The war in Ukraine is the latest manifestation of a mindset that has been decades, if not centuries, in the making. Three books debunk the myths that Russia tells itself
Three new books portray a land caught in a muddle and beset by inequalities. A familiar story or is it time for a reset?
Robert Seethaler’s gem of a novella mixes the dying composer’s reflections with real-life history and imaginative flourishes
The correspondence between the writer and the actress charts the passionate highs and bitter lows of their 16-year relationship
From the inspection towers of 19th-century factories to the data architecture of Amazon warehouses, Henry Snow casts those who surveil workers as capitalism’s villains
A new tale about the power of secrets by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of ‘Olive Kitteridge’
A lonely teenager lodges with his father’s cousin in this story of substitute love and male friendship
Oxford philosopher Carissa Véliz’s ingenious, scathing survey of forecasting takes a well-timed swipe at today’s obsession with predictive algorithms
Historian Thomas W Laqueur’s copiously illustrated book explores why dogs have long been an integral feature of the artistic world
Reading for both pleasure and betterment endures — even if unquestioning faith in literary canons and critical authority is gone
Xiao Hai tells a story of shattered dreams and the grim reality of conditions inside China’s manufacturing sector
From ‘The Rose’, the latest collection by the award-winning New York-based poet and playwright
Tech giant faces lawsuit from five large groups over its use of copyrighted works to train Llama AI models
Humans must get used to living and working with the quirks of machine-written text
From British declinism to Antony Beevor on Rasputin and a Chinese factory memoir. Plus fiction by Elizabeth Strout — and Boyd Tonkin on Marilyn Monroe and the power of reading
Anna Thomasson mixes biography with photographic analysis to explore the tangled relationships of Picasso, Lee Miller and their circle in the summer of 1937
The peasant who became a powerful adviser was a symptom, not the cause, of the Romanovs’ downfall, argues the ‘Stalingrad’ author
Catch up on our most-read articles
In a beautifully balanced novel, a man tries to bond with his partner’s young sons while grappling with his own inherited history
Award will go to the best original business book proposal by an author aged under 35
A gripping and authoritative global history of the plague that killed more than 100mn people in the 14th century
Co-author of ‘Open to Work’ argues AI will bring opportunity — if workers are brave enough to take the initiative
Kremlin crackdown targets even loyal publishing houses
The biographer of Keynes straddled disciplines and political parties in a lengthy and often controversial career
Hélène Giannecchini on the powerful everyday photographs of Donna Gottschalk
A romance scam takes an unexpected turn in Martina Hefter’s German Book Prize-winning novel, her first translated into English
Writers flee Paris publishing house Grasset in protest against conservative owner Vincent Bolloré
A vivid portrait of the civil conflict of the 1940s and 1950s — and how it opened the way for the armed groups that still control parts of the country
Jonathan Cheng’s rigorous, revealing history traces the dynasty’s founding myths — and what they mean for the country’s place in the world today
A hunt for meaning unites the eight tales from one of the best practitioners of the short form
A journalist lifts the lid on how the Johnson family battled to keep control of the asset manager in a history packed with luminaries of finance
The acclaimed historian’s eye-opening guide to the ancient world reminds Martin Wolf why classics are as relevant as ever
Doctors, dairy farmers, failed novelists — how authors’ fictional selves take on an identity all their own, distinct from their creators
The story of a young girl in 1960s Calcutta who claims to have lived before shows the difficulties of grappling with climate politics in literary fiction
Trove including works by John Keats and Oscar Wilde will be auctioned by family for charity in New York
Witty, observant and wildly original stories explore the difficulties of modern dating, dark goings-on in 1950s Chelsea — and a dog’s-eye view of the world
Plotto
