An oil field in Baku ©AFP ESSAY Sep 21, 2012

Notes from underground

Three accounts of the oil industry will make you think next time you fill the tank. By Ed Crooks

Salman Rushdie ©Corbis NON-FICTION Sep 21, 2012

‘Joseph Anton: a Memoir’

Salman Rushdie’s memoir of life under a fatwa could not be more timely, writes John Lloyd

Brokeland Records illustration ©Toby Whitebread Peter Aspden from FICTION Sep 21, 2012

Souled out

Michael Chabon’s ‘Telegraph Avenue’ tells of the great themes of art, money, birth and death – all set to a 1970s soundtrack

John Keats: A New Life NON-FICTION Sep 22, 2012

Beauty that must die

Nicholas Roe’s ‘John Keats: A New Life’ seeks to revise our image of the greatest poet-physician in the English language, who was too frail for this life

Swimming Home FICTION Sep 21, 2012

In at the deep end

Secrets and symbols abound in Deborah Levy’s clever novel ‘Swimming Home’, which is also a disquieting meditation on power, memory and madness

The Monday Review

book cover 'Education, education, education'

Andrew Adonis’s personal account conveys his role in the shift in attitudes towards failing schools

Small talk

Michael Rosen

Michael Rosen: What does it mean to be a writer? You stick stuff in a mincer and other stuff comes out

Once Upon a Time: the Lives of Bob Dylan NON-FICTION Sep 21, 2012

So much older then

Ian Bell reassesses Bob Dylan’s early career in ‘Once Upon a Time’, writing with an intelligence rarely found in rock biography

Leonardo and the Last Supper NON-FICTION Sep 21, 2012

A table for thirteen

Ross King’s ‘Leonardo and the Last Supper’ chronicles the making of Da Vinci’s great mural and unravels it in a light that is novel and fascinating yet scholarly

The Stone Thrower FICTION Sep 21, 2012

Mundanely macabre

Adam Marek’s ‘The Stone Thrower’ is comprised of surreal and grotesque stories loosely linked on the fragility of children and the planet they will inherit

The Quality of Mercy FICTION Sep 21, 2012

Brutal lives

Master of historical fiction Barry Unsworth disputes over the status of slaves as chattels or free men in his final novel ‘The Quality of Mercy’

Hide Me Among the Graves FICTION Sep 21, 2012

Monstrous city

Tim Powers’ ‘Hide Me Among the Graves’, steeped in the morbid poetry of the Pre-Raphaelites, conjures a rich mythology based on vampire lore

Wordpower

Podcast

Kate Tempest Spoken word: the rise of performance poetry and its uneasy relationship with its written cousin

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EDITOR’S CHOICE

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An illustration by Adam Fisher ©Adam Fisher Life’s been different since Alison Moore’s novel made it to the Man Booker Prize shortlist

Business Book

Business Book of the Year Award Towering figures are among the subjects of the six finalists, writes Andrew Hill

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