Tory MP's complaint that prize for writers of colour was unfair to whites dismissed

Philip Davies had complained to the Equality and Human Rights Commission that the Jhalak prize breached discrimination rules

A Conservative MP who claimed that a book prize set up to address the lack of diversity in British publishing was discriminatory against white people has had his complaint dismissed.

Philip Davies, Conservative MP for Shipley, wrote to the Equality and Human Rights Commission in January, claiming that the Jhalak prize for writers of colour, discriminated against white writers.

Related: Literature report shows British readers stuck in very white past

Related: Women’s Equality party leader seeks backing for a clear run to beat ‘misogynist’ MP

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James Patterson writing true-crime book about Aaron Hernandez

Days after the former American football star killed himself in prison, the bestselling thriller writer announces plans for a nonfiction study of ‘what went wrong’

Barely a week after the American football star Aaron Hernandez killed himself in prison, where he was serving a life sentence for murder, the bestselling novelist James Patterson has announced he is writing a true-crime book about the case.

Due for release in 2018, the creator of the Alex Cross thrillers said he would track the rise of the player from humble origins through a $40m (£30m) professional football career to his conviction for murder in 2015 and his death at 27. In a statement, Patterson’s US publisher Little, Brown said: “The nonfiction book will investigate the dramatic rise and fall of the football star, who left behind a murder sentence, a young daughter, and shocking secrets.”

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Frequent readers make the best lovers, say dating-app users

Heavy reading increases empathy – and makes users of dating sites more likely to click on your profile

A dating website claims to have discovered what kind of reading preferences make one more attractive to potential partners. According to eHarmony, women who listed The Hunger Games among their favourite books saw the biggest boost to their popularity, while men who read Richard Branson’s business books were approached most often. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo was a hit for both genders. But crucially, reading anything is a winning move; men who list reading on their dating profiles receive 19% more messages, and women 3% more.

This welcome news does not come out of the blue. Last year, the dating app My Bae also announced that people who used reading tags on its profiles were more successful in finding dates. More recently, research from Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, showed that reading a novel can improve brain function.

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Former German chancellor Helmut Kohl awarded €1m damages over biography

Judge says unauthorised biography ‘deeply violates’ retired politician’s personal rights and sullies his reputation

Helmut Kohl has been awarded a €1m (£842m) in damages over an unauthorised biography that a judge said had “deeply violated” the former German chancellor’s personal rights.

Judges in the western city of Cologne ordered the book’s two authors and their publisher to pay the damagesto Kohl, 87, for breaching his trust and sullying his reputation.

Related: Helmut Kohl chides Angela Merkel and Mikhail Gorbachev in new book

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Beano legend Leo Baxendale dies aged 86

Artist was creator of beloved characters such as Minnie the Minx and the Bash Street Kids

Leo Baxendale, the creator of Beano favourites Minnie the Minx and the Bash Street Kids, has died at the age of 86.

Baxendale’s fresh and energetic style, combined with his drawings of anarchic fun in strips including Little Plum, The Three Bears and Lord Snooty, made him a favourite for generations of British children, as well as an inspiration for comics artists. The comics historian Denis Gifford has called him “the most influential and most imitated comics artist of modern times” and he was inducted into the British Comic Awards Hall of Fame in 2013. Baxendale died from cancer on Tuesday.

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What is a mugwump? An insult only Boris Johnson would use

Heads are scratched, dictionaries consulted and references unearthed in an effort to understand the attack on Jeremy Corbyn

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The foreign secretary has officially entered the general election campaign in a manner befitting no other politician, by introducing a real head-scratcher.

In a column in the Sun, Boris Johnson referred to the Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, as a “mutton-headed old mugwump”, leading to much confusion about the meaning of the term and a peculiar kind of fallout just six weeks before the country heads to the polls.

Related: 'Mutton-headed old mugwump': Boris Johnson attacks Corbyn

Pretty sure he is, mate @jk_rowling http://pic.twitter.com/h1NCW0DbXX

Here's a #mugwump spotted in his natural environment. Shy, elusive creatures who live among the elite & never stray from their own species. http://pic.twitter.com/YF8QhYKq2H

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'Screen fatigue' sees UK ebook sales plunge 17% as readers return to print

Consumer sales down to £204m last year and are at lowest level since 2011 – when Amazon Kindle sales first took off in UK

Britons are abandoning the ebook at an alarming rate with sales of consumer titles down almost a fifth last year, as “screen fatigue” helped fuel a five-year high in printed book sales.

