Lost to translation: how English readers miss out on foreign women writers

Only a third of books translated into English last year were by female writers. As Women in Translation month wraps up, we investigate why – and if things are changing

When Argentinian author Samanta Schweblin’s first book, El núcleo del disturbio came out in 2002, she was 24 years old, a fresh, female voice in a Latin American literary scene dominated by male greats: Jorge Luis Borges, Julio Cortázar, Mario Vargas Llosa, Gabriel García Márquez. Every good review was important, even if the praise was occasionally backhanded: onewell-known Argentinian critic loved her debut and said that she wrote like a man.

More than a decade later, she rolls her eyes. “That’s a compliment? It was so strange to me … and he was trying to be very nice, trying to cheer me up and push my career,” says Schweblin, now with a Man Booker International prize nomination under her belt.

Related: In their own words: 10 female translators on the work that inspires them

Related: The malice and sexism behind the ‘unmasking’ of Elena Ferrante

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Despacito drives Bertelsmann to record €500m profits

Song of the summer and TV shows American Gods and 13 Reasons Why boost German media group

The global success of 2017’s song of the summer, Despacito, together with sales of the TV series American Gods and the popularity of controversial book-turned-Netflix series 13 Reasons Why has helped drive record first-half profits at German media group Bertelsmann.

Related: Why Despacito is the perfect summer song in Trump's America | John Paul Brammer

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Pepe the Frog cartoonist forces withdrawal of 'alt-right' children's book

Matt Furie, whose ‘peaceful frog-dude’ has been co-opted as a far-right meme, has stopped distribution of book that lawyers say espouses Islamophobia

The cartoonist who created Pepe the Frog has taken legal action to force the author of a self-published children’s book that uses the character to espouse “racist, Islamophobic and hate-filled themes” to give all of his profits to a Muslim advocacy organisation.

Pepe, created by Matt Furie in the early 2000s as a “peaceful frog-dude” with the catchphrase “feels good man”, was adopted as a symbol by supporters of the US “alt-right” last year. He has since been designated by the Anti-Defamation League as a hate symbol, but Furie has been attempting to end the association, even killing off the character in one comic strip and subsequently launching a Kickstarter to raise money to “save Pepe”.

Related: Pepe the Frog creator kills off internet meme co-opted by white supremacists

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John Smelcer dropped from YA award amid 'concerns' over integrity

PEN Center USA’s young adult prize has withdrawn its shortlisting of Stealing Indians after a number of authors cast doubt on the writer’s bona fides

PEN Center USA has dropped John Smelcer’s novel Stealing Indians from the shortlist for its young adult award, after Smelcer’s integrity was publicly questioned by several writers, including Man Booker prize winner Marlon James.

Smelcer’s Stealing Indians was one of four titles in the running for the award. Telling the story of four Indian teenagers taken from their homes and sent to boarding schools in the 1950s, it was first published in 2016, but featured a quote on the cover from Chinua Achebe. (“A poignant story of colonisation and assimilation, something I know a little bit about. A masterpiece.”) Achebe died in 2013.

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Usborne apologises for puberty book that says breasts exist to make girls 'look grown-up and attractive'

Children’s publisher to revise wording in Growing Up for Boys after backlash on social media and Amazon

Usborne publishing has apologised and announced it will revise a puberty guide for boys that states that one of the functions of breasts is “to make the girl look grown-up and attractive”.

Published in 2013, Growing Up for Boys by Alex Frith is described by Usborne as a “frank and friendly book offering boys advice on what to expect from puberty and how to stay happy and confident as they go through physical, psychological and emotional changes”. According to the publisher, it “covers a range of topics, including moods and feelings, what happens to girls, diet, exercise, body image, sex and relationships, self-confidence, alcohol and drugs”.

Wtf? From the @Usborne book 'Growing up for Boys': Girls have breasts for two reasons - feeding babies and looking grown-up and attractive. http://pic.twitter.com/r1I34eLlvK

Related: Books for girls, about girls: the publishers trying to balance the bookshelves

Related: Parents push to end gender division of boys' and girls' books

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From Evelyn Waugh to Elizabeth I: Vivien Leigh's eclectic library up for auction

Personal inscriptions from Winston Churchill, Orson Welles and AA Milne in the actor and avid reader’s library are expected to sell for more than £500,000

Vivien Leigh’s star-studded library, including books inscribed by AA Milne, Winston Churchill, Truman Capote and Evelyn Waugh, as well as a document signed by Elizabeth I, is expected to exceed the £500,000 sale estimate at auction next month.

Among the highlights of the collection is a copy of Gone With The Wind, with a well-preserved handwritten poem given to the Scarlett O’Hara actor by the book’s author, Margaret Mitchell. It is expected to surpass its £7,000 estimate.

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Glenn Miller book clears RAF of accidentally killing band leader

Research by historian Dennis Spragg suggests that the Lancaster bombers often blamed were 90 minutes too early

The death of Glenn Miller has been one of the enduring unsolved mysteries of the second world war. The US musician’s aircraft vanished over the Channel without trace in 1944 after leaving a British airbase for France. The disappearance of the hottest big-band leader of the era has provoked numerous theories, some wild, with a long-held claim that his plane was brought down by RAF Lancasters jettisoning their bombs over the English Channel.

Related: Django Reinhardt with the Glenn Miller’s All Stars: Paris 1945 review – immaculate

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Deadpool star Ed Skrein quits Hellboy reboot after whitewashing controversy

British actor steps down from his role in the upcoming comic adaptation in response to debate over white actor playing an Asian character

Deadpool actor Ed Skrein has quite the upcoming Hellboy reboot after his casting was met with controversy.

