‘His father was ever a man of few words,” begins Maggie O’Farrell’s 10th novel, a lengthy and ambitious story set in the aftermath of the Irish famine. Land opens in 1865 on... Read more »
The 4thWrite prize, an annual short story competition for Black, Asian and minority ethnic writers run by publisher 4th Estate and the Guardian, has opened for submissions. The winner will receive £1,000,... Read more »
We can all agree that the internet today, especially two particular platforms owned by the world’s greatest megalomaniacs, is a hellscape. But if you think X and Facebook are purgatories of friendless... Read more »
Missouri Williams’s darkly absurd and wilfully grotesque debut novel, The Doloriad, concerned itself with the aftermath of a world-shattering catastrophe. Her second takes place in what feels like the beginning of one.... Read more »
A few syntactical tics – and the verdict of an AI detection platform – have sparked a furore over the possibility that a short story given a prestigious literary award was written... Read more »
Sarah Wynn-Williams’s memoir documenting her seven years working at Facebook opens, unexpectedly, with a shark attack. The New Zealander was 13 years old and swimming in the sea when the shark bit her... Read more »
The debut novel by Claire Lynch, which won the Nero Gold prize for fiction last month, unfolds across two timelines as it tells of family secrets and a bitter divorce. The first... 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 »
Roger Casement had a life that defies categorisation: an imperial administrator who exposed imperial atrocities; a one-time diplomat for the United Kingdom who enlisted German help in Ireland’s fight for freedom; a... Read more »