Books
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William Boyd remembers an exemplar of the ultimate literary professional, tirelessly writing at the top of his game well into his 80s
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In the Australian-American author’s precise fiction, devastation is the subject and the aim - and the reader is not spared
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A mother and daughter are suspended in grief, in this haunting Italian novel
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Drinking sherry, bingeing Downton Abbey ... how authors keep up the spirit of the season, even when writing during heatwaves and a nightmarish Christmas
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The long read: She published her first book in her 40s, and became the biggest selling author of the past decade in any genre – The Gruffalo alone has sold 13m copies. How did this former busker make it so big?
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Adventure on a Bad Night, in which a shopping trip unpicks layers of prejudice, was written in 1944 and rediscovered by the son of a writer fascinated by ‘the possibility of evil’
Books of the year
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A teenager’s nature diary, the race for a vaccine and the return of Lyra ... books have been vital in getting us through the year. Guardian critics pick 2020’s best fiction, poetry, politics, science and more
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A fine portrait of Mary Wollstonecraft as an Enlightenment intellectual neglects the complexity of her views on the ‘oppression of my sex’
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The former Guardian editor offers a compelling tour of journalism and why it matters
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Glory, grief, loss – and incest – are all covered in this panoramic account that makes more sense of the great European dynasty than its rulers often did
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A village runs its own brutal system of justice, in this slippery fable of mob morality
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The System by Ryan Gattis; The Spiral by Iain Ryan; The Last Resort by Susi Holliday; The Decagon House Murders by Yukito Ayatsuji; and Crocodile Tears by Mercedes Rosende
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A haunting, visionary novel that moves from St Petersburg to St Andrews, with ghosts and saints hovering over every page
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From toxic masculinity to the #MeToo movement, the author of Girls captures the rocky recalibrations at work in sexual culture
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Themes of love and loneliness, doom and desire are explored in a richly comic collection from an Irish maestro
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A fierce and clear-eyed debut that finds a fresh way to explore humankind’s role in environmental chaos
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David Walliams, Whoopi Goldberg, Bruce Springsteen … when celebrity authors make big money from children’s books, do young readers and other writers pay the price?
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The prize-winning author’s life is now an episode of Steve McQueen’s hit series Small Axe. He talks about working on the project and his latest novel, based on a Jamaican slave uprising
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Margaret Atwood, John Banville, Tom Stoppard, Ralph Fiennes, John Boorman and more pay tribute to a master who transcended the limits of spy fiction
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Ireland’s greatest living writer is as ambitious as ever. She talks about working in Nigeria, coping with critics – and one final novel
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The author of the prize-winning Hamnet on her first children’s book, conquering her stammer, and the advantages of living with a fellow novelist
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The prize-winning writer on her new memoir Not a Novel, growing up near the Berlin Wall and her support for refugees
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Named the ‘winner of winners’ of the Women’s prize, Bernardine Evaristo, Maggie O’Farrell and others ask the author about the #EndSars protests in Nigeria, writing about Trump, and the culture that got her through 2020
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The prize-winning author’s life is now an episode of Steve McQueen’s hit series Small Axe. He talks about working on the project and his latest novel, based on a Jamaican slave uprising
Regulars
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The naturalist, TV presenter and writer on overpopulation, the one book he failed to finish and an underrated novel about a woman watching a snail
You may have missed
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When £2.5m of rare books were stolen in an audacious heist at Feltham in 2017, police wondered, what’s the story? By Mark Wilding
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After being mugged, crime author Chris Whitaker found himself unable to cope with the trauma. Putting his thoughts down on paper helped – then disaster struck again
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Her debut about a woman who raises an orangutan as a human was widely praised in 1932, but her work has slipped from sight. Is it time for a revival?
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The US president’s refusal to concede the election looks unnervingly familiar to a classicist – ancient Rome offers valuable lessons about letting go of power
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Children’s books The best of 2020 - for all ages