David Malouf, the acclaimed Australian author of books including Ransom, An Imaginary Life and the Booker prize-nominated Remembering Babylon, has died aged 92. Malouf died on Wednesday, his publisher, Penguin Random House... Read more »
Literary fiction Fiction Audition Katie Kitamura The opening pages of Katie Kitamura’s fifth novel establish a nervy, fraught physicality. The narrator is meeting a man at a restaurant. She is anxious, hyper-vigilant.... Read more »
The American Library Association (ALA) has reported a record high in the number of books banned in US libraries. In 2025, 5,668 books were banned – representing 66% of the total number... Read more »
Andy Warhol sent Paul a Brillo box. Fran Lebowitz called Peter “a genius about sex”. The ending of Susan Sontag’s second novel was inspired by a bunch of Peter’s photographs. Sontag dedicated... Read more »
The word “hotel” is cognate with “hostel” and “hospital”, and for a few short years in the middle of the 20th century, one Paris establishment functioned as all three. Hôtel Lutetia sits... Read more »
If you’ve ever been on the receiving end of a five-year-old’s withering “You are not the boss of me” (having caused offense by, say, helping to zip a jacket or tie a... Read more »
Son of Nobody by Yann Martel review – Life of Pi author discovers a long-lost poem from Troy | Books
In Yann Martel’s fifth novel, a Canadian classicist, Harlow Donne, has been offered a year’s fellowship at Oxford University. His wife, Gail, has a full-time managerial job, and they have a seven-year-old... Read more »
Thirty-five thousand years ago, in the Ardèche region of France, Paleolithic artists drew a spectacular bestiary on the walls of the Chauvet cave. Their focus was apex predators, so there were lots of lions, as... Read more »
An award-winning poet living in Roundhay Park, Leeds, Jason Allen-Paisant spent his early childhood living with his grandmother in Coffee Grove, a hilly rural district of Jamaica which was cut off from... Read more »