Never mind heaving bosoms and whimpering grunts, some writers – from Sally Rooney to DH Lawrence – depict genuine, sometimes graphic, intimacy in all its forms
November 2019
Book clinic
Book clinic: can you recommend middle-class American authors?
Yes, but go further… there are richly rewarding literary tales from Africa and South America too
March 2018
Top 10s
Top 10 parallel narratives
From Philip Roth to Zadie Smith, Lisa Halliday selects some of the best novels using formal adventures to bridge the ‘impassable gaps’ in our world
February 2018
Top 10s
Top 10 books about cheating
From illicit James Salter to category-defying Jeanette Winterson, here are the best contemporary works about romantic infidelity
August 2017
Top 10s
Top 10 books on postwar France
Novelist Alex Christofi chooses books, by authors from Françoise Sagan to James Salter, that conjure an era fraught with political struggle and possibility
April 2017
A brief survey of the short story
James Salter's unreliable genius
Some of his short stories have conspicuous faults – not least in their portrayal of women – but the best show a unique, sad beauty
February 2017
Rereading
Beautiful and brutal: how James Salter set the standard for erotic writing
Following a young couple in 1960s France, A Sport and a Pastime asks how we make sense of romance and tells the truth about sexual love
September 2016
Top 10s
Top 10 stories of hubris
From Michel Houellebecq to Simone de Beauvoir, novelist Tommy Wieringa chooses stories of men who have tried to reach beyond what is possible
August 2016
Books blog
Sarah Hall: sex, death and the short story
Sex and death are the most fascinating aspects of life, fiction’s greatest challenge – and the short story is perfectly adapted to explore difficult subjects
June 2015
My hero
My hero: James Salter by Rupert Thomson
Salter’s gift as a writer was his way of conveying the ecstasy and transience of life in language that was simple and crystalline
James Salter obituary
Cult author who ‘wrote American sentences better than anyone’
Author James Salter dies aged 90
Salter, who most famous novel was A Sport and a Pastime, published in 1967, also wrote the script of the 1969 film Downhill Racer, starring Robert Redford
July 2014
Top 10s
Top 10 holidays in fiction
From James Salter to Lorrie Moore and Patricia Highsmith, novelist Emma Straub is our guide for a tour of the best-imagined vacations
November 2013
The Observer's books of the year
Writers, Observer critics and others tell us their favourite reads of 2013 – and what they hope to find under the tree
May 2013
The Guardian UK Culture Podcast
James Salter reads Break it Down by Lydia Davis
James Salter, the veteran American novelist and short story writer, reads a story by Lydia Davis, winner of the 2013 Man Booker International prize
James Salter: the forgotten hero of American literature
One of the great postwar American writers, James Salter has, at 87, spent his working life in the shadow of his peers. But will his first novel in more than 30 years raise his profile, asks Rachel Cooke
All That Is by James Salter – review
James Salter, now in his late 80s, is amazingly good – but is he great, asks James Lasdun
October 2012
Books blog
Great American novel delays
The 34-year break since James Salter's last novel is pretty substantial, but his countrymen have regularly outdone him
December 2008
Solo Faces
Review: Solo Faces by James Salter James Salter is one of the few writers accorded the honour of being republished as a modern classic in his own lifetime, writes Alfred Hickling
March 2007
How to be the hippest act in town even in your eighties
Robert McCrum meets James Salter, the softly-spoken American novelist whose work is experiencing a remarkable renaissance.
