The Essex Serpent beats Harry Potter to win Waterstones book of the year

Sarah Perry’s gothic ‘novel of rare intelligence’ receives lucrative honour ahead of the playscript for JK Rowling’s theatrical debut

A book born from sudden inspiration on a journey, akin to the grand plan for a story about wizards that first seized JK Rowling on a train to London, has beaten the Harry Potter author to win the lucrative Waterstones book of the year. The Essex Serpent, Sarah Perry’s acclaimed gothic tale of a mythological beast terrorising a Victorian community, beat Rowling’s script for Harry Potter and the Cursed Child and was the “overwhelming choice” of the chain’s booksellers.

A novel of passion, ideas and friendship, Perry’s novel saw off an eclectic shortlist that also included Christopher de Hamel’s Meetings With Remarkable Manuscripts, Emma Jane Kirby’s The Optician of Lampedusa and Beatrix Potter’s newly discovered The Tale of Kitty-in-Boots, illustrated by Quentin Blake.

Related: The Essex Serpent by Sarah Perry review – a compulsive novel of ideas

Related: The Essex Serpent author Sarah Perry: ‘Kids at school found me strange. I didn’t mind’

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Gun that almost killed Arthur Rimbaud sells for €435,000 at Paris auction

Seven-millimetre revolver poet Paul Verlaine used in failed attempt to kill his lover fetches more than seven times its estimate

The most famous gun in French literary history, used by Paul Verlaine when he tried to kill his lover and fellow poet Arthur Rimbaud, has sold for €434,500 (£368,000) at auction in Paris.

The staggering price for the 7mm six-shooter which almost changed the course of world literature was more than seven times the estimate, auctioneers Christie’s said on Wednesday.

Related: Edmund White on the French 19th-century poet, Arthur Rimbaud

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Bad sex award goes to Italian novelist Erri De Luca's genital 'ballet dancers'

The Literary Review’s annual pillory of overheated erotic writing selects a passage from The Day Before Happiness for little-coveted honour

Italian author, poet and translator Erri De Luca has added another accolade to his glittering career – although this may be one he would prefer to have avoided. The winner of the 2013 European Prize for Literature, hailed as “writer of the decade” by Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera in 2009, has won the 24th annual Literary Review Bad sex award for a passage in his novel The Day Before Happiness.

Related: Bad sex award 2016: the contenders in quotes

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Prize copy of Wisden withheld from disgraced cricketer up for auction

Leatherbound edition, intended to honour Mohammad Amir as player of the year, was never presented following spot-fixing scandal of 2010

A unique copy of cricketing bible Wisden’s Almanack, which was withheld from its player of the year after he was convicted of cheating, is expected to break sales records for the much-loved reference book at auction.

The leather-bound volume is the fifth of the first five of 150 numbered copies produced every year for collectors. Since 1890, the first five numbered copies have been presented to players chosen as cricketers of the year by the guide’s editor.

Related: Mohammad Amir's suspension makes Wisden cut its famous five to four

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The best SF and fantasy books of 2016

In a year in which new and important voices from around the world made themselves heard, Adam Roberts reflects on SF’s ever-expanding universe
• Vote: What was your favourite book of the year?

In 2016, SF and fantasy went global. It wasn’t a question of success – both genres have been globally successful for many years – but of provenance. This was the year in which western audiences began to wake up to the excellence and diversity of genre voices from around the world.

Take, for instance, the Hugo, the genre’s most prestigious award. Over the last couple of years this prize was more or less hijacked by the “Sad” and “Rabid Puppies” – groups opposed to the more progressive and liberal iterations of SF. In 2016 these angry activists proved much less destructive. This year’s Hugo winners were not only great books, they were pointers for the direction in which the genre as a whole is moving. Best novel went to NK Jemisin’s The Fifth Season (Orbit), a tale of an earthquake-afflicted and wasted world that functions as a powerful fable of ecological collapse while also reconfiguring fantasy in more ethnically and sexually diverse directions. Best novella was Nnedi Okorafor’s African-flavoured space opera Binti (Tor), while best novelette was Folding Beijing by Hao Jingfang, translated by Ken Liu.

The power of translation is a unifying theme in an unusually varied year for SF

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Woman on the Edge of Time, 40 years on: 'Hope is the engine for imagining utopia'

Marge Piercy, the landmark feminist novel’s author, reflects on the aspirations for a just society that she dramatised in 1976 – and their continuing relevance

The point of a novel about the future is not to predict it; I’m not pretending to be Nostradamus. The point of such writing is to influence the present by extrapolating current trends for advancement or detriment. Nobody is good at prediction. If we were better at guessing events in a year or even a few months or weeks, our divorce rate would be zero, we would not get into stupid relationships, and nobody would lose money in the stock market or to the racetrack. The point of creating futures is to get people to imagine what they want and don’t want to happen down the road – and maybe do something about it.

Woman on the Edge of Time was first published 40 years ago and begun three-and-a-half years before that. The early 1970s were a time of great political ferment and optimism among those of us who longed for change, for a more just and egalitarian society with more opportunities for all the people, not just some of them. Since then, inequality has greatly increased.

Instead of slut-shaming, I projected a society in which sex was available, accepted, and non-hierarchical

Related: Top 10 novels about women's political awakening

Who decides cars are all-important and our cities must be built around them as if they were the primary inhabitants?

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Carol screenwriter Phyllis Nagy to script Patricia Cornwell’s Kay Scarpetta film

Nagy has taken on writing duties for the first big-screen outing for the forensics specialist and hero of 24 crime novels

Carol screenwriter Phyllis Nagy has signed on to write an untitled movie featuring crime character Kay Scarpetta, according to the Hollywood Reporter.

Related: How Patricia Highsmith's Carol became a film: 'Lesbianism is not an issue. It's a state of normal'

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Oxford literary festival agrees to pay authors, ending 'work for nothing' row

Event commits to paying all authors £150 from next year, in the wake of protracted dispute sparked by Philip Pullman’s resignation as patron

Oxford literary festival has announced that it will in future be paying all authors who appear there. The news follows an 11-month standoff prompted by Philip Pullman’s resignation as patron on the basis that it was no longer acceptable to expect writers to “work for nothing”.

Pullman’s resignation followed a wave of anger from leading authors, 30 of whom went on to sign a letter calling for a boycott of the event, which will celebrate its 21st year in April.

Related: Joanne Harris drops out of books festival over 'unreasonable' demands

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Prayer book that may have been Henry VIII's could fetch £2.5m at auction

The Bute Hours, to be auctioned at Sotheby’s, is particularly rare because few such books survived Reformation

A dazzling 16th century English prayer book, so extravagantly and expensively decorated that some experts believe it may have belonged to the young Henry VIII, will be auctioned at Sotheby’s with a £2.5m estimate – 156 years after the same auction house sold it for £84.

Few such English books survived the Reformation, and this one is particularly rare because it contains an image of Thomas Becket, which survived the widespread destruction of his image after Henry VIII outlawed the cult of the saint and martyr. The experts believe another image of Becket was removed from the book, but the censors missed this one.

