

      What we're reading
      What we’re reading: writers and readers on the books they enjoyed in October

Non-fiction reviews

  • On 22 November 2015, a French flag flutters over candles and flowers as people gather at Place de la Republique (Republic Square) in Paris to pay tribute for the victims of the 13 November terror attacks in Paris and Saint-Denis that killed 130 people

    Society books
    V13 by Emmanuel Carrère review – harrowing account of the Paris attacks trial

    Chris Power
  • Eve Babitz

    Biography books
    Didion & Babitz by Lili Anolik review – friendship and rivalry in LA

    Rebecca Nicholson
    The journalist and author of Hollywood’s Eve makes no pretence of impartiality as she charts the difficult relationship between two chroniclers of California
  • A painting of a naked Adam with Eve holding an apple in a bucolic setting surrounded by various animals.

    Religion books
    We Who Wrestle With God by Jordan Peterson review – a return to God… by way of the Brothers Grimm and The Lion King

    Andrew Anthony
    The Canadian psychologist’s zealous exegesis of the Bible as a moral rulebook for life is long-winded and out of touch
  • Rex Harrison rides a giraffe in Doctor Dolittle (1967).

    Film books
    Box Office Poison by Tim Robey review – Hollywood’s fascinating flops

    Larushka Ivan-Zadeh
  • Wallis Simpson and Alberto da Zara at the Peking races, Paomachang, 1925

    Biography books
    Her Lotus Year by Paul French review – Wallis Simpson’s Shanghai story

    Rachel Cooke
  • The Plant Institute in St Petersburg.

    History books
    The Forbidden Garden of Leningrad by Simon Parkin review – the botanists who defied Hitler

    Charlie English
  • Colette

    Essays
    The Position of Spoons, and Other Intimacies by Deborah Levy review – portrait of the artists

    Freya Berry
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Fiction & poetry reviews

  • Yoko Tawada

    Fiction in translation
    Suggested in the Stars by Yōko Tawada review – a linguistic odyssey

    Ellen Peirson-Hagger
  • The Penobscot River in Maine is the setting for Fire Exit.

    Fiction
    Fire Exit by Morgan Talty review – secrets and lies in Maine

    Michael Donkor
    The virtues of truth-telling are explored in this tale of one man’s need to confront and reveal his past
  • Jonathan Coe, novelist, photographed at the Guardian Photo Studios in London. Jonathan Coe is an English novelist and writer. His work has an underlying preoccupation with political issues, although this serious engagement is often expressed comically in the form of satire. For example, What a Carve Up! (1994) reworks the plot of an old 1960s spoof horror film of the same name. It is set within the "carve up" of the UK's resources that was carried out by Margaret Thatcher's Conservative governments of the 1980s. Jonathan Coe published his first novel, The Accidental Woman, in 1987. In 1994 his fourth novel What a Carve Up! won the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, and the Prix du Meilleur Livre Étranger in France. It was followed by The House of Sleep, which won the Writers' Guild of Great Britain Best Novel award and, in France, the Prix Médicis. As of 2022, Coe has published fourteen novels. Besides novels, Coe has written a biography of the experimental British novelist B. S. Johnson, Like a Fiery Elephant, which D. J. Taylor described in Literary Review as "a deeply unconventional biography," won the Samuel Johnson Prize in 2005. Also in 2005 Penguin published his "collected shorter prose", a volume consisting of only 55 pages, under the title 9th & 13th. The same collection was published in France in 2012 under the title Désaccords imparfaits. He has written a short children's adaptation of Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift, and a children's story called The Broken Mirror. Both titles are published in Italy only, as La storia di Gulliver (2011) and Lo specchio dei desideri (2012). A handwritten manuscript page from The Rotters' Club was displayed as part of the "Writing Britain: Wastelands to Wonderlands" exhibition that ran at the British Library during 2012. Coe was a judge for the Booker Prize in 1996, and has been a jury member at the Venice Film Festival (in 1999, under the chairmanship of Emir Kusturica) and the Edinburgh Film Festival in 2007. In 2012 Coe was invited by Javier Marías to become a duke of the kingdom of Redonda. He chose as his title "Duke of Prunes", after a favourite piece of music by Frank Zappa. Coe read an excerpt of The Terrible Privacy of Maxwell Sim to crowds at the Latitude Festival in July 2009. The central character was to be "a product of the social media boom", and "the sort of person with hundreds of Facebook friends but no one to talk to when his marriage breaks up." Coe's 2019 book Middle England won the European Book Prize and also won the Costa Book Award in the Novel category.