Related: Ghost in the Shell’s whitewashing: does Hollywood have an Asian problem?

http://pic.twitter.com/8WoSsHXDFO

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The Philip K Dick book I love most…

In the 35 years since he died, the sci-fi writer’s probing of the nature of reality seems ever more prescient. Ahead of a Blade Runner sequel and new C4 series, three novelists pick their favourite works

Chosen by Nicola Barker

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Grandma Forgets: The picture book that helps families cope with pathos of dementia

In a publishing first, Paul Russell uses his own experience to bring the disease out of the shadows for young readers

From the earliest fairytales warning of the dangers of talking to strangers in the woods, to Roald Dahl’s moral messages about selfishness and greed, stories for children have been useful devices to broach difficult subjects. Now a new picture book tackles an issue largely overlooked by children’s literature, yet which affects an increasing number of families: what happens when a grandparent has dementia?

Grandma Forgets, by Paul Russell, tells the story of a little girl dealing with her grandmother’s illness, touching on the cruelty of a condition that robs sufferers of their memories. In the story, Grandma does not recognise family members, forgets how to play their games and frequently loses Dad’s keys.

Related: Jenny Downham: 'I hope readers will be less afraid of dementia after reading Unbecoming'

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University invites Game of Thrones fans to search George RR Martin archives for clues

While Thronies await The Winds of Winter, the sixth book in the A Song of Fire and Ice saga, the Cushing Library at Texas A&M University suggests they look for possible story ideas amid the 300 boxes of papers donated by Martin in 1993

It might not be quite as expansive as the Citadel’s vast library, but the Texas university that holds George RR Martin’s papers has invited the public to pick through the fantasy author’s archives to discover clues about upcoming storylines in his Game of Thrones books.

Martin’s archive was first deposited at the Cushing library at Texas A&M University in 1993 – three years before A Game of Thrones, the first novel in his A Song of Ice and Fire series, was published. Today it runs to more than 300 boxes of notes, manuscripts and papers and more than 1,300 books. Now the university’s chancellor, John Sharp, is encouraging students and members of the public to look through the archive.

Related: Let's just say it: George RR Martin needs to get on with The Winds of Winter

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Gina Miller to write 'rallying cry' memoir, Rise

Brexit legal challenger to write book about struggles in her work and personal life, as well as ‘offering guidance and confidence to women in particular’

Inspired by Maya Angelou’s “tone of defiance in the face of increasing hostility, hate and defamation” in the classic poem Still I Rise, anti-Brexit campaigner Gina Miller has written a memoir which her publisher hopes will be a “rallying cry” for other women to make their voices heard.

Rise, which will be published in August 2018, has just been sold at auction to the independent publisher Canongate. Miller, who became a public figure when she successfully challenged the UK government over its authority to trigger article 50 without parliamentary approval, will write the book with the novelist and journalist Elizabeth Day.

Related: Gina Miller: ‘The dishonesty still goes on. That’s what I abhor’

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Tattoos, gravediggers and traffic cones: the KLF take Liverpool

Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty are staging a three-day series of events to mark their collaborative return after 23 years – and they’ve already formed a new band, Badger Kull, after day one

“It’s not a book launch.” Bill Drummond’s first five words may come as no surprise to anyone who’s followed his and Jimmy Cauty’s inventively abstruse creative partnership since their 1987 appearance as the Justified Ancients of Mu Mu, the band who’d later storm the charts as the KLF.

For the purposes of writing a novel, 2023, which is either impenetrable or terrible or both, they’re now the JAMs again, sitting side by side in an independent Liverpool bookshop having arrived at midnight in a customised ice-cream van: a) blaring out the KLF’s What Time is Love?; and b) with a coffin in the back. This comes ahead of Welcome to the Dark Ages, a £100-a-head, 400-capacity three-day event drawing on themes from the book and the duo’s 30-year history. They’re rubber-stamping books instead of signing them, because of course they are.

Related: The return of the KLF: pop's greatest provocateurs take on a post-truth world

Related: GoogleByte v Beyon-Say: an exclusive extract from the KLF's chilling novel about the world in 2023

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'My skin crawled': Hillary Clinton recalls dealing with 'creep' Trump

In an excerpt from the former presidential candidate’s forthcoming memoir, she describes sharing a stage with Donald Trump ‘looming’ behind her

Hillary Clinton considered telling Donald Trump: “Back up, you creep!” during one of the presidential debates, adding, in the first extract from her new book, that “my skin crawled” when he invaded her personal space.

In the comments, broadcast by MSNBC’s Morning Joe on Wednesday, the former Democratic presidential nominee recounts how uncomfortable she felt being on stage with the future president just two days after his infamous “pussy-grabbing” tape had been made public.

Related: Hillary Clinton to 'let her guard down' in candid 2016 election memoir

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GoogleByte v Beyon-Say: an exclusive extract from the KLF's chilling novel about the world in 2023

The KLF, the band that burned £1m, are back – with a futureshocker in which AppleTree and GoogleByte are global powers. But is a shadowy group called the Illuminati actually in charge? And is it true J-Zee and Beyon-Say are members?

09.27 Sunday 23 April 2023

There are some who have decreed order is the natural order of not only the human condition but of everything that has ever existed and is ever likely to exist.

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Martin Scorsese to produce 'gritty and grounded' Joker origin story – reports

Directed by Todd Phillips, with a lead that’s yet to be cast, the ‘hard-boiled crime film’ will pay stylistic homage to Scorsese’s films of early-80s

The Batman universe is set to expand once more with a new film from Warner Bros and DC with Martin Scorsese on board to produce, according to a report in the Hollywood online news site, Deadline.

The film – an origin story of the character, which won’t be attached to any other iteration – will be directed by The Hangover’s Todd Phillips, who will co-write the film with Scott Silver (8 Mile, The Fighter).

