Your holiday reading list: chosen by Zadie Smith, David Nicholls and more
Leading authors including Bernardine Evaristo, Armistead Maupin and Alice Roberts recommend books to read this summer
May 2024
Books interview
Anne Enright: ‘Give me Moby-Dick over Persuasion anytime’
The award-winning Irish author on her Women’s prize-shortlisted novel The Wren, the Wren, waylaying poet Paul Muldoon at an airport and why she no longer writes about her family
April 2024
Anne Enright, Kate Grenville and Isabella Hammad shortlisted for Women’s prize for fiction
Capturing ‘an enormous breadth of the human experience’, the six shortlisted novels compete for a £30,000 prize to be awarded in June
‘Six spellbinding and thought-provoking novels’: why we chose the Women’s prize for fiction shortlist
From Sri Lanka to New South Wales and Shanghai, these wide-ranging stories are united by a compelling focus on women’s experience
This month's best paperbacks
This month’s best paperbacks: Anne Enright, Sarah Bernstein and more
Looking for a new reading recommendation? Here are some brilliant new paperbacks, from acutely observed novels to a laugh-out-loud memoir
March 2024
Poet Liz Berry’s The Home Child wins Writers’ prize book of the year
Anne Enright triumphs in fiction category for The Wren, The Wren and Observer art critic Laura Cumming wins non-fiction with Thunderclap: A Memoir of Life and Art and Sudden Death
Gary Lineker, Theresa May and David Nicholls join the Hay festival 2024 lineup
This year’s festival promises to be a ‘civic platform’, with a new series of daily news analysis, a debate about the Israel-Gaza war and an appeal to the younger generation
Anne Enright and Isabella Hammad make the Women’s prize for fiction longlist
Three Irish authors – including Claire Kilroy and Megan Nolan – and Booker-shortlisted Brit Chetna Maroo sit among the 16 nominees, eight of them debut novels
January 2024
Zadie Smith and Paul Murray on shortlist for Writers’ prize
Other authors in contention for the award, previously known as the Rathbones Folio prize, include Naomi Klein and Observer art critic Laura Cumming
August 2023
Book of the day
The Wren, The Wren by Anne Enright review – the female gaze
Book of the week
The Wren, the Wren by Anne Enright review – a supple, spellbinding scrutiny of familial relationships
July 2023
‘She trembled with the truths she had to tell’: Sinéad O’Connor by friends, fans and collaborators
Neil Jordan, Róisín Murphy, MC Lyte, Anne Enright and more share their memories of a uniquely talented, uncompromising artist, mother and ‘Celtic warrior’
June 2023
Summer books: Zadie Smith, Ian Rankin, Richard Osman and others pick their favourites
Leading authors recommend the best recent books, from a forbidden love affair at the Western Front to a murder mystery set in Egypt
May 2023
Top 10s
Top 10 novels about motherhood
From Elena Ferrante to Taffy Brodesser-Akner,writers have captured the pressures that being a mother can inflict on marriage and on the creative self
September 2022
Hilary Mantel remembered: ‘She was the queen of literature’
The beloved writer of the Wolf Hall trilogy and Beyond Black has died. Here, leading contemporaries pay tribute
June 2022
Summer books: Bernardine Evaristo, Hilary Mantel, David Nicholls and more pick their favourites
Authors recommend their favourite recent reads, from addictive novels and fascinating cultural history to a game-changing graphic memoir
October 2021
Top 10s
Michael Billington’s top 10 books about theatre
From Anne Enright’s novel about an actor’s daughter to the diaries of former National Theatre director Peter Hall, the theatre critic chooses his favourite titles about the stage
June 2021
Anne Enright on The Green Road: ‘I set out to write another King Lear’
On my radar
On my radar: Anne Enright’s cultural highlights
August 2020
Books that made me
David Nicholls: 'Gifting books feels like changing the music at someone else’s party'
The author and screenwriter on being inspired by Tess of the D’Urbervilles, feeling gloomy over Moomins and rereading Franny and Zooey