    Fiction
    The Proof of My Innocence by Jonathan Coe review – a blue murder mystery

    Alex Clark
    Set during Liz Truss’s premiership, Coe’s multilayered study of how things quickly fell apart is a whodunnit with a villain hiding in plain sight
  • Alan Bennett

    Fiction
    Killing Time by Alan Bennett review – a cut above

    Clare Clark
  • Cambridge college

    Fiction
    The Proof of My Innocence by Jonathan Coe review – ingenious cosy crime spoof

    Justine Jordan
  • Jon Fosse

    Fiction
    Morning and Evening by Jon Fosse review – the Nobel laureate’s mystical account of where we begin and end

    Yagnishsing Dawoor
  • road in the desert

    Science fiction roundup
    The best recent science fiction, fantasy and horror – reviews roundup

    Lisa Tuttle
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Children's and YA books

  • Twenty Four Seconds From Now Illo Twenty-Four Seconds From Now: A Regular Love Story by Jason Reynolds

    Children's books
    Young adult books roundup – reviews

    Fiona Noble
  • An illustration from Gold Rush by Flora Delargy.

    Children's book roundup
    Children’s and teens roundup – the best new picture books and novels

    Imogen Russell Williams
    Spellbinding witches; memories of home; treasure hunters; fake facts; fearsome creatures; a great guide to graphic art and more
  • 1 Turtle Moon 3 (c) Levi Pinfold

    Children's book reviews round-up
    Children’s and teens roundup – the best new chapter books

    Kitty Empire
    From young werewolves’ adventures with vampires to hard-up funeral crashers and the late Jeremy Strong’s wonderful final tale
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Interviews

  • Emmanuel Carrère.

    Interview
    ‘Why do I have an interest in such horrible things?’: Emmanuel Carrère on the Paris terror attacks trial

    Mark O’Connell
  • Sigrid Rausing, photographed in her London home looking into the distance looking happy/sad

    Interview
    Granta publisher Sigrid Rausing: ‘Working while grieving was consoling’

    Lisa Allardice
    The editor and author on completing the memoir by her late friend, Swedish writer Johanna Ekström, where she stands on the assisted dying bill and what she’s reading
  • Deborah Levy

    Interview
    Deborah Levy: ‘A writer’s career is choppy – I was 50 when I found success’

    Her ‘living autobiographies’ and novels have earned her legions of fans, but that success was hard won. Deborah Levy talks about stamina, boldness, and finding delight in the details
  • Writer Anne Michaels at the Brickworks in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, on Wednesday, October 23, 2024. Photo by Chloe Ellingson

    Interview
    Anne Michaels: ‘Language can’t represent brutality’

  • Alan Bennett.

    Interview
    Alan Bennett at 90: ‘What will people think? I don’t care any more’

  • The Observer/ Books<br>Eliza Clark - British Author - She's Always Hungry. (Faber) Photographer in South London.

    Interview
    Eliza Clark: ‘I don’t think we respect female writers’

    Hephzibah Anderson
  • Jonathan Coe.

    Interview
    Novelist Jonathan Coe: ‘Liz Truss was very unimpressed to meet me’

    Emma Brockes
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Regulars

  • Garth Greenwell

    The books of my life
    Garth Greenwell: ‘I didn’t read Middlemarch until my late 30s. Why didn’t someone intervene? ’

  • packet of french fries

    Big idea
    The big idea: is convenience making our lives more difficult?

    Everything is easier with modern technology – except fulfilling your true potential
  • Neneh Cherry photographed for the Observer New Review in London by Phil Fisk. August 2024

    Audiobook of the week
    A Thousand Threads by Neneh Cherry audiobook review – love, chaos and creativity

    The singer-songwriter’s atmospheric memoir reveals many musical adventures and doesn’t shy away from exploring her challenging times
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