Sales of consumer ebooks plunged 17% to £204m last year, the lowest level since 2011 – the year the ebook craze took off as Jeff Bezos’ market-dominating Amazon Kindle took the UK by storm.

Related: Paperback fighter: sales of physical books now outperform digital titles

Related: The fall and rise of physical book sales worldwide – in data

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Silence of the Lambs director Jonathan Demme dies aged 73

Oscar winning film-maker emerged from the American independent scene, and went on to direct a string of major social-issue films in subsequent decades

Film director Jonathan Demme, best known for The Silence of the Lambs and Something Wild, has died at the age of 73, it has been announced. His publicist told Variety that the cause of death was “cancer complications”.

The Silence of the Lambs, the horror-thriller adapted from Thomas Harris’ novel, was the high point of his career as a mainstream film-maker: the film won five Oscars, including best director for Demme, and made its central character Hannibal Lecter into a household name.

Related: Oliver Burkeman talks to Jonathan Demme about his new film starring former president Jimmy Carter

Very sad to hear of the passing of the great Jonathan Demme. Admired his movies, his documentaries, his concert films. He could do anything.

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New William Gibson novel set in a world where Hillary Clinton won

Agency, by the famously prescient SF author, imagines an alternative US where voters have elected their first female president

Science fiction writer William Gibson is to use the dream of a Hillary Clinton win in last year’s US presidential election as the launch point for his next novel. Gibson, who coined the word “cyberspace” in his 1984 debut Neuromancer, will reimagine the world under a Clinton presidency in his next novel Agency, as well as London in the distant future.

Due out in January 2018, the novel will travel between two periods: one in present-day San Francisco, where Clinton’s White House ambitions are realised; and the other in a post-apocalyptic London, 200 years into the future after 80% of the world population has been killed.

Related: 'It will be called Americanism': the US writers who imagined a fascist future

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New William Gibson novel set in a world where Hillary Clinton won

Agency, by the famously prescient SF author, imagines an alternative US where voters have elected their first female president

Science fiction writer William Gibson is to use the dream of a Hillary Clinton win in last year’s US presidential election as the launch point for his next novel. Gibson, who coined the word “cyberspace” in his 1984 debut Neuromancer, will reimagine the world under a Clinton presidency in his next novel Agency, as well as London in the distant future.

Due out in January 2018, the novel will travel between two periods: one in present-day San Francisco, where Clinton’s White House ambitions are realised; and the other in a post-apocalyptic London, 200 years into the future after 80% of the world population has been killed.

Related: 'It will be called Americanism': the US writers who imagined a fascist future

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Void Star by Zachary Mason review – a technothriller with literary ambitions

Virtual hallucinations and tricksy Matrix-style visions dominate a 21st-century immortality quest

It’s late in the 21st century. New York City has drowned, and the reversal of Pacific currents means that Tokyo is freezing. In Saudi Arabia “the mullahs rule piously over blank infernos of sand”. There are armed drones and super-powerful AIs that have been designed for thousands of generations by other AIs, so that no human understands how they work. The rich have private armies and undergo yearly rejuvenation treat-ments at exclusive clinics. But James Cromwell, an inscrutable billionaire already more than 100 years old, wants more time. And someone unknown has sent him proof of a concept for an elixir of immortality. The question is, what does this party want in return?

Related: The Lost Books of the Odyssey by Zachary Mason | Book review

A character will die dramatically, only for it to turn out that it was just a copy running as a disposable subroutine

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International prize for Arabic fiction goes to Mohammed Hasan Alwan

A Small Death, the Saudi novelist’s historical novel about a Sufi mystic and adventurer, takes $50,000 honour for ‘striking artistry’

A historical novel about the life and adventures of an Andalusian adventurer and Sufi mystic has taken the most prestigious prize in Arabic fiction.

Saudi author Mohammed Hasan Alwan won the $50,000 (£39,000) International prize for Arabic fiction for A Small Death, his fictional account of the life of Sunni scholar Muhyiddin Ibn ‘Arabi. The novel follows him from his birth in Muslim Spain in 1165 to his death in Damascus in 1240, taking in journeys from Andalusia to Azerbaijan, and his reflections on the violence witnesses in Morocco, Egypt, the Hejaz (now part of Saudi Arabia), Syria, Iraq and Turkey. A contentious figure in history, Ibn ‘Arabi has been declared the foremost spiritual leader in Sufism by some, but condemned as an apostate by others.

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Robert Pirsig: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance author dies aged 88

Book telling the father-son story of a motorcycle trip across the western United States was published in 1974 and quickly became a best-seller

Robert Pirsig, author of the influential 1970s philosophical novel Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, has died at the age of 88.

