If you like Baby Reindeer, you’ll love Young Mungo! 29 terrific TV shows – and the books to read instead
This month's best paperbacks
This month’s best paperbacks: Colson Whitehead, Britney Spears and more
October 2023
Top 10s
The top 10 allegories in fiction, from Plato to Kafka
Authors from Jonathan Swift to NoViolet Bulawayo show how much can be done with what might sound a narrow form – and how much fun can be had with it
July 2023
Audiobook of the week
Harlem Shuffle by Colson Whitehead audiobook review – New York’s criminal underworld
Book of the day
Crook Manifesto by Colson Whitehead review – a dazzling sequel to Harlem Shuffle
April 2023
The books of my life
Colson Whitehead: ‘When I read Invisible Man I thought maybe there’s room for a Black weirdo like me’
The Pulitzer prize-winning novelist on discovering Ralph Ellison as a child, his passion for esoteric encyclopedias and why he loves World War Z
November 2022
Top 10s
Top 10 books about unlikely revolutionaries
Novels by Richard Powers and Colson Whitehead, and polemics by Rachel Carson and Mary Wollstonecraft show how ideas and words can change the world
August 2022
In brief: Harlem Shuffle; Two Brothers; The Queen of Dirt Island – reviews
Colson Whitehead on a heist gone wrong; a revisionary study of the footballing Charltons; and Donal Wilson’s latest fictional vignette of small-town Ireland
June 2022
Top 10s
Top 10 stories of male friendship
Writers from Alexandre Dumas to Jack Kerouac and Colson Whitehead have written fiction worth bonding with about these sometimes uneasy alliances
A mysterious building containing sea, clouds and wildlife is the setting for this intense and enigmatic tale read by the Hollywood actor – plus this week’s other picks
September 2021
Harlem Shuffle by Colson Whitehead review – a delicious heist novel
New hustle: Pulitzer winner Colson Whitehead on his heist novel
Book of the day
Harlem Shuffle by Colson Whitehead review – a zinging wiseguy noir thriller
Legends of the fall: the 50 biggest books of autumn 2021
May 2021
Books blog
Lionel Shriver v Cynthia Ozick: hurrah for the new literary beef
‘Their stories need to be told’: the true story behind The Underground Railroad
‘We had a therapist on set’ – William Jackson Harper on The Underground Railroad
Barry Jenkins: ‘Maybe America has never been great’
April 2021
Top 10s
Top 10 books about brothers
From Kit de Waal’s precocious caregiver, to Liz Nugent’s ugly rivalry, to Colson Whitehead’s juvie ordeal, writers are often drawn to a bond that can (almost) never be broken
August 2020
Not the Booker prize
Not the Booker: Emma Donoghue, Abi Daré and Shahnaz Ahsan join the shortlist
The addition of Akin, The Girl With the Louding Voice, and Hashim & Family means we now have six books on our shortlist – let’s get reading