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Canadian literary world divides over sex charges against novelist

Creative writing teacher Steven Galloway has apologised for an affair with a student, but complainant insists he has not fully addressed his ‘abuse of power’

The main complainant involved in the sacking of author Steven Galloway from his job at the University of British Columbia has denied that her complaints were about a two-year consensual affair between the two of them, as his lawyer had announced last week.

Galloway, the author of The Cellist of Sarajevo, was fired from his role as creative writing chairman at UBC in June, after being suspended pending investigation for “serious allegations’’ in November 2015. When one of several allegations was found to have been substantiated by the investigation, Galloway was fired; since then, UBC has repeatedly said that it could not reveal details of the alleged offence without the author’s consent, or they would be in breach of privacy laws.

Related: Atwood and Martel among Canadian writers drawn into row over creative writing tutor's sacking

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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie slams BBC 'ambush' with Trump supporter

The novelist has hit out at the way she found herself pitched into an adversarial encounter on Newsnight with American Spectator editor

Author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has received an apology from the BBC, after she accused Newsnight producers of “sneakily pitting” her against a Trump supporter in a live TV interview.

Footage of Adichie’s appearance on the TV programme two weeks ago was shared widely online, particularly because of her comments. When R Emmett Tyrrell, Jr, the editor of the American Spectator, claimed president-elect Donald Trump wasn’t racist, Adichie retorted: “I’m sorry, but as a white man, you don’t get to define what racism is. You really don’t.”

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Julian Barnes: letting US authors compete for Booker prize is 'daft'

Former winner says opening award to American writers, including ‘heavy hitters’, would limit chances of others

Man Booker winner Julian Barnes has criticised opening up the UK’s premier literary prize to American writers, calling it “straightforwardly daft”.

The novelist, who won the award in 2011 for The Sense of an Ending, revealed he was firmly against the controversial changes introduced in 2014.

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Time to write women back into parliamentary history – Rachel Reeves

Former frontbencher has written book about Alice Bacon, Labour MP who helped transform education in postwar Britain

Women MPs are too often written out of political history, according to Rachel Reeves, the former Labour frontbencher, who has written a new biography of the pioneering parliamentarian Alice Bacon.

Reeves, a former shadow work and pensions secretary, said the book was her contribution to redressing the balance, after she followed in the footsteps of Bacon in 2010 to become the second female MP elected to a seat in Leeds.

Related: We owe a debt to Labour’s bold, pioneering Alice Bacon | Rachel Reeves

Related: Corbyn sets goal for 50% of Labour MPs to be women by 2020

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PG Wodehouse secures redemption as British Library acquires priceless archive

The author’s reputation, long tarnished by charges of Nazi collaboration, will be restored as his papers find a new home

For most of his 93 years, PG Wodehouse, the “performing flea” of English literature, was also an elephant of productivity. Up to his final hours, he wrote every day, accumulating a manuscript mountain: letters to friends, writers and composers, from Evelyn Waugh to George Gershwin, light verse, journals and journalism, libretti, short stories, plays and novels such as Right Ho, Jeeves, and The Code of the Woosters. At the peak of his career in the 1930s, he complained to a friend: “I have become a writing machine.”

Now the Observer can reveal that this lifetime of literary work has reached a remarkable climax. On Thursday, the British Library will announce that the Wodehouse archive is about to join its 20th-century holdings, a collection that includes the papers of Arthur Conan Doyle, Evelyn Waugh, Mervyn Peake, Virginia Woolf, Harold Pinter, Ted Hughes, Beryl Bainbridge, JG Ballard and Angela Carter.

Related: Devoted American pilgrims move Jeeves, Bertie Wooster and Blandings Castle to Seattle

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John Bird slams absence of library funding in autumn statement

Stressing the need to improve literacy to reduce poverty, the peer said library closures would eventually result in greater disorder and crime

The Big Issue founder John Bird has attacked the short-term thinking of Theresa May’s government, after the autumn statement ignored the House of Lords’ appeal to provide libraries with emergency funding.

“We called for emergency funding to stop closures [in October] and there was nothing about libraries in the autumn statement,” Lord Bird told the Guardian. “More than 300 libraries have closed and 8,000 librarian jobs are gone. We have this problem with just-in-time-ism, where the government is only doing just what it has to and not doing any deep, probing work that will bear fruit over 10, 20, 30 years.”

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Essay collection about race in Britain named readers' book of 2016

The Good Immigrant, published via crowdfunding campaign, wins at the first Books Are My Bag Readers’ awards after more than 50,000 people voted

A collection of essays about migration, stereotypes and race in Britain written entirely by BAME writers has been selected as UK readers’ favourite book for 2016, seeing off Harry Potter and the Cursed Child and The Girl on the Train to take the top prize.

With more than 50,000 votes cast online and in bookshops around the UK, The Good Immigrant was picked by readers as their favourite book of the past 12 months. The editor, author Nikesh Shukla, was presented with the award at the inaugural Books Are My Bag Readers awards at a ceremony in London.

Related: Typecast as a terrorist | Riz Ahmed | The Long Read

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Finnish feminist fantasy to be made into movie by Film4

Maria Turtschaninoff’s novel Maresi, the first in the Red Abbey Chronicles series, has been optioned by the UK company

Film4, whose recent credits include American Honey, Free Fire, as well as Oscar winners Ex Machina, 12 Years a Slave and Slumdog Millionaire, are to adapt a feminist fantasy saga for the big screen.

Related: Record Oscar nominations for British outfit Film4

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Unseen HG Wells ghost story published for first time

The Haunted Ceiling, a macabre story of strange goings-on in an old house, is thought to have been written in the mid-1890s

Here’s a gothic tale for a stormy night: a man called Meredith converts a room in his house into a cluttered and untidy study, and one day asks a visiting friend if he can see anything strange on the ceiling.

“Don’t you see it?” he said.
“See what?”
“The – thing. The woman.”
I shook my head and looked at him.
“All right then,” he said abruptly. “Don’t see it!”

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Jane Austen 'inspiration' receives £7.6m funding in autumn statement

Wentworth Woodhouse, believed to have been the template for Pemberley in Pride and Prejudice, to be saved as ‘a key part of northern heritage’

As part of Wednesday’s autumn statement, the chancellor Philip Hammond has announced that £7.6m will be allocated to saving the stately home Wentworth Woodhouse in Rotherham, the property believed to have inspired Jane Austen’s Pemberley in her novel Pride and Prejudice.

The Grade-I listed building is Europe’s largest private home, sitting on 82 acres of land and believed to have more than 350 rooms. It took 25 years to build in the 1700s and once employed 1,000 staff, including a bear keeper and a “state bed maker”.

Related: 'Politicians don’t have a clue': people respond to the autumn statement

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Handwritten Anne Frank poem sells at auction for £119,000

Auction of 12-line text in Dutch from 1942, a rare example of the young Jewish girl’s handwriting for sale, took just two minutes

A handwritten poem by Anne Frank, the Jewish girl who kept a diary of two years spent in hiding from the Nazis, has sold at auction for €140,000 (£119,000), more than four times its reserve price.

The sale, to an unnamed online bidder, took just two minutes at the Bubb Kuyper auction house in the Dutch city of Haarlem.

