A travel writer is drawn into a world of espionage from Congo to the eastern bloc in this portrait of a vanished era
Some big names missing from a final six that includes the largest number of female authors in the fiction prize’s history
Exciting first novels cover themes from America’s racial divide to writing as therapy — and riding to the rescue in the Iraqi desert
Women’s bodies and Gillian Anderson’s anthology of fantasies; Serhii Plokhy on how Putin’s invasion came to Chernobyl; Craig Brown’s funny but circuitous life of Queen Elizabeth II; Oliver Burkeman on the pressure for self-improvement; new books from Will Self and Garth Greenwell that blur the boundaries between life and fiction; a history of ancient India’s cultural conquests — plus Nilanjana Roy on Elsa Morante and Barry Forshaw’s pick of crime titles
On the 50th anniversary of her bestselling novel La Storia, we remember a writer inextricably linked to Italian political history
The author’s latest book, inspired by the intimate diaries kept by his mother, Elaine, is arguably his most mature novel yet
The American writer continues the story of his auto-fictional alter-ego amid a devastating mid-life illness
The latest novels from Attica Locke, Linwood Barclay, Simon Mason and more
The Norwegian author’s dark novel underscores how love and suffering are often bedmates
Olive Kitteridge and Lucy Barton finally meet in the author’s perfectly rendered world of Crosby, Maine
From Lewis Carroll to Roald Dahl and Harry Potter, Sam Leith’s engrossing book is more than a history — it’s a celebration
In Yoko Ogawa’s beautifully composed novel, a young girl tries to make sense of the world around her
Capers in Constantinople and Cornwall — plus a chilling story of espionage set in 1930s Vienna — are among the most compelling new spy novels
Virginie Despentes uses the 18th-century epistolary form to craft a modern exploration of ageing, gender and addiction
The author’s latest novel draws on Herbert Henry Asquith’s letters to aristocrat Venetia Stanley in the run-up to the first world war
Mark Haddon turns to Greek myths and contemporary narratives to examine love, genetics and animals
Familiar material becomes a page-turner in Tim Parks’s expert hands
The lauded author’s Booker-longlisted novel follows a secret agent as she monitors green activists in deepest France
Nell Frizzell’s carefully observed novel explores the messy emotions that bind siblings together
The Damned United author’s compelling fictionalisation of the plane crash that killed eight players succeeds as an elegy for society’s lost innocence
Susanna Crossman recounts the pain, joy and trauma of communal life
Rebecca Godfrey’s final book, completed by Leslie Jamison, reimagines the wild, wealthy, bohemian life of the heiress and art collector
Adèle Rosenfeld’s striking debut novel explores what it is like to be partially hearing, stuck in limbo between sound and silence
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
Cassandra and Clytemnestra take centre stage in a gutsy follow-up to ‘The Silence of the Girls’ and ‘The Women of Troy’
