Jilly Cooper was our national flirt
Novels like Riders made room for pleasure in a literary culture often wary of it
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Ian McEwan and fiction’s problem with climate change
In What We Can Know, Britain has sunk beneath the waves – but literature remains buoyant
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RF Kuang’s descent into the abyss
The American author’s sixth novel struggles to satirise chronic illness and pain.
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There is no contemporary fiction
The novel promises an ending. But world events will not be so neatly contained.
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Katie Kitamura’s study of social dynamics
The novelist coolly examines how we interact with each other in a deeply unsettling story of reversals and doubles.
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How Gatsby deceived America
A century after its publication, the novel’s glory and brutality persist in the national psyche.
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I Want to Go Home But I’m Already There is a document of hellish times
In her debut novel, Roisin Lanigan’s caustic social commentary of renting in London is undercut by supernatural horror.
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As the literary novel fades from relevance, James Graham is the writer for our era
The author of Dear England has channelled the people and events that made modern Britain.
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In Twist, Colum McCann examines what connects us
His thrilling new novel traces the mysterious cables stretching across our ocean beds.
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Kazuo Ishiguro’s everyday dystopia
Never Let Me Go was once dismissed by critics for its “dear-diary” prose, but 20 years later the novelist’s masterwork…
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The death of the British Catholic novel
Catholicism gave English literature something it needs to rediscover.
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25 books to read in 2025
From AI to the Beatles and from Pope Francis to Jung Chang, here are the new books to look out…
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Why the novel matters
We read and write fiction because it asks impossible questions, and leads us boldly into the unknown.
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Alan Hollinghurst’s English underground
Our finest living social novelist has made it his mission to disrupt the sexual and literary status quo.
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James Lee Burke’s garden of good and evil
Over 24 novels, the bruised Louisiana detectives Robicheaux and Purcel have become one of crime writing’s great partnerships.
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Samantha Harvey: “Orbital isn’t the kind of book that normally wins the Booker”
The day after winning the prize, the British author discusses choosing to write a story set in space, climate change,…
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David Peace: “There aren’t enough working-class stories around”
The great chronicler of England’s traumas on class, national identity and the importance of football novels.
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Why Rachel Cusk won the 2024 Goldsmiths Prize for fiction
Her novel Parade, slim but complex, is the latest product of a career dedicated to breaking new formal ground.
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Rachel Cusk wins the 2024 Goldsmiths Prize for “ferociously illuminating” novel Parade
The award for inventive fiction goes to a book replete with ideas about art, literature and freedom.
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Rachel Cusk: “Women are writing more boldly about female experience”
The Goldsmiths Prize-shortlisted novelist on visual art, writing womanhood, and the value of difficulty in literature.
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