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Atwood and Martel among Canadian writers drawn into row over creative writing tutor's sacking

Margaret Atwood and Yann Martel join authors calling for investigation into dismissal of Steven Galloway – but critics say move could ‘silence’ abuse victims

Fierce controversy is rocking Canada’s literary community over the sacking of a creative writing tutor at the University of British Columbia. More than 80 authors, including Margaret Atwood and Yann Martel, have signed an open letter calling for an independent investigation into the dismissal. But that protest has prompted further contention, with the signatories now accused of pressuring abuse victims into silence.

Steven Galloway, author of the novel The Cellist of Sarajevo, was the chairman of UBC’s creative writing program until November 2015, when he was suspended by the university for what it called “serious allegations”. He was then sacked in June, when UBC said there had been “a record of misconduct that resulted in an irreparable breach of … trust”.

My belief in due process and my belief in survivors are both parts of me, and I cannot sacrifice one for the other.

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First trailer released for Martin Scorsese's Oscar contender Silence

Scorsese’s study of Jesuit missionaries in 17th century Japan stars Andrew Garfield and Adam Driver alongside Liam Neeson

The first footage of Martin Scorsese’s major awards contender Silence has been released, in the form of a 130-second trailer ahead of its world premiere at the Vatican next week.

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Costa book award 2016 shortlists dominated by female writers

Rose Tremain, Maggie O’Farrell and Sarah Perry lead contenders for the £30,000 top prize

Women dominate this year’s Costa book award shortlists, with Rose Tremain, Sarah Perry and Kate Tempest among 14 female writers of the 20 nominated across the awards’ five categories.

Three previous Costa winners are in the running for the best novel award: Maggie O’Farrell for This Must Be the Place, Rose Tremain for The Gustav Sonata and Sebastian Barry for Days Without End. Barry, who won the overall Costa book of the year in 2008 for his novel The Secret Scripture, told the Guardian he was excited to be nominated again. “It knocks your socks off every time, even in your 60s,” he said, describing how he celebrated after getting the call while at a restaurant with his wife. “Winning the Costa changed my life. I was able to send my kids to university with that prize. To be at the cadet stage again, that is so exciting.”

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'It's like they were selling heroin to schoolkids': censorship hits booksellers at Kuwait book fair

Many Arab book fairs have been a free space for publishers to sell titles banned in shops, but Kuwait has seen raised levels of censorship – turning the book trade into a risky business

Arab book fairs are like a giant travelling circus; no sooner does one end than publishers are boxing up books, pulling down posters, and moving their wares to the next. There are more than 15 major fairs across the region, with dozens of minor ones. This week, a reported 568 publishers are at the Kuwait international book fair, where readers, publishers, and writers are fighting back – and winning small gains – against a growing censoriousness.

Related: UAE launches new law to 'make reading a daily habit'

Kuwait has a robust appreciation for literature and tough-minded writers – yet restrictive censorship and bureaucracy

A book being banned doesn't mean demand disappears. 'It's sold under the table, exposing the sellers to danger'

Related: Tunisian novel wins ‘Arabic Booker’ in Abu Dhabi despite UAE ban

We don't want to submit to this situation, which we hope will change in a country where freedom has had a wide berth

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Tom Hiddleston and Ben Wheatley to reunite for Frank Miller adaptation

High-Rise actor and director to collaborate on big-screen version of Miller and Geof Darrow’s comic Hard Boiled

High-Rise star Tom Hiddleston is to reunite with director Ben Wheatley for Hard Boiled, an adaptation of the early-90s comic-book series by Frank Miller and Geof Darrow.

Hiddleston is down to play Nixon, a seemingly deranged tax collector in a near-future dystopian Los Angeles. He recently completed work on Thor: Ragnarok (the third in the series) and Kong: Skull Island. Wheatley’s most recent project is Free Fire, an action comedy set in a warehouse, which looks to be his most mainstream film yet.

Related: Free Fire review – Ben Wheatley's shootout comedy is firing blanks

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Amber Heard sued for $10m over 'conspiracy' in London Fields promotion

The producers accused the actor for having ‘breached performance and promotional obligations’, the second lawsuit launched against the film

Another lawsuit has been filed over the film London Fields – this time directed at actor Amber Heard.

In the $10m suit filed by the film’s producers, Heard, who starred as Nicola Six in the adaptation of the 1989 Martin Amis novel, is alleged to have “breached performance and promotional obligations”, the Hollywood Reporter wrote.

Related: London Fields review: Martin Amis gets the Guy Ritchie treatment

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Irish writer William Trevor dies aged 88

Three-time winner of the Whitbread prize and author of more than 15 novels and many short stories has died

The Irish writer Sir William Trevor has died, at the age of 88, his publisher has announced

Trevor, the author of more than 15 novels and many short stories, was shortlisted for the Man Booker prize four times, most recently for The Story of Lucy Gault in 2002, the same year he was knighted for his services to literature. He also won the Whitbread prize three times and frequently contributed short stories to The New Yorker magazine.

Related: A brief survey of the short story part 39: William Trevor

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Unique copy of first full-length audio book found in Canada

Set of four LPs with full text of Joseph Conrad’s 1902 novella Typhoon was made by RNIB in 1935

A unique copy of the first full-length audio book ever made, a set of four LPs recorded in 1935 with the full text of Joseph Conrad’s 1902 novella Typhoon, has been rediscovered in Canada.

The hunt continues for surviving copies of others of the earliest titles, including The Gospel According to St John, and Agatha Christie’s The Murder of Roger Ackroyd.

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Royal Society's young people's prize goes to 'well cool' pop-up book

How Machines Work by David Macaulay is praised by school-age judges for story of the mechanics used by a sloth to escape his zoo

The tale of an inventive sloth who outwits his zookeeper with elaborate inventions has won the Royal Society’s young people’s book prize, which champions the best science books for children.

How Machines Work by author and illustrator David Macaulay scooped the £10,000 prize at a ceremony in Cardiff on Monday afternoon. The picture book, which shows working cogs on the cover and pulleys and a seesaw inside, uses pullouts and pop-ups to explain engineering and simple mechanics.

Related: Alexander von Humboldt biography wins Royal Society science book prize

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Tintin drawing sells for record €1.55m in Paris auction

Original artwork by Hergé from Explorers on the Moon was expected to sell for between €700,000 and €900,000

An original drawing from the popular Tintin adventure Explorers on the Moon has sold for a record €1.55m (£1.3m) in Paris, auction house Artcurial has announced.

The 50cm x 35cm drawing in Chinese ink by the Belgian cartoonist known as Hergé shows the boy reporter, his dog, Snowy, and sailor Captain Haddock wearing spacesuits and walking on the moon while looking at Earth. It had been expected to sell for between €700,000 and €900,000.

Related: Original Tintin comic artwork sells for more than €1m

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'Something will crack': supposed prophecy of Donald Trump goes viral

Nearly 20-year-old prediction by an obscure left-wing philosopher, now widely shared after the election, foresaw the rise of a Trump-like ‘strongman’

Americans trying to unpick he phenomenon of Donald Trump have turned to an obscure academic, who predicted that old industrialized democracies were heading into a Weimar-like period in which populist movements could overturn constitutional governments.

