In seeking to understand his parents and his life, Flanagan merges memory and fiction to ponder the random nature of existence, resulting in a masterpiece of subtlety and depth

Been recommended the great German author but never got round to picking his books up? This handy guide will help you find your way in

Austin Butler shakes his stuff as Elvis, Cronenberg gets creepy, Claire Denis takes on colonial agony and Hirokazu Kore-eda unwraps his first Korean-language film

WG Sebald’s writing on the Holocaust was driven by the anger and distress he felt over his father’s service in Hitler’s army

From William Shakespeare to WG Sebald, these books are written less to dispel mystery than to accept it

Dazzling debut novels, searing polemics, the history of humanity and trailblazing memoirs ... Read our pick of the best books since 2000

Travelling on foot is a national obsession that has inspired a whole tradition of great writing, from Laurie Lee to Iain Sinclair

A New York family takes a road trip south, in this rigorous and beguiling novel about child migrants on the US-Mexico border that has been longlisted for the Women’s prize

The Pulitzer prize-winner on combining writing with raising kids, his freakozoid tendencies and the authors he returns to

A wandering Slavic sect survives on the kindness of strangers in this playful Polish novel