Peter Hubbard, executive editor of his publisher William Morrow & Co, said in a statement that Pirsig’s wife Wendy had confirmed his death at his home in Maine “after a period of failing health”.

Related: Digested classics: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M Pirsig

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Wellcome science book prize goes to story of a heart transplant

Maylis de Kerangal’s Mend the Living, which tracks the journey of a heart from donor to recipient, is only the second novel to take the £30,000 award

A novel that “illustrates what it is to be human” has become the first translated book to win the Wellcome prize for science writing.

Maylis de Kerangal’s Mend the Living, which tracks the journey of a heart from donor to recipient over 24 hours, is only the second novel ever to scoop the £30,000 prize, which is awarded to a work of fiction or nonfiction that engages with health and medicine.

Related: Mend the Living by Maylis de Kerangal review – the story of a heart

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Author Kuki Gallmann shot by raiders on her ranch in Kenya

Conservationist, whose memoir I Dreamed of Africa became a Hollywood film, left critically wounded after armed men ransacked a lodge on her estate

Author and conservationist Kuki Gallmann, whose memoir I Dreamed of Africa was turned into a Hollywood film starring Kim Basinger, has been shot by raiders at her ranch in Kenya.

The 73-year-old is reported to have suffered extensive internal injuries and is in “a stable, but critical” condition.

Related: 'I was never scared of the elephants in my garden'

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Science fiction sheds light on robot debate | Letters

Reading Laurie Penny’s article about AI will not pose many surprises for readers of classic science fiction (Opinion, 20 April). She suggests that we may have to “build robots with a capacity for moral judgment”, which presumably would entail their having basic commands capable of overruling experience (experience of language being what so rapidly turns ’bots racist and sexist). Isaac Asimov long ago turned this idea into a series of books about his three laws of robotics. She also points to the role of language in forming preconceptions, citing our rigid system of pronouns. Poul Anderson, also long ago, proposed a whole new system, with “e” as the third-person pronoun, “uz” as its possessive, and the lovely word “marry” as a noun denoting a partner of whatever gender (“uz marry”). I wonder why we haven’t yet succeeded in imitating him.
Jeremy Cushing
Exeter

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RSC plans celebration of Shakespeare's favourite classical poet

Company aims to reignite interest in Ovid, whose book the Metamorphoses is alluded to in some of the Bard’s plays

Shakespeare’s favourite classical poet, Ovid, inspired him with myth, magic and metamorphosis. Now the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) is seeking to reignite interest in the Roman poet amid concerns that directors are tempted to cut classical allusions from the Bard’s plays because they assume today’s audiences will not understand them.

Gregory Doran, the RSC’s artistic director, is staging a celebration of the author of the Metamorphoses, the epic masterpiece on the themes of transformation and passion, which features Daphne and Apollo, Daedalus and Icarus among its mythological stories.

Related: Julius Caesar/Antony and Cleopatra review – Rome truths from the RSC

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Lambeth Palace to house religious library in new nine-storey tower

Planning permission has been granted for first new building at site for 200 years which will house historic manuscripts and books

A new library at Lambeth Palace will house the biggest collection of religious works outside the Vatican after planning permission was granted for the first new building at the historic site for 200 years.

A contemporary building with a nine-storey tower will be constructed in the grounds of the palace on the south bank of the Thames opposite the Palace of Westminster.

Related: Archbishop of Canterbury takes in Syrian refugee family

Related: Remains of five archbishops found near Lambeth Palace

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Not just William: Richmal Crompton's adult fiction republished

Reissues aim to restore her darker stories of village intrigue for grownups to the popularity they once enjoyed

Richmal Crompton has long been overshadowed by her creation Just William, but the darker side of her imagination is set to be rediscovered, with several of her lesser-known adult novels coming back into print.

Although best known for her 38 books about the errant schoolboy William Brown and his gang of Outlaws, Lancashire-born Compton was a prolific writer for both children and adults, often publishing two books a year, as well as writing short stories magazines. “She wrote 41 adult novels as well as the Just William books,” her new publisher Harriet Sanders said. “They did very well at the time and display something that you see in other writers of children’s books … the clarity with which they are written.”

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Bill O'Reilly's publisher stands by him after Fox sacking

TV host and bestselling author who was fired on Wednesday after multiple sexual harassment claims came to light, retains support of Henry Holt

Fox News may have abandoned Bill O’Reilly, but the beleaguered TV host, who was sacked on Wednesday following sexual harassment claims, has found support from his publisher Henry Holt, which has promised to stand by the bestselling author.