In 1998, the late Stanford philosopher Richard Rorty published a small volume, Achieving Our Country: Leftist Thought in Twentieth-Century America, that described a fracturing of the left wing coalition that rendered the movement dispirited and cynical that it invited its own collapse.

Related: Obama has become a therapist for those suffering from Trump anxiety

Related: Brexit and Trump have exposed the left’s crucial flaw: playing by the rules | Jonathan Freedland

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Chair of BAME prize slams UK publishers after lack of submissions

Author Sunny Singh calls British publishing ‘pathetic’ as inaugural £1,000 Jhalak prize receives only 51 entries

The chair of the judges for the inaugural Jhalak prize, the author Sunny Singh, has branded British publishers “pathetic” after the award created to recognise black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) writers received only 51 submissions so far.

The £1,000 prize was set up to recognise “[authors] who feel that their work is often marginalised unless it fulfils a romantic fetishisation of their cultural heritage”. Despite the deliberately broad entry requirements – it is open to BAME writers based in the UK working in any genre, regardless of whether they are self-published or with a publisher – the award has received startlingly few entries, with only two weeks to go until submissions close.

Related: Report finds UK books world has marginalised and pigeonholed ethnic minorities

Related: Could there really be only one new black male novelist in Britain? | Arifa Akbar

Related: Guardian and 4th Estate BAME prize reaches out to untapped talent

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Germany buys California home where writer Thomas Mann lived in exile

Nobel prize-winning author built Pacific Palisades home in Los Angeles after fleeing 1930s Germany during Hitler’s rise to power

Germany has bought the California home that once belonged to the Nobel prize-winning author Thomas Mann and plans to turn it into a “centre for transatlantic dialogue”, after fears that it was being sold off as a “teardown” – of value only for the land on which it stands – caused outrage among German fans of the author.

Three thousand curators and writers – including Nobel laureate Herta Müller – signed an online petition for the house to be saved after it went on the market at an asking price of $15m.

Related: Winter reads: The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann

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Kickstarter for Mike Diana film raises enough to clear arrest warrant

With more than $45,000 raised for documentary about cartoonist charged with ‘artistic obscenity’ in the US, some will be used to pay $2,000 fine in Florida

A Kickstarter campaign to fund a documentary about the US comic artist Mike Diana – the first person to receive a criminal conviction in the US for “artistic obscenity” – has surpassed its $40,000 (£32,000) goal, with enough extra money to clear the outstanding warrant for his arrest in the state of Florida.

Diana was living in Largo, Florida, when he became the first person to be convicted and jailed on obscenity charges in 1994, for his self-published comic book Boiled Angel. A jury took just 40 minutes to convict him following a sting in which an undercover police officer procured copies of Diana’s underground comic.

Related: 'Draw and you'll go to jail': the fight to save comics from the censor

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Alex Wheatle wins 2016 Guardian children's fiction prize

Author who says his time in jail inspired his love of literature triumphs with Crongton Knights, set on a fictitious inner-city estate

A writer who traces his interest in books back to a spell in jail after the 1981 Brixton riots has won the Guardian children’s fiction prize with a hard-hitting novel set on a fictitious inner-city estate plagued by knife crime and overrun with phone-jacking “hood rats”.

Alex Wheatle is the 50th writer to have won the award, joining a roster that includes Ted Hughes, Philip Pullman, Mark Haddon and Jacqueline Wilson.

Related: Guardian children's fiction prize 2016 shortlist announced

Related: Can reading children's books help tackle knife crime?

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Rep John Lewis tells National Book awards how he was refused entry to library because he was black

US congressman shares childhood story of public library colour bar at NBA ceremony, as Colson Whitehead and historian Ibram X Kendi also earn accolades

Civil-rights campaigner and congressman John Lewis was in tears as he accepted America’s National Book award for young people’s literature in Manhattan on Wednesday night, speaking of how as a child he had been turned away from the public library for being black.

Related: John Lewis: 'I don’t think I’ve changed much. I still consider myself an activist'

Related: Colson Whitehead: 'My agent said: Oprah. I said: Shut the front door'

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Poets' unlikely love letters are turned into critically acclaimed film

Die Geträumten consists of readings from the letters of Ingeborg Bachmann and Paul Celan – daughter of a Nazi and son of Jews

She was the daughter of a Nazi party member, he the only son of parents who died in the Holocaust. The love affair between Ingeborg Bachmann and Paul Celan was as unlikely as it was brief, spanning two months in Vienna and a shorter rekindling 10 years later.

But the meeting of minds between two of the most influential writers in the German language – and the more than 200 poems, letters, postcards, telegrams and unsent drafts it spawned – has outlasted not just their love affair, but also their authors’ premature deaths.

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Blue Peter star beats top authors to Bad sex award nomination

Ian McEwan and Jonathan Safran Foer get honorary mentions, but are left off final shortlist for novels by authors including Tom Connolly, Gayle Forman and former kids’ TV presenter Janet Ellis

• Read extracts from this year’s shortlist
• Bad Sex award 2015: how bad was it last year?

Morrissey won it last year for referencing the “pained frenzy” of a “bulbous salutation”; Giles Coren triumphed with an extraordinary simile which had a male character’s genitalia “leaping around like a shower dropped in an empty bath”. The Bad sex in fiction award, that least desirable of literary prizes, is back, and this year former Blue Peter presenter Janet Ellis is in the running for the dubious honour.

The Literary Review, which set up the prize 23 years ago, announced this morning that Ellis’s debut novel The Butcher’s Hook, a dark, twisted story of a girl in 18th-century London, was one of six contenders for the award for “the most egregious passage of sexual description in a work of fiction”. Ellis, who presented Blue Peter in the 1980s, drew praise for the debut when it was published – “a cross between Fanny Burney’s Evelina and US crime drama Dexter,” found the Observer. But the panel of five judges at the Literary Review singled it out for a surprisingly agricultural passage in which Ellis’s heroine Anne consummates her passion for butcher’s apprentice Fub.

“‘Anne,’ he says, stopping and looking down at me. I am pinned like wet washing with his peg. ‘Till now, I thought the sweetest sound I could ever hear was cows chewing grass. But this is better.’ He sways and we listen to the soft suck at the exact place we meet. Then I move and put all thoughts of livestock out of his head.”

Related: Bad sex award 2016: the contenders in quotes

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Literal interpretation of Bible 'helps increase church attendance'

Study finds conservative theology mixed with innovative worship approach helps Protestant churches grow congregations

Churches that are theologically conservative with beliefs based on a literal interpretation of the Bible grow faster than those with a liberal orientation, according to a five-year academic study.

“If we are talking solely about what belief system is more likely to lead to numerical growth among Protestant churches, the evidence suggests conservative Protestant theology is the clear winner,” said David Haskell, the Canadian study’s lead researcher.

Related: The Bible? Not on my desert island, say majority of Britons

Related: Fellow white evangelicals: your votes for Trump shook my faith | Sam Thielman

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Dictionary of 50,000 surnames and their origins published

Four-year study by linguists and historians of British and Irish records back to 11th century analyses family names

“What’s in a name?” Juliet asked as she and Romeo tried to puzzle their way around the troubling problem of their warring families. Well, plenty, the most detailed investigation into surnames in the UK and Ireland has found.