Martin Scorsese on board to produce a 1980's Gotham City crime film based on the origins of the Joker? You have my attention... #TheJoker

Okay I'm hopeful for the Joker movie. If they are casting a new joker and Scorsese is suppose to produce then all is not lost.

DiCaprio must be playing the joker? DiNero is his father? Where does Joe Pesci fit in?

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IPA urges China to 'respect the decision' of Cambridge University Press to restore articles

International Publishers Association praises CUP’s decision, counter to China’s censorship request, but will ‘wait to see what the consequences’ are

The president of the International Publishers Association has urged the Chinese government not to take punitive action against Cambridge University Press following the publisher’s decision to restore online access to hundreds of academic articles it had been asked to remove by Chinese authorities.

Related: Cambridge University Press backs down over China censorship

.@Cambridge_Uni has also announced its decision to push back against Chinese censorship on Chinese social media, in Chinese http://pic.twitter.com/laV6u4O1yi

Related: China’s bid to block my journal’s articles is a new attack on academic freedom | Tim Pringle

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Antifa: the Anti-fascist Handbook – 'What Trump said made the book seem even more urgent'

Rushed into print after the US president said there were ‘fine people on both sides’ of the Charlottesville clashes, Mark Bray’s guide provides tactics for those hoping to ‘defeat the resurgent far right’

When US president Donald Trump drew a parallel between the far-right protestors in Charlottesville and counter demonstrators last week, saying that, “You had people that were very fine people on both sides. Not all those people were neo-Nazis, not all those people were white supremacists”, Melville House rushed into action.

The independent publisher worked around the clock to get a new book printed following Trump’s remarks, and one week later, Antifa: the Anti-fascist Handbook is on bookshop shelves. A history of and guide to the anti-fascism movement, Antifa had originally been scheduled for September, but “everything in Charlottesville, and Trump’s odd behaviour around it, meant we tried to accelerate it even more,” said Melville House co-founder Dennis Johnson. “When the president said what he said, it made the book seem even more urgent.”

Related: ‘Alt-right’, ‘alt-left’ – the rhetoric of hate after Charlottesville

Related: Anti-fascist activists take on Trump and the far right: 'Resistance is our only shot'

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Brian Aldiss: the pre-eminent science-fiction writer – and always a gentleman

Neil Gaiman remembers the ‘grand old man’ of sci-fi, whose death at the age of 92 was announced earlier in the week, as a ‘genially opinionated giant’

I encountered Brian Aldiss when I was a boy. I liked him as a writer, but even more than I enjoyed his writing, I loved his editorial choices: his influence on Penguin’s science fiction through the 1960s was immeasurable, and he introduced me to many of my favourite writers.

Related: Brian Aldiss obituary

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Solzhenitsyn's Russian Revolution epic to be published in English

First complete translation announced of dissident’s multi-volume historical novel The Red Wheel – his ‘life’s mission’ – after anonymous donor funds project

A grant from an anonymous donor is enabling the late Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s epic cycle of novels about the Russian Revolution – a work which was the Soviet dissident writer’s “life’s mission”, according to his son – to be published in English for the first time.

Stephan Solzhenitsyn said the upcoming translation covered “the very heart of the Russian Revolution: the toppling of Russia’s 1,000-year monarchy”. His father was born in 1918, a year after the revolution and at 17 he decided to “be its chronicler”, in 1936. “War, prison, camps, survival from terminal cancer, and his fight to tell the story of the Gulag intervened and delayed, but did not stop him from his life’s mission,” said Stephan.

Related: The Russian Revolution: then and now

Related: Top 10 books about the Russian Revolution

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‘Speculative fiction is a powerful political tool’: from War of the Worlds to Terra Nullius

When Claire G Coleman decided to write a story about dystopian Australia, she realised that the most unsettling narratives came straight out of the past

Claire G Coleman knew she needed to write a novel when she visited a memorial to a massacre on her family’s traditional lands.

Coleman, who identifies with the south coast Noongar people, had been travelling around Australia in a caravan for two-and-a-half years. “When I returned to country, I went to a museum in a small town where my grandfather was born,” she tells Guardian Australia. “There was an entire section of the museum dedicated to my family.”

Related: Taboo by Kim Scott review – a masterful novel on the frontier of truth-telling

Aboriginal people live in a dystopia every day.

Related: From Wonder Woman to Spirited Away: what really makes a superhero?

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Australian book week: share your best/worst costumes for the school parade

It’s that time of year when parents become amateur costume designers, often with no warning. We want to hear your stories – and see your photos, please!

In the movies, parental inadequacy is usually denoted by the parent buying store-bought cakes instead of slaving over a hot stove themselves – but there’s nothing quite like a book week parade to make you feel like the worst parent on the planet.

Especially when the first you heard of the parade is at 8am on the day itself, just as you’re shoving store-bought cakes into lunchboxes. As other kids turn up in elaborate homemade Peter Pan or Pearlie in the Park or Where the Wild Things Are costumes (not that there’s anything wrong with that), you have to try to convince your seven-year-old that wearing his dad’s Y-fronts outside his jeans with a red towel on his shoulders will make him the best Captain Underpants ever.

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Brian Aldiss obituary

One of Britain’s most accomplished and versatile writers who was best known for his works of science fiction

Brian Aldiss, author of the classic Helliconia trilogy, and the story on which Steven Spielberg’s 2001 film AI: Artificial Intelligence was based, was one of Britain’s most accomplished and versatile writers of science fiction. In a lifelong and prolific career, Aldiss, who has died aged 92, produced more than 40 novels and almost as many short-story collections. An ambitious and gifted writer, with a flowing and inventive literary style, he did not confine himself to science fiction. As well as his prodigious output of SF, he wrote several bestselling mainstream novels, poetry, drama, two autobiographies and several film scenarios. He also edited a huge number of anthologies and produced a body of criticism that was remarkable for its energy and clarity.