Related: A timeline of Bill O'Reilly's downfall: another Fox News founding father exits

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Proust's complaint about neighbours' loud sex among treasures in French sale

Letter from ‘jealous’ author, as well as another by Gustave Flaubert defending Madame Bovary will be sold from collection worth an estimated €3m

A treasure trove of letters and diaries revealing the secrets of some of France’s greatest literary figures is about to go on sale in Paris. Correspondence and journals by Gustave Flaubert, Victor Hugo and Marcel Proust are among 230 lots to be sold alongside a rare first edition of Galileo’s Discorsi on 26 April.

Amassed by Geneva-based Jean Bonna, who has been described as the greatest collector of French literature in the world, the collection is a fraction of material acquired over the past 50 years. Bonna said he was streamlining his collection to concentrate on French literature. Admitting he felt “a little bit sad” to sell the Galileo, which is expected to make in excess of €700,000 (£585,000), he added: “It is a wonderful book, and the best copy I have ever seen, but it does not belong in my collection because it is a scientific book and not French literature.”

Related: The £30m bookshelf: Pierre Bergé and the greatest stories ever sold

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Mahabharata epic set to become India's most expensive movie ever

Randamoozham, starring veteran actor Mohanlal, will cost Rs 1,000-crore (£150m) and is to be funded by UAE-based billionaire BR Shetty

India is set to make its most expensive film ever with an 1,000 crore rupees (£120m) adaptation of epic Sanskrit poem the Mahabharata.

Entitled Randamoozham, the two-part film will be financed by United Arab Emirates-based billionaire BR Shetty, and will dwarf the budget of the current record-holder, the two-part epic Baahubali, which cost a combined Rs430 crore (£51m) to make.

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Stella prize 2017: Heather Rose's The Museum of Modern Love wins award

$50,000 prize for Australian women writers goes to novel based on Marina Abramović’s performance of The Artist is Present

Heather Rose has won the 2017 Stella prize for Australian women writers for her novel, The Museum of Modern Love, based on the artwork of Serbian-born performance artist Marina Abramović.

“It’s by far the biggest thing that’s ever happened in my career,” Rose told Guardian Australia.

Related: Stella prize 2017: 'urgent national issues' dominate longlist of Australian women writers

Related: Ali Cobby Eckermann's poetry: inspiring those of us who feel like outsiders

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The Guardian view on immortality: not for the faint-hearted | Editorial

The faithful and the futurologists imagine life without death. But living forever may not be all it’s cracked up to be, and then what?

Good Friday seems a suitable day to consider the fact that, in an era in which life expectancy everywhere has almost doubled, humankind is more confused than ever about death. Nearly half of the British population supposes that death is complete annihilation; an almost equal number still believes in some form of life after death, and, for a subject notably lacking in eyewitness data, a surprisingly small proportion, less than 10%, acknowledge they do not know what happens. Meanwhile, in California but also elsewhere, there are enormously rich men who believe that death is a problem with a technological solution which they hope to live to profit from.

Ideals of technological immortality come in two sorts. There are those who hope that their bodies will be preserved or at least prolonged almost indefinitely, usually by freezing. There is absolutely no reason to suppose that the present technology allows brains to be frozen and rethawed without being reduced to a unworkable state. To hope that this will be changed by some future breakthroughs is an act of faith at least as remarkable as supposing that Jesus rose from the dead. That belief was at least marked since its earliest appearance by a saving ambiguity about what it might actually mean. Saint Paul, for example, was absolutely certain it had happened but nowhere managed to explain what it materially might have been.

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Faith still a potent presence in UK politics, says author

Idea that secularisation would purge politics of religious commitment appears misguided, Nick Spencer’s book argues

Faith remains a potent presence at the highest level of UK politics despite a growing proportion of the country’s population defining themselves as non-religious, according to the author of a new book examining the faith of prominent politicians.

Nick Spencer, research director of the think tank Theos and the lead author of The Mighty and the Almighty: How Political Leaders Do God, uses the example that all but one of Britain’s six prime ministers in the past four decades have been practising Christians to make his point.

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Bana al-Abed, seven-year-old Syrian peace campaigner, to publish memoir

Dear World, which will recount the young Twitter activist’s experience of war and flight from her war-torn home, is scheduled for autumn release

A seven-year-old Syrian refugee whose tweets from war-torn Aleppo won her a global following is set to write a book. Bana al-Abed’s Dear World will recount her experiences in Syria and how she and her family rebuilt their lives as refugees. Simon & Schuster plans to publish it in the US this autumn.