A team of researchers has spent four years studying the meanings and origins of almost 50,000 surnames, from the most common to the highly obscure.

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Curious George loses his home: the world's only store will be closed down

New building owners plan to replace Massachusetts store dedicated to playful fictional monkey with a stairwell, as customers and enthusiasts push back

Curious George must find a new home. The only shop dedicated to the mischievous fictional monkey is being booted out of its building at One JFK Street in Harvard Square in Cambridge, Massachusetts, forcing the children’s book and toy store to look for a new home.

Real estate investment trust Equity One bought the building last year, and has announced plans the gut the building. A stairwell will replace the current store, named the Only Curious George Store in the World, according to development plans obtained by the Guardian.

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Hundreds of US children's authors sign pledge to tackle racism and xenophobia

Declaration on website The Brown Bookshelf signed by more than 400 writers and illustrators in 48 hours, including Jacqueline Woodson and Daniel José Older

Hundreds of American children’s authors and illustrators have put their names to a declaration citing their commitment to using literature “to help eliminate the fear that takes root in the human heart amid lack of familiarity and understanding of others”.

The National Book Award-winning children’s author Jacqueline Woodson is one of more than 400 writers to sign the statement on website The Brown Bookshelf. The site was set up to promote African American children’s writers by the authors Kelly Starling Lyons, Tameka Fryer Brown, Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich, Don Tate, Gwendolyn Hooks, Tracey Baptiste, Crystal Allen, Paula Chase-Hyman, Varian Johnson and Jerry Craft, who are all signatories to the letter.

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Philippe Sands wins the 2016 Baillie Gifford prize for nonfiction

Human rights lawyer given the £30,000 award – formerly known as the Samuel Johnson prize – for his history of crimes against humanity, East West Street

Human rights lawyer Philippe Sands has beaten the Nobel laureate Svetlana Alexievich to win the Baillie Gifford prize for nonfiction for East West Street, his account of the history of genocide and crimes against humanity.

Related: East West Street by Philippe Sands review – putting genocide into words

Related: How the Nuremberg trials found names for the Nazis' crimes

Related: ‘We’re on a xenophobic path – someone needs to press pause’: Philippe Sands in conversation with Hisham Matar

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'Post-truth' named word of the year by Oxford Dictionaries

US election and EU referendum drive popularity of adjective describing situation ‘in which objective facts are less influential than appeals to emotion’

In the era of Donald Trump and Brexit, Oxford Dictionaries has declared “post-truth” to be its international word of the year.

Defined by the dictionary as an adjective “relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief”, editors said that use of the term “post-truth” had increased by around 2,000% in 2016 compared to last year. The spike in usage, it said, is “in the context of the EU referendum in the United Kingdom and the presidential election in the United States”.

Related: How technology disrupted the truth | Katharine Viner

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Arrival lands in top spot at UK box office, but no space for American Pastoral

Denis Villeneuve’s smart sci-fi epic starring Amy Adams soars, as Ewan McGregor’s Philip Roth adaptation stumbles

Arrival was the only film released at the weekend in more than 100 prints, and it enjoyed plenty of attention from cinemagoers, pushing Doctor Strange off the top spot. Opening at 561 cinemas, the brainy sci-fi took £2.57m, with Thursday takings pushing the total to £2.92m. The JK Rowling-created Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them arrives this week, which explains why Arrival was given such a clear field – distributors in general were reluctant to release a film and then have it clobbered after seven days.

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Off to a flying start: Quidditch Premier League launched in UK

With 20,000 players taking part in the fictional sport from the Harry Potter books, organisers announce a league pitting teams including the London Monarchs and the Yorkshire Roses

If rugby and football don’t prove magical enough this season, the launch of a Quidditch Premier League in the UK next summer could be the answer.

Related: Quidditch leaves Harry Potter behind as (real) World Cup fever grows

Related: Brooms up! European Quidditch finals sweep Tuscan town

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Margaret Atwood writes letter of solidarity to imprisoned Turkish novelist

To mark Day of the Imprisoned Writer, the Canadian Booker prize winner has joined fellow authors in sending messages of support to five persecuted writers around the world, including Aslı Erdoğan

Margaret Atwood has written to Asli Erdoğan on her 91st day behind bars to tell the imprisoned Turkish novelist that her “words still shape the fight for freedom and the right to free expression”.

The Canadian Booker prize winner is one of a group of authors sending messages of solidarity to five writers currently in prisons around the world. The letters are intended to mark the Day of the Imprisoned Writer, which has been commemorated on 15 November by PEN International and members of PEN from around the world since 1981. PEN said that in the 12 months since last year’s event, at least 35 writers have been killed for their work.

Related: Turkish novelist jailed in 'unacceptable' conditions, say campaigners

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Children's laureates demand UK government investigate school library closures

Exclusive: In an open letter to the government, current laureate Chris Riddell warns that school efforts to encourage reading is ‘being undermined through lack of economic and intellectual investment’

Children’s laureate Chris Riddell, backed by all eight former children’s laureates including Quentin Blake and Julia Donaldson, has made a powerful and passionate call for the Department of Education to end the “disadvantageous school library lottery” that has seen hundreds of school libraries lose a dedicated librarian over the last decade.

In an open letter to Justine Greening, the secretary of state for education, Riddell writes that he is “deeply concerned” the work school libraries and librarians do in promoting reading for pleasure “is not fully appreciated and, worse, is being undermined through lack of economic and intellectual investment”.

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The Power review – a shocking gender war

Naomi Alderman’s anarchic sci-fi satire imagines a future in which girls can shoot bolts of electricity from their fingers

In the weeks before my daughter was born I was surprised by how many well-wishers told me that I would notice a contrast between her temperament and that of my son. She would be less noisy, they said, more serene. It’s still early days… but it’s the kind of thing Naomi Alderman’s new novel gets you thinking about.

It’s a brash sci-fi fantasy, clever and coarse, calculated and hectic, with the premise that sometime around 2018 girls everywhere find that they have the ability to emit lethal bolts of electricity – generated by a previously undetected length of flesh under the collarbone. Governments fall, there’s a new religion, and online forums throb with talk of “the coming gender war”.

Alderman excels is in how thoroughly she develops her conceit

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Ted Chiang, the science fiction genius behind Arrival

The award-winning writer’s complex, thoughtful and futuristic stories should prove fertile ground for film-makers now Hollywood has discovered him

In the small world of science fiction short stories, Ted Chiang is a superstar. It’s easier to list the major SF awards he hasn’t won than those he has, and he’s equally acclaimed in the broader field of literary short fiction – all for a body of work that could probably fit within half a Game of Thrones novel.

Related: Arrival review: heartfelt alien-contact movie communicates spectacular ideas

If there is a recurrent theme, it's squaring the circle between fantasies of belief and the scientific worldview

Related: When AI rules the world: what SF novels tell us about our future overlords

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Tennessee mother calls for removal of school history book 'promoting Islamic propaganda'

Pearson textbook My World History is subject of formal complaint after parent says child felt assignments on Islam ‘went against her beliefs as a Christian’

A Tenessee mother and founding member of a parents’ group opposed to Islamic “indoctrination” has asked for a history textbook to be removed from her daughter’s social studies curriculum, claiming that it “promotes Islamic propaganda”.