He began publishing his stories in the mid-1950s, a time when SF was heavily dominated by US writers schooled in the markets of commercial magazines. Aldiss’s work came as a breath of fresh air to a genre beginning to suffocate in its own orthodoxies. He wrote lively, intelligent prose, shot through with subversive humour, linguistic novelty and human observation. He took for his subjects the full range of modern scientific research. As well as the exact sciences, he also plundered speculative, psychological, sociological and sexological areas of inquiry. One of the most exhilarating aspects of reading Aldiss is the diversity of his imagination.

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Science fiction author Brian Aldiss dies aged 92

The prolific writer behind more than 80 books and editor of 40 anthologies died at his Oxford home after celebrating his birthday

Brian Aldiss, the “grand old man” of science fiction whose writing has shaped the genre since he was first published in the 1950s, has died at the age of 92.

Aldiss’s agent, Curtis Brown, and his son, Tim Aldiss, have announced that the author, artist, poet and memoirist died at home in Oxford in the early hours of 19 August. “Brian had celebrated his birthday with close friends and family and spoken to many close to him,” wrote Tim on Twitter as he announced the death of “our beloved father and grandfather”.

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Science fiction author Brian Aldiss dies aged 92

The prolific writer behind more than 80 books and editor of 40 anthologies died at his Oxford home after celebrating his birthday

Brian Aldiss, the “grand old man” of science fiction whose writing has shaped the genre since he was first published in the 1950s, has died at the age of 92.

Aldiss’s agent, Curtis Brown, and his son, Tim Aldiss, have announced that the author, artist, poet and memoirist died at home in Oxford in the early hours of 19 August. “Brian had celebrated his birthday with close friends and family and spoken to many close to him,” wrote Tim on Twitter as he announced the death of “our beloved father and grandfather”.

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German writer held in Spain on Turkish warrant granted conditional release

Turkish-born author Doğan Akhanlı, who has written about human rights in Turkey, was arrested on Saturday while on holiday

Germany welcomed the release on Sunday of a German writer detained in Spain on a Turkish warrant and accused Turkey of abusing the international system used to hunt down fugitives.

Turkish-born writer Doğan Akhanlı, who has German citizenship, was arrested on Saturday while on holiday in southern Spain. Akhanlı was conditionally released after a court hearing on Sunday, but ordered to remain in Madrid while Turkey’s extradition request is considered, his lawyer said.

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When Milton met Galileo: the collision of cultures that helped shape Paradise Lost

A transformative visit to Catholic Florence inspired the Puritan poet to write his epic masterpiece, a BBC documentary reveals

It is an epic poem with a daunting reputation that has struck fear into the hearts of many a student of English literature. Recounting the fall of man, and Adam and Eve’s expulsion from the Garden of Eden, Paradise Lost cemented the reputation of its author, the staunchly Protestant poet, John Milton, as one of England’s literary giants.

The 10,000-line poem is regarded as one of the defining contributions to the English canon, a work to be mentioned in the same breath as those of Chaucer, Shakespeare and Dickens. But 350 years after its publication, some rather surprising influences on the Puritan imagination of its author have emerged, the result of a little-known journey the poet undertook to the heart of Catholic Italy.

Related: 'England hath need of thee': appeal to save Milton's Paradise Lost cottage

Related: Paradise Lost 'translated more often in last 30 years than previous 300'

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Has Donald Trump ruined the dystopian novel? Let's hope not

Sci-fi author John Scalzi has despaired at the impact on fiction of the dramatic, lurid US presidency – but the best dystopias have emerged in the toughest times

First it was the literary authors, lambasted by Aleksandar Hemon in June 2016 for failing to take on the era of Trump in their fiction. Hemon had declined to sign a letter denouncing Trump that more than 400 of his fellow authors had put their names to, and wondered if their time might have been better spent tackling the approaching election on the page. “One has a hard time recalling a novel that has forcefully addressed the iniquities of the post-9/11 era,” he wrote last summer. “Perhaps there is an author among the open letter signatories eager to develop a narrative in which Trump … wouldn’t be the false cause of our discontent but a symbol of an America struggling to forestall its precipitous intellectual and political decline, to which the absence of its literature from its politics must have contributed.”

Related: How can fiction compete with the drama of Donald Trump’s presidency?

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Claire Zorn's grief-and-surfing story wins children's book of the year award

One Would Think the Deep triumphs in category for older readers, with Go Home, Cheeky Animals! winning early childhood prize in CBCA prizes

Stories about grief, animals and hiking through the Grampians have taken out the top gongs in this year’s Children’s Book Council of Australia book of the year awards.

Related: From Wonder Woman to Spirited Away: what really makes a superhero?

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Collection of Yeats family treasures to go on display for first time

Letters from poet WB Yeats to his first love, and artwork by his brother, sisters and father will be auctioned at Sotheby’s

A treasure trove of Yeats family material, including hundreds of passionate, rueful and philosophical letters from the poet William Butler to the first of his many loves, and the desk at which he wrote them, will go on public display for the first time in Dublin and London in September, before being sold in a Sotheby’s auction in London.

The sale will include books, paintings, furniture and personal possessions relating to all the members of the extraordinarily artistic family, whose lives and work were also woven into the history of 20th century Ireland. The material includes not just the letters from the Nobel laureate poet WB Yeats but also his hair brushes, many works by his painter brother Jack B Yeats, an important group by their artist father, John B Yeats, including family portraits and his last self-portrait, and original artworks and embroidery designs for the Cuala Press founded by the poet’s sisters, Lolly and Lily, using skills they had learned at the Kelmscott Press founded by William Morris and from his textile artist daughter, May.