The self-declared peace activist took to the social media network that made her name to announce the news. “I am happy to announce my book will be published by Simon & Schuster. The world must end all the wars now in every part of the world,” she tweeted to her 368,000 followers.

Related: Where is Bana? Fears for Syrian girl who tweeted from Aleppo

I am a Syrian child who suffered under Bashar al Asad & Putin. I welcome Donald Trump action against the killers of my people.

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Jude Law to play young Dumbledore in Fantastic Beasts 2

The Oscar-nominated actor will take on the role played by Richard Harris and Michael Gambon in the Harry Potter franchise

Jude Law is set to take on the role of the young Dumbledore in a sequel to Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them.

Related: Why Dumbledore must not be the token gay person in Fantastic Beasts

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Unseen Sylvia Plath letters claim domestic abuse by Ted Hughes

Unpublished correspondence from the poet to her former therapist records allegation of beating and says that he told her he wished she was dead

Sylvia Plath alleged Ted Hughes beat her two days before she miscarried their second child and that Hughes wanted her dead, unpublished letters reveal. The two accusations are among explosive claims in unseen correspondence written in the bitter aftermath of one of literature’s most famous and destructive marriages.

Written between 18 February 1960 and 4 February 1963, a week before her death, the letters cover a period in Plath’s life that has remained elusive to readers and scholars alike. While the American writer, who was living in England during that time, was a prolific letter writer and had kept detailed journals since the age of 11, after her death Hughes said his wife’s journals from this time were lost, including the last volume, which he said he destroyed to protect their children, Frieda and Nicholas.

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X-Men illustrator faces backlash over alleged anti-Christian messages

Marvel distances itself from Indonesian artist Ardian Syaf after his images’ apparent reference to fierce religious and political divisions in his country

An artist who allegedly inserted political and religious messages into an X-Men spinoff comic has apologised, saying his career is over after fans complained about background images in the first issue of X-Men: Gold containing apparent antisemitic and anti-Christian references.

On Saturday, publisher Marvel said it would remove the artwork from future versions after readers in Indonesia claimed that some images contained coded messages referring to political and religious tensions in the country. They alleged Indonesian artist Ardian Syaf had sneaked in references to hardline Islamist opposition to Jakarta governor Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, the first Christian governor of the Indonesian capital in half a century.

Related: Marvel executive says emphasis on diversity may have alienated readers

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The Boss Baby makes a dummy of UK box-office competition

Aggressive previews strategy allows The Boss Baby to hold off Beauty and the Beast in the family-film arena, while good weather kills off more mature offerings

While glorious sunshine at the weekend created very tough conditions for cinema operators across the UK, the Easter school holiday delivered up an audience for titles with a clear family positioning. DreamWorks Animation’s The Boss Baby posted £2.8m for the weekend period, just ahead of Beauty and the Beast’s £2.76m. However, a very aggressive previews strategy meant that The Boss Baby added takings from the preceding six days (1-6 April), essentially creating a nine-day opening “weekend” figure of £8.03m. In the same nine-day period, Disney’s Beauty and the Beast earned £12.21m.

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Colson Whitehead wins Pulitzer prize for The Underground Railroad

The acclaimed slavery novel has been rewarded alongside Lynn Nottage’s factory drama Sweat and Matthew Desmond’s nonfiction work Evicted

Literary blockbuster novel The Underground Railroad, which depicts the journey of a young woman escaping from slavery via a fantastical train system, has won the Pulitzer prize for fiction.

Related: The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead review – luminous, furious and wildly inventive

Giddy-up, motherfucker!

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Bill Cosby's books among 'most challenged' last year at US libraries

The fallen star’s children’s series was deemed problematic by readers ‘because of criminal sexual allegations against the author’

Bill Cosby’s children’s book series was among the 10 most challenged books in US libraries last year, according to the American Library Association (ALA).

It is the first time Cosby, who was once a symbol for family values in the US, appeared on the ALA’s annual Most Challenged Books list.

Related: Bill Cosby sexual assault trial: only one accuser permitted to testify

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British 70s protest-music chronicle wins music book of the year

Daniel Rachel’s Walls Come Tumbling Down, an exhaustive account of the Rock Against Racism, 2 Tone and Red Wedge movements, takes the Penderyn music book prize

An exhaustively researched history of pop music’s impact on British political life during the 70s and 80s has won this year’s Penderyn music book prize. Walls Come Tumbling Down won its author Daniel Rachel the £1,000 prize at the Laugharne Weekend music and literature festival in south Wales, the prize’s home since it was first presented in 2015.

