The acclaimed author of The Country Girls, which was burned in the market square of her home town, has died aged 93. Here, Irish novelists pay tribute to a titanic figure who liberated their country’s fiction

Donna Tartt’s cult tale of toxic friendship, John Williams’s anti-campus must-read and Zadie Smith’s superb third novel – here are the books that ace academia

The novelist on growing out of DH Lawrence, the joy of James Joyce and the sound of WB Yeats

The challenge of capturing the triumphs and crushing failures of the stage and concert hall in words has been taken on by writers from Shakespeare to Virginia Woolf and Eimear McBride

In a series of anonymous hotel rooms, a woman reflects on romantic loss and the instability of identity, in the latest novel from the Girl Is a Half-formed Thing author

It began with the fallout from the global financial meltdown and ended with two women sharing the Booker. Which titles shaped the last 10 years?

Hardwick’s novel depicts her encounters with Billie Holiday and refers to her divorce from Robert Lowell, but is much more than autofiction

Walker’s mesmerising music came to explore new realms of experience with merciless daring. It changed her work – and her life – says the acclaimed novelist

The author of A Girl Is a Half-Formed Thing on Booker-winner Anna Burns, musician Alasdair Roberts, and her favourite bakery