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'England hath need of thee': appeal to save Milton's Paradise Lost cottage

Charity seeks to build on lottery pledge to secure a lasting future for museum in home where writer completed his epic poem on the fall of man

Pointing to Wordsworth’s comment more than 200 years ago that “Milton! Thou shouldst be living at this hour. / England hath need of thee”, a charity has launched an “urgent” appeal to the public to help it preserve the 16th-century Buckinghamshire cottage where John Milton completed Paradise Lost, 350 years ago.

The radical poet lived in the Chalfont St Giles cottage after he fled London during the 1665 plague. Although he remained there for less than two years, it was where he completed his masterpiece, Paradise Lost. The cottage is the only surviving residence of the poet and is open to the public as a museum. It holds a leading collection of first editions, as well as a lock of the poet’s hair, and an original proclamation from King Charles II, banning his books. According to the charity, it is the second-oldest writer’s home museum in the world after Shakespeare’s birthplace. Without a much-needed injection of cash, however, the museum risks closure.

Related: Quiz: How well do you know John Milton?

Related: Paradise Lost 'translated more often in last 30 years than previous 300'

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Authors voice fury at Russian publisher cutting gay scene from teen book

Author VE Schwab ‘devastated’ after discovering a storyline was cut without her permission in Russia, where LGBT books are regularly shrinkwrapped

VE Schwab’s Shades of Magic series follows the story of the magician Kell, a “traveller” with the ability to move between four parallel versions of London. Acclaimed and bestselling – in the Guardian it was called “a compelling, swashbuckling read” – the young adult fantasy trilogy features a diverse array of characters, from the gender-fluid pickpocket Lila to the bisexual prince Rhy. However, Schwab was horrified to learn last week that her books aren’t quite so diverse in Russian translations, where her publisher excised a scene about the romantic relationship between two male characters.

“The Russian edition of Shades of Magic has been my favourite. This week I learned that they redacted the entire queer plot w/out permission,” she wrote on Twitter to her more than 50,000 followers, describing herself as “positively devastated”.

Related: Russian 'gay propaganda' law ruled discriminatory by European court

Related: Fanny Hill: why would anyone ban the racy novel about 'a woman of pleasure'?

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The guilty secret: Chinese crime writer arrested for four cold-case murders

Liu Yongbiao had talked of plans for book about killer author who evades capture but police say he is now a suspect in multiple decades-old murders

In the introduction to his novel The Guilty Secret, Chinese writer Liu Yongbiao revealed he had already started work on a follow-up he hoped would prove a literary sensation: a suspense-filled, cold-case detective drama about a ravishing female author who evades capture despite committing a string of grisly murders.

He would call it The Beautiful Writer who Killed.

Related: The lying Dutchman: how a crime writer confessed to his wife's murder

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Nick Clegg book will reveal How to Stop Brexit

The ex-deputy prime minister’s ‘resistance handbook’, out in October, explains how the EU referendum decision can be reversed while reuniting the UK – and seems destined to fill many remoaners’ Christmas stockings

Alongside tips on household management from Mary Berry and help with home cooking from Nigella Lawson, a different kind of guide is also due to land on bookshop shelves this Christmas: How to Stop Brexit, by the former deputy prime minister Nick Clegg.

Publisher the Bodley Head has announced that Clegg’s manual about remaining in the EU would be published on 5 October. How to Stop Brexit (And Make Britain Great Again) will, said the publisher, see the former leader of the Liberal Democrats show that there is “nothing remotely inevitable” about Brexit – and lay out how readers can help to stop it.

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Good Omens: David Tennant and Michael Sheen to save the world in TV adaptation

Terry Pratchett would be ‘over the moon’ at the casting according to his estate, while co-author Neil Gaiman reminds Hollywood to give both equal credit

The late Terry Pratchett would have been “over the moon” at the “dream” casting of David Tennant as the demon Crowley in the forthcoming adaptation of Good Omens, according to the Discworld author’s long-time assistant Rob Wilkins.

Variety reported that Michael Sheen will play the angel Aziraphale, and Tennant will take on the role of Crowley, in Amazon Studios’ six-episode adaptation next year. Co-authored by Pratchett and Neil Gaiman, the 1990 fantasy bestseller Good Omens tells of Crowley and Aziraphale’s attempts to prevent the apocalypse, following the birth of the antichrist, Adam, in Lower Tadfield, Oxfordshire.

My job as Executive Producer on #GoodOmens is primarily to remind the world the book had TWO FECKING AUTHORS @Variety.

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H(a)ppy by Nicola Barker review – life in a world without stories

Nicola Barker’s kaleidoscopic new novel is a socio-political futurama with a wildness and honesty all of its own

What wonders there are in Nicola Barker’s bewildering, fatiguing and deliciously stimulating new novel, and what colours would those adjectives appear in had they been processed by The Graph, the all-seeing, nearly all-controlling system that monitors citizens’ emotions and accordingly represents them in pinks, reds, blues and purples? The more dramatic the emotion, the stronger the colour – but rather than indicating a welcome concentration of excitement or pleasure, such variations are to be repudiated: in Barker’s brave new world – whether a dystopia or a utopia is a moot point – stability, calm and neutrality are prized above all else.

This is the post-history, post-pain, post-individual world of The Young, who have traded what the uninitiated might view as their liberty for membership of a moderated, soothed and protected group consciousness. Sexual desire, grief, regret, hope, ambition – all are things of the past, or would be, should The Past still be permitted to exist. As “characters” on the page, even their physicality is dubious; despite mentions of hand, chairs, clothes, light, they read as if strangely and disturbingly disembodied.