Walls Come Tumbling Down, subtitled The Music and Politics of Rock Against Racism, 2-Tone and Red Wedge, explores how revulsion at Eric Clapton’s drunken attack on “wogs” and “coons” at a Birmingham gig in 1976 provided the spark for a significant protest movement led by the British music industry.

Related: Rock Against Racism: the Syd Shelton images that define an era

Related: Walls Come Tumbling Down by Daniel Rachel review – where have all the political musicians gone?

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Alec Baldwin accuses HarperCollins of sloppy editing on his memoir

Claiming that his memoir, Nevertheless, contains “SEVERAL typos and errors”, the actor has decided to publish his own clarifications on Facebook

Alec Baldwin, whose impersonations of Donald Trump have skewered the thin-skinned US president for the amusement of Saturday Night Live audiences for months now, has proved to have a weak spot: poor editing.

The 59-year-old actor has attacked his publisher HarperCollins, accusing the editors of poor proofreading. In his first post on a Facebook page set up to promote his new autobiography, Nevertheless, he claimed the published edition “contains SEVERAL typos and errors which I was more than a little surprised to see”.

Related: Nevertheless: A Memoir by Alec Baldwin review – charm, candour and egotism

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Censored in Israel, praised by Merkel: the novelist who is a ‘threat to Jewish identity’

Dorit Rabinyan’s story of an affair across the Israeli-Palestinian divide became a cause célèbre. As the book is published in Britain, she talks about her year in the firing line

A year ago, the Israeli novelist Dorit Rabinyan was at the centre of an unexpected storm. Her third book, All the Rivers – about a relationship between a Palestinian artist, Hilmi, and an Israeli woman, Liat – had been selected for the national curriculum. Then, abruptly, it was withdrawn by the education ministry because of its subject matter.

That attempt at censorship – as Rabinyan acknowledges – had its positive aspect. Sales of her novel have doubled since it became a cause célèbre in Israel’s culture wars in January 2016. Now being translated into 20 languages, it was published in the UK last month. And Rabinyan is preparing to set off on a month’s book tour of the US.

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Writer, Warhol associate and TV Party host Glenn O'Brien dies aged 70

The New York renaissance man was a key player in the city’s punk, fashion and creative scenes for decades – and got his start in Warhol’s Factory

Glenn O’Brien, the New York cultural figure who was an author, musician, magazine editor, style guru, TV host and key figure at Andy Warhol’s Factory, has died aged 70.

Described by Rolling Stone, one of the publications he edited along with Warhol’s Interview, as a “renaissance man”, O’Brien was perhaps best known as the host of TV Party – the public access show on which he interviewed guests such as Debbie Harry and Jean-Michel Basquiat.

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Folio prize returns with nonfiction joining novels on the 2017 shortlist

The £20,000 award established as a more literary rival to the Booker has found a new sponsor and extended its reach to cover factual books

Three years after it was born from literary-world frustrations with the Man Booker prize, the Folio prize has returned, with a shortlist that has more than a little in common with other prizes this year.

The Folio prize was created in the wake of the 2011 Man Booker shortlist, when the judges controversially emphasised “readability” and a book’s ability to “zip along”, perceived by some to be at the expense of literary merit. Margaret Atwood deemed it “much needed in a world in which money is increasingly becoming the measure of all things”.

Related: Booker prize divides quality from readability, says Andrew Motion

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Crime and Punishment pays woman who chanced on Dostoevsky rarity

First English-language edition of the classic novel found in £14 box of secondhand books fetches £13,500 at auction

Fyodor Dostoevsky may have been pressured to write by his ever-growing gambling debts, but one woman’s gamble on a £14 box of books has resulted in the discovery and sale of a lucrative, rare first edition of his classic novel Crime and Punishment.

The novel, which follows the mental torment and moral dilemmas of student Rodion Raskolnikov who feels driven to commit murder, was first serialised in a Russian magazine in 1866 and published in two volumes a year later. It was first published in English in London in 1886, as an unassuming blue volume in Vizetelly’s One-Volume Novels series.

Related: How Lenin’s love of literature shaped the Russian Revolution

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Germany devours book on Angela Merkel decision to open borders

Non-fiction thriller and a novel on her state of mind both claim refugee crisis changed relationship between chancellor and her people

As Angela Merkel gears up for her third re-election later this year, observers could be forgiven for assuming that the issue which has come to dominate Germany’s image abroad will only play a minor role in the campaign.