Michelle Edmisten, a founder of the Facebook group Sullivan County Parents Against Islam Indoctrination, first raised the issue in October, after her daughter was given an assignment requiring her to answer questions about the name of Islam’s holy book, and the five pillars of Islam.

The controversy sadly reflects larger efforts to purge lessons on Islam from schools in Tennessee

Related: Donald Trump has made it clear: in his America, Muslim citizens don’t exist | Moustafa Bayoumi

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Michaela McGuire will be new artistic director of Sydney Writers' festival

McGuire, now director of Emerging Writers’ festival, will replace Jemma Birrell, who has been at the helm since 2012

Michaela McGuire has been announced as the new artistic director of the Sydney Writers’ festival, replacing Jemma Birrell, who has been at the helm of the festival since 2012.

McGuire is currently the director of the Emerging Writers’ festival, which she joined in July 2015. Her 18-month stint in the role resulted in a 15% increase in attendance in 2016 and what the organisation calls “its most successful festival result yet”.

Related: Sydney writers' festival 2016 roundup: six things we learned

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Single sentence novel wins Goldsmiths prize for books that 'break the mould'

Mike McCormack’s Solar Bones takes £10,000 prize, making him the third Irish author to win in four years

A novel written in a single sentence has won the 2016 Goldsmiths prize, becoming the third Irish winner in the four-year history of an award set up to reward fiction that “breaks the mould or opens up new possibilities for the novel form”.

Mike McCormack’s Solar Bones is set on All Souls Day in November 2008 and takes place inside the mind of Marcus Conway, a middle-aged engineer from County Mayo in the west of Ireland, who is brought back from the dead to contemplate “a county with a unique history of people starving and mortifying themselves for higher causes and principles […] blistered with shrines and grottoes and prayer-houses and hermitages […] a bordered realm of penance and atonement”.

Related: Solar Bones by Mike McCormack review – an extraordinary hymn to small-town Ireland

Related: Goldsmiths prize and Anakana Schofield – books podcast

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Prime Minister's Literary awards 2016: Lisa Gorton and Charlotte Wood share fiction prize

The Life of Houses and The Natural Way of Things authors divide $80,000 prize – one of three categories split among winners

A story about the hidden tensions in one of Australia’s establishment families and another about a group of women kidnapped and imprisoned on a broken down property are the joint fiction winners of the prime minister’s literary awards.

In the fiction category, two novels, The Life of Houses by Lisa Gorton and The Natural Way of Things by Charlotte Wood shared the prize.

Related: Prime Minister’s Literary awards 2016: novel with print run of 350 makes shortlist

Related: Prime minister's literary intervention makes a sham of peak event

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Authors called David more likely to be on bestseller lists than BAME writers

The Bookseller magazine has published analysis finding a ‘shockingly low’ number of BAME authors in the UK top 500 titles of the year

A writer has more chance of making it into the bestseller charts if their name is David than if they are from an ethnic minority, according to new analysis from The Bookseller magazine which found a “shockingly low” number of books by British BAME (black, asian and minority ethnic) authors in the top 500 titles of the year to date.

Looking at last week’s book charts, the magazine found one book by a person of colour in the official UK top 50 – American author Paul Beatty’s The Sellout, which had just won the Man Booker prize. The first title by a British writer of colour, Matthew Syed’s look at the secrets of success, Black Box Thinking, was in 368th place.

Related: Turned down 18 times. Then Paul Beatty won the Booker …

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The Accountant adds up to a big deal at the UK box office

Ben Affleck action thriller tames A Street Cat Named Bob and Nocturnal Animals as Doctor Strange hangs on to the top spot

The weekend after Doctor Strange, and two weeks before Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, the release calendar paused for breath. But, despite the lack of any blockbusters, four movies with individual commercial appeal arrived: The Accountant, starring Ben Affleck; bestseller adaptation A Street Cat Named Bob; period romance The Light Between Oceans, with Michael Fassbender and Alicia Vikander; and Tom Ford’s starry awards contender Nocturnal Animals.

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Harry and Beatrix Potter face off on eclectic Waterstones book of the year shortlist

Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent is the only novel on the six-book shortlist, up against JK Rowling’s play script for Harry Potter and the Cursed Child and a long-lost Beatrix Potter story

Sarah Perry’s novel The Essex Serpent might have missed out on the big literary prizes this year, but her tale of a 19th-century amateur naturalist on the trail of a mythical beast is the novel of the year for booksellers at the UK’s largest book chain.

Related: The Essex Serpent author Sarah Perry: ‘Kids at school found me strange. I didn’t mind’

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Naomi Klein attacks free-market philosophy in Q&A climate change debate – video

Naomi Klein clashed with Georgina Downer of the Institute of Public Affairs and Liberal senator James Paterson, also formerly of the IPA, when she appeared as a panellist on the ABC’s Q&A on Monday night. Downer and Paterson rejected the assertion of the Canadian journalist and author that climate change undermined the free-market assumptions of centres such as the IPA and the US Heartland Institute. The Labor frontbencher Anthony Albanese and the author Don Watson were also on the panel.

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Cinderella as masochist, Red Riding Hood as trickster: new book resurrects 'troubling' fairytales

‘Deliciously cruel’ 19th century twists on favourite stories, as adapted by Baudelaire and Apollinaire, make English debut in new book, Fairy Tales for the Disillusioned

From a masochistic, submissive version of Cinderella who is gunning for a prince with a shoe fetish to a prince who “loved in equal measure brunette ladies and blond pages, beautiful statues and heraldic dogs”, a series of 19th-century French fairytales – many of which have never been translated into English before – are due out this week in the book Fairy Tales for the Disillusioned.

Related: Charles Perrault: the modern fairytale's fairy godfather

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Manuscript reveals Flaubert's messy search for perfection

Handwritten book full of crossings-out and comments, up for auction in France, reveals Madame Bovary author’s literary struggles

The handwritten manuscript is page after page of scratched out notes, smudges, comments and ink blots that reveal just how arduous the French novelist Gustave Flaubert found the writing process.

Celebrated for his first and most famous published work, Madame Bovary, which took five years to write, Flaubert was meticulous about the style and elegance of his work.