In the face of such colliding stories, characters and frames of reference, culture becomes a kaleidoscope, constantly shifting

Related: Nicola Barker: ‘I find books about middle-class people so boring – I feel like stabbing myself’

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Eimear McBride wins James Tait Black prize for The Lesser Bohemians

The Irish novelist’s ‘astonishing’ novel about the sexual awakening of a teenager with an older actor lands the UK’s oldest literary award

Eimear McBride, who won the Baileys prize in 2014 for a first novel which had struggled to find a publisher, has taken Britain’s oldest literary award, the James Tait Black prize, for her second, The Lesser Bohemians.

Won by names from EM Forster to DH Lawrence, the James Tait Black prizes for fiction and biography have a history that stretches back to 1919. More than 400 titles were submitted for this year’s prizes, with a shortlist chosen by University of Edinburgh academics and postgraduate students.

Related: The Lesser Bohemians by Eimear McBride review – a brilliant evocation of sex and intimacy

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Asia’s Harry Potter obsession poses threat to owls

From Indonesia to India, wild birds are being sold as pets to families who want their own Hedwig. Ecologists call for protection to help species survive

The Harry Potter phenomenon has broken publishing and cinema box-office records and spawned a series of lucrative theme parks. But wildlife experts are sounding the alarm over a sad downside to JK Rowling’s tales of the troubled young wizard. The illegal trade in owls has jumped in the far east over the past decade and researchers fear it could endanger the survival of these distinctive predators in Asia.

Conservationists say the snowy owl Hedwig – who remains the young wizard’s loyal companion for most of the Harry Potter series – is fuelling global demand for wild-caught birds for use as pets. In 2001, the year in which the first film was released, only a few hundred were sold at Indonesia’s many bird markets. By 2016, the figure had soared to more than 13,000, according to researchers Vincent Nijman and Anna Nekaris of Oxford Brookes University in a paper in Global Ecology and Conservation. At around $10 to $30, the price tag is affordable to most middle-class families.

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Hugo awards 2017: NK Jemisin wins best novel for second year in a row

The Obelisk is headline winner in a year marked by diminished presence of conservative Sad Puppy lobby and strong showing from women

A year after NK Jemisin became the first black person to win the Hugo award for best novel, the African American author has landed the prestigious science fiction prize for the second year running.

Jemisin was announced as the winner of the best novel Hugo at Worldcon in Helsinki on Friday. She took the prize, which is voted for by fans, for The Obelisk Gate, the follow-up to her Hugo award-winning novel The Fifth Season. The series is set in a world that is constantly threatened by seismic activity, and where the mutants who can control the environment are oppressed by humans. The New York Times called Jemisin’s writing in the series “intricate and extraordinary”.

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Hugo awards 2017: NK Jemisin wins best novel for second year in a row

The Obelisk is headline winner in a year marked by diminished presence of conservative Sad Puppy lobby and strong showing from women

A year after NK Jemisin became the first black person to win the Hugo award for best novel, the African American author has landed the prestigious science fiction prize for the second year running.

Jemisin was announced as the winner of the best novel Hugo at Worldcon in Helsinki on Friday. She took the prize, which is voted for by fans, for The Obelisk Gate, the follow-up to her Hugo award-winning novel The Fifth Season. The series is set in a world that is constantly threatened by seismic activity, and where the mutants who can control the environment are oppressed by humans. The New York Times called Jemisin’s writing in the series “intricate and extraordinary”.

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

Booksellers Association calls for end to Amazon's 'deeply unfair' tax advantages

After figures showed that the online giant pays proportionally far less UK tax than its bricks-and-mortar competitors, the trade body has demanded change

Bricks-and-mortar bookshops have launched a broadside against Britain’s “deeply unfair” tax system, which they say forces them to compete against the likes of Amazon “with one hand tied behind their backs”, after it was revealed that the online retailer’s corporation tax more than halved last year.

On Thursday, Amazon’s latest annual accounts for its European online retail business revealed that while turnover at Amazon UK Services – the company’s warehouse and logistics operation – rose to almost £1.5bn in 2016, its corporation tax payments fell from £15.8m to £7.4m year on year.

Related: Will business rates hike be final chapter for high street bookshops?

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Read like a girl: how children’s books of female stories are booming

Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls and Fantastically Great Women Who Changed the World are just two of a raft of inspirational titles changing bedtime reading

Studies in the past have found that children’s books are dominated by male characters, that history books are overrun by male authors writing about male figures, and that literary fiction is less likely to win a prize if it focuses on a female character.

A new wave of books aimed at children might just be doing its small bit to change that. Thousands of little girls – boys as well, but likely mainly girls – will be settling down for bed this evening with a new kind of bedtime story, one in which the heroines are not fictional, but real. From Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls to Fantastically Great Women Who Changed the World, sales of books about inspirational women have boomed this year – and look set to grow.

Related: The Guardian view on feminism and sci-fi: asking what if women ruled the world | Editorial

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A 'gurt' plan: National Poetry Day to celebrate England's local words

From the Bristol word for great, via Merseyside’s ‘geg in’ and London’s ‘fam’, 12 authors are writing poems celebrating language tied to English regions

From the Berkshire term for a woodlouse, “cheeselog”, to a Suffolk phrase for lopsided, “on the huh”, England’s poets are set to do their bit for preserving regional dialects, with a series of poems celebrating local words.

The initiative to “shine a light into a lexicon that’s too often overlooked”, as the lexicographer Susie Dent described it, stems from the #freetheword project, a partnership between BBC English Regions, National Poetry Day and the Oxford English Dictionary to find unrecorded words used in everyday speech all around the UK.