A year and a half after the German chancellor and her Austrian counterpart opened borders to thousands of refugees in September 2015, the anti-migrant party Alternative für Deutschland has dropped in the polls to pre-crisis levels.

Related: Merkel made catastrophic mistake over open door to refugees, says Trump

Related: 'Either you're pro-refugee, or against': Bavarian town split after year of border controls

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Naomi Klein to rush out new book taking on Trump administration

Canadian activist, who only began writing No is Not Enough two months ago, says book will put forward manifesto for action

Naomi Klein has revealed she is to publish a new book taking on the Trump administration, arguing that a corporate political takeover got him elected and that a rise in activism can be utilised to resist his policies.

No Is Not Enough is the most rapidly written book by the acclaimed Canadian writer and activist, a respected political thinker with a huge following since her 1999 book No Logo. She only began writing it two months ago and it will be published in June.

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World's biggest prize for children's books goes to 'caring visionary'

Astrid Lindgren memorial award, worth £445,000, won by Wolf Erlbruch, a German illustrator whose books tackle tough subjects including death

German illustrator Wolf Erlbruch has won the world’s largest cash prize for children’s literature, the Astrid Lindgren memorial award, honouring an entire body of work by an author or institution.

Erlbruch, who has been nominated for the award several times, is a much-venerated figure in children’s literature in Germany; his books often tackle difficult and dark themes in childhood. He was one of 226 candidates from 60 countries for the 5m Swedish kronor (£445,000) honour, which goes to work “of the highest artistic quality” featuring the “humanistic values” of the late Pippi Longstocking author. The jury called him “a careful and caring visionary” who “makes existential questions accessible and manageable for readers of all ages”.

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Hay 2017 to host stars from Stephen Fry to Bernie Sanders

Celebrated polymath and veteran senator will appear alongside the likes of Graham Norton, Charlotte Rampling and Howard Jacobson

US president Bill Clinton once dubbed it “the Woodstock of the mind”. Now marking its 30th year, Hay festival is set to tackle Brexit, climate change and Donald Trump with a varied and high-profile political lineup. Stars include US senator Bernie Sanders, former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis and the former president of Mexico, Felipe Calderón.

Sanders, the outspoken critic of Donald Trump and longest serving independent in US congressional history, will speak at the festival – held in and around the small town of Hay-on-Wye on the Welsh border – about what will happen next in the US.

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Salman Rushdie accuses the White House of weaponising 'fake news'– video

The author says the White House has taken the label of fake news to use as a weapon, claiming the ‘the entire force of the state is aimed against the fourth estate’. The White House is the place ‘from where all untruth flows’, he says. Rushdie was speaking at the New York public library at A Dangerous Moment: Shades of Red and Blue, hosted by the Ethics Centre and supported by the Guardian

• Immigration, fake news and terror: Rushdie and experts on a dangerous moment for the US

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Shortlisted book features women able to kill men with single touch

Naomi Alderman whose sci-fi book The Power is shortlisted for Baileys women’s prize for fiction, hopes most readers won’t take it the wrong way

A science fiction book imagining a world where women develop a power to hurt or kill men with a single touch has been shortlisted for a major literary prize.

Naomi Alderman’s thriller The Power is one of six books shortlisted for the £30,000 Baileys women’s prize for fiction, an award which has been celebrating fiction written by women in English since 1996.

Related: Baileys women's prize for fiction 2016 longlist – in pictures

Related: Madeleine Thien: ‘In China, you learn a lot from what people don’t tell you’

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via Science fiction | The Guardian http://ift.tt/2nTBKTn

Shortlisted book features women able to kill men with single touch

Naomi Alderman whose sci-fi book The Power is shortlisted for Baileys women’s prize for fiction, hopes most readers won’t take it the wrong way

A science fiction book imagining a world where women develop a power to hurt or kill men with a single touch has been shortlisted for a major literary prize.

Naomi Alderman’s thriller The Power is one of six books shortlisted for the £30,000 Baileys women’s prize for fiction, an award which has been celebrating fiction written by women in English since 1996.

Related: Baileys women's prize for fiction 2016 longlist – in pictures

Related: Madeleine Thien: ‘In China, you learn a lot from what people don’t tell you’

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Amber Heard sues London Fields producer over body-double sex scenes

The actor accuses the film’s producer of secretly filming “pornographic” scenes with a body double that she claims violated a nudity clause in her contract

Amber Heard has filed a lawsuit against the producers of the troubled film adaptation of Martin Amis’s London Fields, over the recording of an “explicit pornographic sex scene” involving the actor’s body double.