Related: Jean-Jacques Perrey, electronic musical pioneer, dies at 87

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Naomi Klein at the Great Barrier Reef: what have we left for our children? – video

Exclusive: In Under the Surface, a special Guardian film, the award-winning writer and environmental campaigner Naomi Klein travels to the Great Barrier Reef with her son, Toma, to see the impact of coral bleaching caused by climate change. In a personal but also universal story, Klein tells how she wants him to bear witness. ‘Just in case, amid the coral that is still alive, he can find something beautiful to connect with, something he can carry with him as he navigates life on a warmer, harsher planet than the one I grew up on. Because climate change is already here – and kids are on the frontlines’
Extra footage supplied by David Hannan

• Naomi Klein: Climate change is intergenerational theft. That’s why my son is part of this story

• Help us continue to cover the stories that matter. Support the Guardian with a monthly or one-off contribution

• Great Barrier Reef: a catastrophe laid bare

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The Guardian view on Westworld: science fiction’s fresh look at the present | Editorial

A show about treating robots as fully human reminds us how difficult it is to treat even humans that way

Almost all injustice comes from the sense that some people are worth less than others. So we can behave as if women are worth less than men; foreigners less than we are; poor people less than rich ones, and slaves, paradigmatically, are worth less than free people. This is so obvious that it is difficult to think about, and difficult sometimes to see. One way to make it fresh and unavoidable would be to set it up as fact. Suppose there were a class of robot servants, things which were by definition not properly human, and which could not, because of the way they are made, suffer in the ways that we do, even if they appeared to be anguished. What would be the moral wrong in mistreating them?

This is the premise of Westworld, the latest big-money, made-to-be-a-box-set television show, in which rich tourists are set loose in a gigantic wild west theme park populated by entirely lifelike androids whom they can treat exactly as they like. The violence is almost as enjoyable as in real cowboy movies because we know the blood, however copious, isn’t real. But the androids must eventually acquire consciousness, and the story will reach a denouement as old as Frankenstein.

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It’s all for love as Spain’s Barbara Cartland finally gets a chance to woo British readers

Corín Tellado is famed throughout the Spanish-speaking world for her light romance novellas

The giants of bestselling Spanish-language fiction – the chroniclers of deluded chivalry, intellectual and psychological labyrinths and the odd dynasty condemned to a solitudinous century – enjoy a formidable worldwide reputation. Miguel de Cervantes, Jorge Luis Borges or Gabriel García Márquez are known well beyond their homelands.

Not so Corín Tellado. This remarkable and unassuming Asturian author, who died in 2009, produced more than 4,000 works during a six-decade career. If she has an equivalent in the English-speaking world, it is Barbara Cartland rather than George Eliot. But her escapist tales of love and loss, suffering and redemption, have sold more than 400m copies – and a great deal more than that if the millions of pirated Latin American editions are counted. In 1962, Unesco declared her the most-read Spanish author alongside Cervantes.

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Hitchcock experts rush to defend director over Tippi Hedren’s claims of sexual harassment

Actress says she repelled advances on The Birds set but film crew dispute story

Cinema historians, former cast and crew and Alfred Hitchcock’s official biographer have rushed to the defence of the director after claims that he sexually harassed and bullied actress Tippi Hedren during the filming of The Birds in the 1960s.

In her new book, Tippi: A Memoir, published on 17 November, Hedren alleges that the director made sexual approaches to her and regarded her as his personal property. In one passage she also describes her genuine horror during the filming of the attic scene in The Birds when she was attacked by real birds. “It was ugly, brutal and relentless,” she writes, adding that Cary Grant, visiting the set that week, had told her how brave she was.

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Leading authors join protest march against cuts to cultural services

Children’s laureate Chris Riddell and major unions rally in Trafalgar Square to oppose closure of libraries, galleries and museums

Authors, librarians and gallery staff joined thousands of campaigners on a protest march against widespread cuts to cultural services.

The children’s laureate, Chris Riddell, and the former children’s laureate Michael Rosen, who has been a vocal critic of government cuts, were among those who massed outside the British Library in London on Saturday before marching to a rally in Trafalgar Square.

Related: Some libraries deserve to close, says 'digital inclusion' charity

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2016 Stephen Spender prize for poetry in translation – the winners

From poems originally written in 41 different languages, judges selected translations from Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill’s Gaelic, Maria Teresa Horta’s Portuguese and Federico García Lorca’s Spanish

When many of our fellow citizens seem to be glaring at the larger world through arrow-slits, and educational opportunities are narrowed by the abolition of humanities A-levels, it’s heartening to find literary curiosity and ambition alive and well, with young people among those showing the way. The annual Stephen Spender prize for poetry in translation invites adult and younger translators to submit English versions of any poem from any language and period. This year’s entry, judged by Katie Gramich, Stephen Romer and myself, encompassed 41 languages. Alongside some familiar work against which translators like to test themselves, it was good to see material new to us.

In the 14-and-under section, there was an encouraging engagement with the difficult directness and immediate depth of feeling in Lorca (“Desire”, translated by Tomás Sergeant, the winner) and Machado (“The Crime”, Thomas Delgado-Little). The winner of the 18-and-under group, John Tinneny’s “Persephone”, from Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill’s Irish, retells the myth from the viewpoint of a naive and fearless girl who’s got in over her head and is saying more than perhaps she knows. Tinneny manages tone and preserves ambiguity well.

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Authors join national protest against library closures

UK library services have come under pressure due to cuts in council funding since David Cameron took office in 2010

Authors will join hundreds of protesters in the first national demonstration to protect library services held in London on Saturday, in response to a string of closures over the past five years.

The children’s laureate, Chris Riddell, and the former children’s laureate Michael Rosen as well as the shadow chancellor, John McDonnell, and an estimated 1,800 protesters from across the country will march from the British Library to Trafalgar Square.

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Author Leïla Slimani urges Moroccans to rebel against 'medieval' laws

Prize-winning novelist describes arrest of two teenage girls who were caught kissing as ‘humiliation and abuse of power’

Moroccans must rebel against the country’s “medieval laws”, the winner of France’s top literary prize has declared, following the arrest of two teenage girls who were caught kissing.

Leïla Slimani, who this week became the first Moroccan woman to win the prestigious Prix Goncourt for her novel Chanson Douce (Sweet Song), lambasted her homeland’s human rights record and the way women are treated.

Related: Moroccan teenage girls to face trial on homosexuality charges

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Jane Eyre facsimile manuscript to be published for 'Brontë bibliophiles'

The collector’s edition of the classic novel will also feature etchings by Edmund Garrett from an edition published in 1897

A facsimile of Charlotte Brontë’s 1847 manuscript of Jane Eyre, written in the author’s flowing hand, will be published for the first time in December.

This edition of the earliest surviving copy of Brontë’s classic joins a roster of facsimiles published by the French press Éditions des Saints Pères, including Madame Bovary, Les fleurs du mal and The Hunchback of Notre-Dame. The reproduction is accompanied with etchings by Edmund Garrett from an edition published in 1897. According to the publisher, the fair copy is “neat, with most notable revisions and corrections centred around her portrayal of Jane’s encounters with Mr Rochester”.

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Anne Frank poem, handwritten for a friend, goes on sale

Written in the friendship book of Jacqueline van Maarsen, Frank’s work is an exhortation to virtuous living written shortly before Anne and her family went into hiding

A short poem by Anne Frank written in Amsterdam in 1942 and autographed by the teenager is expected to fetch up to €50,000 (£44,000) at auction.

The handwritten eight-line poem was written in the “poezie album”, or friendship book, of the older sister of Frank’s classmate and best friend Jacqueline van Maarsen, according to Dutch auction house Bubb Kuyper. The first four lines of the poem can be found in a 1938 periodical, but the next four are not traceable, said Bubb Kuyper, which has put a guide price of €30,000 to €50,000 on the poem.