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Blair reveals he 'toyed with Marxism' after reading book on Trotsky

Former prime minister tells BBC Radio 4 that learning about the Russian revolutionary was ‘like a light going on’

Tony Blair has said that he “toyed with Marxism” as a young man after being inspired by a biography of Leon Trotsky that detailed “extraordinary causes and injustices”.

The former prime minister, who rebranded his party “New Labour” in the belief it would be most electable as a centre-ground party, said yes when asked in a BBC interview if he was “briefly a Trot”.

Related: Revealed: Jeremy Corbyn’s secret backer when chips were down – Tony Blair

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Eva Rausing's father condemns 'self–indulgent' memoir about her drug addiction

Mayhem, by sister-in-law of the wealthy socialite whose drug-related death in 2012 was a media sensation, is due to be published next month

The father of Eva Rausing, the wealthy American socialite whose death made headlines around the world, has accused her sister-in-law – the author of a forthcoming memoir about Eva’s drug addiction – of contributing to her decline, and questioned “the agenda and objectives” of her book.

Eva, the 48-year-old wife of the billionaire Tetra Pak heir Hans Kristian Rausing, was found dead in 2012, under piles of bedding and plastic in a squalid room in the couple’s London mansion. The body was only found two months after she died, during a police search of the property when Hans Kristian was arrested on suspicion of possessing Class A drugs. He later pleaded guilty to preventing the lawful and decent burial of a body and was given a suspended sentence. An inquest found that his wife had died from the effects of cocaine on a damaged heart.

Related: Sigrid Rausing: 'The sadness was overwhelming'

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Shocking figures: US academics find 'dramatic' growth of swearing in books

Textual analysis of more than 1m books by scholars shows startling proliferation of swearwords since the mid-1950s

Mark Twain wrote: “There ought to be a room in every house to swear in,” because “it’s dangerous to have to repress an emotion like that”. Today, the great American novelist might have applauded the increase in cursing, with a new study identifying a “dramatic” increase in swear words in American literature over the last 60 years.

Sifting through text from almost 1m books, the study found that “motherfucker” was used 678 times more often in the mid-2000sthan the early 1950s, occurrences of “shit” multiplied 69 times, and “fuck” was 168 times more frequent the same modern texts.

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Public libraries at the crossroads: should volunteers be keeping them open?

Hundreds of UK libraries are still open – but only because voluntary staff have stepped in. Campaigners and professionals explain why this is a mixed blessing

Readers checking a book out of the village library might not immediately notice much of a difference, but Congresbury is the latest public library to haven been handed over “to the community”. You may be used to libraries being run by volunteers – maybe your local is – but this structure is relatively new. Over the last decade, as many libraries began closing across the UK due to swingeing cuts to local authority funding by central government – 121 libraries closed last year alone – some have instead been handed over by councils to the community to run.

Since librarian Ian Anstice began charting the cuts to UK libraries on his campaigning website Public Libraries News in 2010, 500 of the UK’s 3,850 remaining libraries have now been taken over, at least in part, by volunteers. “I’ve been looking at the count going up steadily for the last few years,” says Anstice. “In 2010, there were a handful – perhaps 10 in the whole country. So this is quite a staggering change.”

If the community doesn’t want to run it, councils] say "well, the community doesn’t want a library"

Volunteers have a brilliant role to play... but they shouldn’t be compelled to take over running the service.

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Netflix can spawn a Disney-Marvel like Millarworld superhero universe

Acquisition of Scottish comic book business can transform into a multi-billion dollar film franchise, but Kick-Ass and Kingsman need some company

Netflix has grand ambitions for Millarworld, the Scottish comic book company it acquired this week. The aim is to repeat Disney’s success with Marvel, where the creator of the Avengers and the Guardians of the Galaxy has become a launchpad for multi-billion dollar film franchises.

Here are four ways in which Netflix can make a global success of Millarworld properties including Kick-Ass and Kingsman.

Related: Netflix buys comic book company behind Kick-Ass and Kingsman

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Netflix buys comic book company behind Kick-Ass and Kingsman

Streaming giant aims to copy Marvel owner Disney’s superhero strategy with Millarworld, its first ever acquisition

Netflix has made its first acquisition, buying the comic book company behind Kick-Ass and Kingsman, as it looks to imitate Marvel-owner Disney’s superhero strategy.

Netflix’s acquisition of Millarworld, founded by former Marvel comic developer Mark Millar, is a strategic move to own and develop its own universe of superhero TV series and films.

Related: Business Today: sign up for a morning shot of financial news

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Monica Lewinsky defends Mary Beard in Twitter row over black Roman Britons

Classical historian’s support for accuracy of educational video draws fire from US academic, but support from President Clinton’s former intern and other stars

Public figures from Monica Lewinsky to JK Rowling and Diane Abbott are lining up to support Mary Beard, after the the classical historian found herself at the centre of a storm of Twitter abuse at the weekend.

Beard came under fire after she wrote that a BBC educational video that showed a black Roman soldier was “pretty accurate”. The video, uploaded to YouTube by the BBC last December, had been criticised by some viewers as being anachronistic, but Beard wrote on Twitter that “there’s plenty of firm evidence for ethnic diversity in Roman Britain”.

Beard said "accurate" which got me going. Then backtracked
Then misrepresented the exchange abt credentials.
Then used the feminist cover. http://pic.twitter.com/FOKqWJ6JXm

Related: Mary Beard: I almost didn't feel such generic, violent misogyny was about me

Look at all these men, none of whom are historians calling names to academic historian @wmarybeard, because she asked for evidence? Amazing. https://t.co/KvwWmngWCG

Similar figures from other urban sites too eg. Roman London, where 24% of ppl studied were of prob African ancestry: https://t.co/0J25h6exRA

A high IQ and an area or two of expertise do not give you license to claim superiority over all other experts in THEIR areas of expertise

http://pic.twitter.com/YwKbIFq3aR

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Mary Beard abused on Twitter over Roman Britain's ethnic diversity

Classicist says her assertion that there was at least some diversity under Roman rule led to ‘torrent of aggressive insults’

Mary Beard has said she faced a “torrent of aggressive insults” on social media after posting messages asserting the ethnic diversity of Roman Britain.