According to the Hollywood Reporter, Heard is suing London Fields producer Christopher Hanley and his wife Roberta, the film’s screenwriter, for violating a ‘nudity rider’ included in her contract by shooting footage that she had no knowledge of after she had left the set. Heard’s lawyer says that the footage, featured in a producer’s cut of the film, was edited so as to leave audiences “with the distinct impression that it was Heard” in the scene.

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

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Conservatives and liberals united only by interest in dinosaurs, study shows

Can an interest in science unite a divided society? No, concludes research based on reading habits of those from right and left of the political spectrum

Hopes that science and its unending quest for the truth can mend the cracks in a divided society have taken a hit as new research has found liberals and conservatives share little common ground on the subject – apart from a fascination with dinosaurs.

Because science intends – in theory at least – to accrue facts from solid evidence, it stands a chance of bringing people together on issues they all agree with, such as the Earth circling the sun, and the first five digits of pi. That, the hope goes, might help reverse the social fragmentation that increasingly pits different groups against one another.

Related: Liberal bias: science writing's elephant in the room?

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Marvel executive says emphasis on diversity may have alienated readers

Comics studio’s vice president of sales tells summit that some stores say people ‘have had enough’ of new female and ethnic minority characters

Marvel’s vice president of sales has blamed declining comic-book sales on the studio’s efforts to increase diversity and female characters, saying that readers were “were turning their noses up” at diversity and “didn’t want female characters out there”.

Over recent years, Marvel has made efforts to include more diverse and more female characters, introducing new iterations of fan favourites including a female Thor; Riri Williams, a black teenager who took over the Iron Man storyline as Ironheart; Miles Morales, a biracial Spider-Man and Kamala Khan, a Muslim teenage girl who is the current Ms Marvel.

I love how Marvel thinks people are tired of "diversity".

NO I AM TIRED OF WATCHING UNCLE BEN DIE 373929463 TIMES.

An idiotic conclusion, @Marvel. I stopped buying your books because of the high price & event fatigue not diversity. https://t.co/uysUOwOBkh

Marvel thinks diversity is ruining their sales? Idk, MAYBE turning Captain America, a worldwide symbol, into a nazi has something to do

Related: African Avengers: the comic book creators shaking up superhero genre

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Tale of Dickens' fight to save Shakespeare house retold in exhibition

Events in which novelist helped save bard’s birthplace from clutches of US showman PT Barnum will be celebrated in Stratford

The story of how Charles Dickens helped save the house where William Shakespeare was born from the dastardly clutches of PT Barnum, the American showman who modestly billed his circus “the greatest show on earth”, will be celebrated in an exhibition at Stratford-upon-Avon this year.

The auction of the Tudor house was held in London on Thursday 16 September 1847, advertised by a poster announcing the sale of “the truly heart-stirring relic of a most glorious period and of ENGLAND’S IMMORTAL BARD ... the most honoured monument of the greatest genius that ever lived”.

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Declan Murphy: ‘When I woke up, I had no memory of my life as a jockey’

The former jump jockey reveals how he pieced together his missing years – and what it cost his friends and family

The moment that changed Declan Murphy’s life for ever arrived when he was 28. It was in 1994 at a May bank holiday meeting at Haydock Park, and Murphy, a celebrated jump jockey, was at the pinnacle of his career, riding Arcot, the favourite in the Swinton Hurdle. Heading into the last hurdle, the pair misjudged their stride and fell. While Murphy lay unconscious on the ground another horse galloped over him, one hoof hitting his head and shattering his skull in 12 places. It was an injury so severe that within days the Racing Post would run his obituary under the stark headline: “Declan Murphy dies in horror fall.”

Twenty-plus years would pass before Murphy, who spent four days in a medically induced coma and came within hours of having the life support machine switched off, felt up to revisiting his ghosts. The result, Centaur, written with Ami Rao, is not only a certain candidate for the William Hill sports book of the year but also sure to be on many non-sports fans’ end-of-year lists. Emotional and honest, Centaur is an unflinching look at how Murphy “came back from the dead” and the heavy price extracted for doing so.

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Yevgeny Yevtushenko, Russian poet who memorialised Babi Yar, dies aged 84

Poet and dissident who denounced Stalin died ‘surrounded by relatives and close friends’ in Oklahoma, where he taught at the University of Tulsa

The acclaimed Russian poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko, whose work focused on war atrocities and denounced antisemitism and tyrannical dictators, has died. He was 84.

Related: The sleep of reason

Related: Yevgeny Yevtushenko: That's what they get!

Related: Yevgeny Yevtushenko: School in Beslan

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