The world’s most powerful literary critic is on TikTok
Jack Edwards shapes the online world’s reading habits from BookTok. But can he handle his success?
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How the Japanese do life
A national culture built upon civility and respect offers an alternative to the self-absorption of the West
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Chess is fiction’s favourite metaphor
From Nabokov to Ballard, games like chess have enticed writers. But how will the advent of AI affect the novel’s…
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Islam is the engine of world history
The religion may have transformed every corner of the globe, but it was also radically changed in the process
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Hari Kunzru and David Sexton to judge the Goldsmiths Prize 2026
Kate Briggs and Francis Spufford complete the panel for this year’s award for fiction “that extends the possibility of the…
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The interwar years were as bewildering as the present
Alwyn Turner’s new history reassures us that the past is not, as many imagine, any cosier or more patriotic than…
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Ali Smith’s infectious hope
For two pairs of sisters in her new novel Glyph, storytelling is a way of dealing with troubles past and…
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How the Soviet Union got over Stalin – or thought it did
His successors proclaimed a more liberal socialism. But was it ever real?
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