The historian had been defending a BBC schools video that featured a black high-ranking Roman soldier as the father of a family, prompting the wave of online abuse. One person said she was “literally rewriting history”.

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Philip Pullman leads writers condemning 'pernicious' book discounts

His Dark Materials novelist says today’s steep price cuts devalue authors’ work and cheapen the experience of reading

With more than two months to go before Philip Pullman’s long-awaited new novel from the world of His Dark Materials is published, pre-orders have sent La Belle Sauvage flying up bestseller lists. But with booksellers already slashing the cover price in half, the award-winning author has spoken out about how cheap books devalue the experience of reading, and called for an end to the “pernicious” doctrine of “market fundamentalism” if literary culture is to survive.

Pullman is president of the Society of Authors, which is launching a campaign for publishers to stop damaging authors’ earnings by discounting bulk sales to book clubs and supermarkets, and has slammed the cut-price culture in his trade.

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JK Rowling's return to Harry Potter makes her world's richest author in 2017

As her wizarding world returns to the stage and screen, Rowling’s $95m pushes James Patterson into second place with $87m

JK Rowling will need to reserve a particularly large vault at Gringotts bank after a bumper year for the Harry Potter novelist magicked her back to the No 1 spot on Forbes’ list of the world’s richest authors, almost a decade after she last topped it.

Forbes – which uses a mix of print, ebook and audio sales data, television and film earnings and expert industry opinion to come up with its list – estimates that Rowling earned $95m in the year to 31 May. This figure is the equivalent of more than $180 per minute, thanks to the sensational sales of her play script, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. When the Harry Potter follow-up was released last summer, it sold more than 680,000 print copies in the UK in the first three days alone, and became the fastest selling book since the final Harry Potter novel.

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James Comey, casualty of Trump's 'Russia thing', signs $2m book deal

The former FBI director, sacked in wake of clash with the US president, promises insights into the ‘highest-stakes situations’ of his career

The former FBI director James Comey has signed a $2m (£1.5m) deal for a book about leadership and decision-making that will draw on his career in government, which included the high-profile drama leading up to his sacking from Donald Trump’s administration.

According to the publisher, Comey will tell how he handled the bureau’s probe into Hillary Clinton’s private email server and the allegations of ties between Russia and Trump’s presidential campaign.

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Royal Society science book prize shortlist tackles 'the big questions'

Judges hail writers’ blend of eloquence and erudition on subjects ranging from the evolution of the octopus to the impact of technology on modern man

From the vastness of infinity to the microbes that live within us, the shortlist for the Royal Society Insight Investment science book prize tackles “the big questions of our time”, according to chair of judges Richard Fortey.

Palaeontologist and writer Fortey, with his fellow judges, read almost 200 books to come up with their lineup of six, which ranges from In Pursuit of Memory, Joseph Jebelli’s look at the quest to find a cure for Alzheimer’s, to Peter Godfrey-Smith’s Other Minds, which explores the evolutionary journey of the octopus. Also shortlisted are Cordelia Fine’s study of gender politics, Testosterone Rex, which tackles the myth that sex creates male and female natures and Mark O’Connell’s To Be a Machine, looking at how technology is changing the human condition. Completing the field are Eugenia Cheng’s Beyond Infinity, a study of the concept of infinity, and Ed Yong’s I Contain Multitudes, about the microbes in our bodies.

Related: Alien intelligence: the extraordinary minds of octopuses and other cephalopods

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'Trainspotting generation' most likely to die from drug misuse

Surge in deaths among 40- to 49-year-olds last year helps fuel another record high in drug misuse deaths

People in the “Trainspotting generation” are most likely to die from drug misuse, after a sharp rise in deaths among 40- to 49-year-olds last year, official statistics show.

The mortality rate among this age group rose from 95.1 deaths per million people in 2015 to 108.0 in 2016, helping fuel another record high in drug misuse deaths (those involving illegal drugs), which hit 2,593 last year, up from 2,479 in the previous 12 months.

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Young adult literature convention under fire over disabled facilities

Authors speak out after reports of problems because a specialised toilet had been given over to celebrity guests at associated Comicon festival

Authors who appeared at the YALC young adult literature convention over the weekend, including Alex Wheatle and Joanne Harris, have spoken out about what they feel was a lack of disabled facilities at the event. Their complaints centre on the sequestering of one of two disabled toilets for the use of celebrities attending the associated Comicon festival on a lower floor.

Organisers of the event, tied to the London Film and Comic Convention (Comicon) at Olympia in London, were accused by one visitor of “ablism” after wheelchair users ended up squeezing into busy lifts and negotiating crowds to reach accessible toilets on the Comicon floor.

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The cult of Babel: Odessa's literary flashmobs attract book-loving tourists

The Black Sea city may lack the pedigree of St Petersburg but it was home to Isaac Babel, and has a storied past as a stopping point for globe-trotting intellectuals

A slow-moving procession of 500-odd people stretch from the grand, if worn, Literary Museum along to the Opera House, one of the biggest and most opulent concert halls of the former Soviet Union.

Clutching hardback books, e-readers and paper printouts, the group – young and old, male and female – read passages aloud from Odessa’s literary past, sending up a gentle hum into the warm evening air. Behind, the sun slowly dips into the sea.

The literary scene here is small and underground, so we take what we can

Related: Kiev's new revolution: young Ukrainians spur cultural revival amid the conflict

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