Top 10 visionary books about scientists: searching for an answer
From Virginia Woolf to Primo Levi, authors are drawn to capturing scientists’ obsessive quest for knowledge
April 2021
Books that made me
Edmund de Waal: ‘If I need to forget everything, I read Lee Child. Honestly’
The artist, potter and author on his middle-of-the-night anxiety reading, wanting to be a poet, and the Japanese classic he wishes he had read
September 2020
Books interview
Ann Goldstein: 'I try to make it really clear that I am not Elena Ferrante'
The Italian author’s translator on how they work together, New York’s terrifying lockdown, and her favourite novelists
November 2019
Top 10s
Top 10 eyewitness accounts of 20th-century history
These stories of a tumultuous era bring to life its intimate passions and accidents as well as its overwhelming scale
October 2019
Top 10s
Top 10 books about Europe
From Homer to Camus by way of Brecht, French author Laurent Gaudé picks the books that tell us something important about the continent today
July 2019
Reading group
'One must find the strength to resist': Primo Levi's warning to history
Reading group
The Truce: how Primo Levi rediscovered humanity after Auschwitz
Reading group
Primo Levi brings readers as close as prose can to the horror of Auschwitz
Reading group
Reading group: we're marking Primo Levi's centenary this month
July 2017
Books blog
Dawkins sees off Darwin in vote for most influential science book
A public poll to mark 30 years of the Royal Society book prizes sees The Selfish Gene declared the most significant – with women authors left on the margins
April 2017
Rereading
Primo Levi’s If This is a Man at 70
The Guardian Books podcast
The shadows of war in Primo Levi and Xan Brooks - books podcast
September 2016
Other lives
Jenny Stolzenberg obituary
Other lives: teacher, psychotherapist and widely exhibited ceramicist
July 2016
Elie Wiesel obituary
Nobel prizewinner, political campaigner and author whose powerful 1960 book Night told of his experiences in Auschwitz and Buchenwald
October 2015
How temptation got the better of Primo Levi’s father
Letters: The pork war in France reminds me of the great humanist Primo Levi writing of his father, a Jew in 1930s Italy
September 2015
Toni Morrison on Primo Levi’s defiant humanism
In his poetry and prose, Primo Levi refuses to regard the crimes of the Holocaust with any fascination, and instead focuses on what it means to be human. The Beloved author celebrates the Jewish chemist’s belief in the individual
December 2014
Top 10s
The top 10 winters in literature
Ghost stories by the fireside and perilous journeys in the snow: from Emily Dickinson to Raymond Briggs, Richard Hirst chooses great writing that gets to the heart of the coldest season
February 2014
Primo Levi: The Matter of a Life by Berel Lang – review
A fresh reading of Primo Levi's life and work reveals his contribution as a philosopher of ethics, says Tim Adams
November 2013
William Weaver obituary
Renowned translator best known for rendering the robust Italian prose of Eco's The Name of the Rose into nuanced English
April 2013
Rereading
Howard Jacobson: rereading If This Is a Man by Primo Levi
Primo Levi's account of his incarceration in Auschwitz should not be regarded as forbidding, argues Howard Jacobson. His subject may be humanity in extremis, but it is still humanity