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JK Rowling's hand-drawn Tales of Beedle the Bard go up for auction

One of only seven manuscript copies of the Harry Potter-related stories is set to sell at auction for up to £500,000

A handwritten copy of JK Rowling’s story collection The Tales of Beedle the Bard, which she made for the publisher who first accepted Harry Potter for publication, is set to fetch up to £500,000 when it is auctioned next month.

Rowling handwrote and illustrated six copies of her collection of fairytales set in the Harry Potter universe, giving them as presents to “those most closely connected to the Harry Potter books”. A seventh copy, which Rowling made to raise money for her charity Lumos, was sold at auction by Sotheby’s in 2007 for £1.95m.

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Wonder Woman trailer shows her deflecting bullets and vowing to save the world

Gal Gadot’s character shows off her superhuman reflexes and indestructible shield in the latest look at the Warner Brothers film based on the DC comic

A new trailer for Wonder Woman has been released, featuring explosions, fights and “weapons far deadlier than you could ever imagine”.

It opens with the voice of Gal Gadot, who plays Diana Price, the alter ego of the superhero.

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London Library books taken in 1950s found in locked wardrobe

Historical volumes more than 50 years overdue discovered by antiquarian bookseller while clearing a house

Plague, astrology and witchcraft are probably among the last things you might want to find when clearing the house of a relative who has recently died. But a collection of 18th-century tomes on these subjects discovered in Wimbledon by an antiquarian bookseller has been welcomed by the London Library, which will be getting them back more than half a century after they were borrowed from the shelves.

The rare volumes are believed to have been removed from the London Library in the late 1950s. They were found by a book dealer at the back of a locked wardrobe when he was called in by a family to look at the book collection of their deceased relative. Patrick Marrin of Marrin’s Bookshop soon realised that attempts had been made to remove the stamps of the London Library from the volumes.

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New Trainspotting sequel trailer released

T2 reunites the surviving four characters from Danny Boyle’s 1996 film and looks at what has happened to them 20 years on

A new trailer for Danny Boyle’s long-awaited sequel to Trainspotting has been released.

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Brexit named word of the year, ahead of Trumpism and hygge

After seeing an ‘unprecedented surge’ in use, the much-adapted term is said by lexicographers to be ‘politics’s most important contribution to the language for 40 years’

“Brexit” has emerged ahead of “Trumpism” and “hygge” to be named the word of the year by Collins after seeing an “unprecedented surge” in use.

The dictionary publisher said that Brexit saw its first recorded usage in 2013, but has since increased in use by more than 3,400% this year as the referendum approached in June, and as the ramifications have played out since. Such an increase, said Collins, is “unheard of” since it began monitoring word usage.

Related: Hygge – the Danish art of living cosily – on its way to UK bookshops

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Wole Soyinka says he will tear up his green card if Trump wins

The Nigerian Nobel-winning author, now living in the US, tells Oxford students that it is up to young people to stand against ‘ultranationalism’ – in a speech that also took aim at Brexit and Bob Dylan

The Nobel literature laureate Wole Soyinka has told students that if Donald Trump is elected president of the United States next week, he will leave the country.

“If in the unlikely event he does win, the first thing he’ll do is to say [that] all green-card holders must reapply to come back into the US. Well, I’m not waiting for that,” said Soyinka, who is scholar-in-residence at New York University’s Institute of African American Affairs this autumn. “The moment they announce his victory, I will cut my green card myself and start packing up.”

It’s a constant fight to try to get a nation to recognise its own noble persuasions … the loftiness of human possibility

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UAE launches new law to 'make reading a daily habit'

As part of a package of measures to promote reading, the new rules will give books to babies and dedicated study time to government staff

They will have to focus on work-related reading rather relaxing with the latest thriller from James Patterson, but government employees in the United Arab Emirates are to be given “dedicated time to read” during work hours following a new law intended to “make reading a daily habit”.

Described as the first of its kind, the UAE’s new “national law of reading” was announced by UAE president, Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed al-Nahyan, earlier this week. It will allow government staff time to read at work – although they must focus on reading matter about professional and personal development within the context of the workplace.

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Johnny Depp to co-star in JK Rowling's Fantastic Beasts sequel

The actor, who has a cameo in the first film, will take a prominent role alongside Eddie Redmayne in the second in JK Rowling’s Potterverse franchise

Johnny Depp will play a starring role alongside Eddie Redmayne in the sequel to Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, a children’s fantasy film set in JK Rowling’s “wizarding world”, 70 years before Harry Potter enrols at Hogwarts.

Depp also has a small cameo in the first film in the series, according to a report by Deadline. Five films are planned for the franchise, with director David Yates confirmed for the first two.

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The Power by Naomi Alderman review – if girls ruled the world

Women have the power and it’s their turn to abuse it, in this instant classic of speculative fiction

What would the world look like if men were afraid of women rather than women being afraid of men? Science fiction has long questioned the conventional exercise of power between the sexes, from the utopian dreams of Charlotte Perkins Gilman, through the wild speculations of Joanna Russ and subtle inner journeys of Ursula Le Guin, on to Margaret Atwood’s dystopias and out to the seamier shores of pulp. Through exaggeration and reversal, many books have set out to illuminate inequality or open up new vistas of possibility. But I don’t think I’ve ever seen the status quo inverted to such devastating effect as in Naomi Alderman’s fourth novel.

It starts with teenage girls. At 14 or 15, the age when in our present world girls are waking to an awareness of their own sexuality tangled up in all the ways society will seek to stifle or exploit it, Alderman has them come alive to the thrill of pure power: the ability to hurt or even kill by releasing electrical jolts from their fingertips. “Something’s happening. The blood is pounding in her ears. A prickling feeling is spreading along her back, over her shoulders, along her collarbone. It’s saying: you can do it. It’s saying: you’re strong.”

Related: Naomi Alderman: ‘I went into the novel religious and by the end I wasn’t. I wrote myself out of it’

The novel is constructed as a big, brash, page-turning, drug-running, globetrotting thriller

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Haruki Murakami cautions against excluding outsiders

Celebrated novelist’s acceptance of the Hans Christian Andersen literary award led to a speech on confronting the inner darkness of people, society and nations

Haruki Murakami has warned that “no matter how high a wall we build to keep intruders out, no matter how strictly we exclude outsiders, no matter how much we rewrite history to suit us, we just end up damaging and hurting ourselves”.

Speaking as he received the Hans Christian Andersen literature award, the Japanese novelist said that “just as all people have shadows, every society and nation, too, has shadows”, and “if there are bright, shining aspects, there will definitely be a counterbalancing dark side. If there’s a positive, there will surely be a negative on the reverse side.”

Related: Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage by Haruki Murakami – review

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Zayn Malik: 'When I look back, I see how ill I was'

Former One Direction star writes in new autobiography, Zayn, about struggles with anxiety, disordered eating and partying on tour

Zayn Malik has opened up about his battles with anxiety, admitting that the pressures of fame often prevented him from eating.

The former One Direction star has spoken before about having anxiety, telling fans it was the reason he was unable to perform at London’s Capital Summertime Ball last June.

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