Bad sex award won by Christopher Bollen's phallic 'billiard rack'

Passage from novel The Destroyers singled out by judges of dubious honour for ‘going overboard in its attempts to describe the familiar in new terms’

An overenthusiastic attempt to “describe the familiar in new terms”, which led to the male genitals being portrayed as an anatomically confusing “billiard rack”, has won the American author Christopher Bollen the Literary Review’s annual Bad sex in fiction award.

Bollen’s The Destroyers, a literary thriller that Jay McInerney said “invokes the shades of Lawrence Durrell and Graham Greene”, beat titles by the bestselling Wilbur Smith and the award-winning Laurent Binet to the prize.

Related: Bad sex award 2017 shortlist: the contenders in quotes

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Oldest complete Latin ​​Bible set to return to UK after 1,302 years

British Library secures loan of giant Codex Amiatinus Bible from Laurentian library in Florence for exhibition on Anglo-Saxon England

One of the greatest of all Anglo-Saxon treasures, the oldest complete Latin Bible in existence, is returning to the UK for the first time in 1,302 years.

The Codex Amiatinus is a beautiful and giant Bible produced in Northumbria by pioneering monks in 716 which, on its completion, was taken to Italy as a gift for Pope Gregory II.

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Kim Moore's 'thrilling' debut poetry collection wins Geoffrey Faber prize

The Art of Falling, by a Cumbrian poet and former trumpet teacher, joins illustrious former winners including Seamus Heaney and JM Coetzee

A debut poetry collection that tackles the author’s own experiences of domestic violence, in poems that “jolt the heart”, has won the Geoffrey Faber memorial prize.

Cumbrian poet Kim Moore’s The Art of Falling covers everything from her experiences as a trumpet teacher to her father’s profession as a scaffolder, as well as the suffragettes and a tattoo inspired by Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own. In My People, she writes of how some “swear without knowing they are swearing … scaffolders and plasterers and shoemakers and carers, the type of carers paid pence per minute to visit an old lady’s house”.

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The best science fiction and fantasy of 2017

Adam Roberts finds floods in Manhattan, magic in Paris and a shortage of electricity across the world

A year ago, Amitav Ghosh usefully stirred things up with his rebuke to “realist” modes of writing. Where, he asked, is all the fiction about climate change? Well, it turns out that the answer is science fiction. Genre writing has been exploring the possible futures of climate change for many years, and 2017’s three best novels engage in powerful and varied ways with precisely that subject. Kim Stanley Robinson is the unofficial laureate of future climatology, and his prodigious New York 2140 (Orbit), a multilayered novel set in a flooded Big Apple, is by any standard an enormous achievement. It is as much a reflection on how we might fit climate change into fiction as it is a detailed, scientifically literate representation of its possible consequences.

Just as rich, though much tighter in narrative focus, is Paul McAuley’s superb Austral (Gollancz), set in a powerfully realised near‑future Antarctica transformed by global warming. Jeff VanderMeer’s vividly weird Borne (4th Estate) takes a different, neo-surrealist approach to the topic. You won’t soon forget its title character, a flying bear as big as a cathedral rampaging through wastelands.

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Emma Cline countersues after ex claims she used spyware to plagiarise his work

Author of The Girls is being sued by former boyfriend, who alleges that her bestselling novel about a Manson-style cult uses material from his own writing

An ex-boyfriend of author Emma Cline has filed a lawsuit claiming that she plagiarised parts of her bestselling novel The Girls by using spyware to access his email and other accounts.

The novelist, who vehemently denies the claims, said in a countersuit that the allegations are the “ludicrous” acts of a man who is jealous of her success and are part of a two-year assault on her mental health and literary reputation.

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Cillian Murphy to star in stage version of Grief Is the Thing With Feathers

Enda Walsh to adapt Max Porter’s acclaimed novel about love, art and bereavement for Complicité theatre company’s Irish production

Cillian Murphy is to star in an Irish stage version of Max Porter’s celebrated novel Grief Is the Thing With Feathers. The production by the groundbreaking Complicité theatre company reunites the Peaky Blinders star with his regular collaborator Enda Walsh, who will direct his own adaptation.

Porter’s rich, lyrical tale follows an author who is reeling from the death of his wife, looking after his two young children and writing a book about Ted Hughes. He is visited one night by Crow, the eponymous avian character from Hughes’s poetry sequence, who enables the grieving family to deal with their pain. The novel was shortlisted for the Guardian first book award in 2015. In her review, Kirsty Gunn called it a “deeply moving book about death and its grief-stricken consolations – love and art”.

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La Belle Sauvage chosen as Waterstones book of the year

Managing director James Daunt says staff showed overwhelming enthusiasm for Philip Pullman’s return after 17 years to the world of Northern Lights

Philip Pullman’s return to the world of Lyra Belacqua, La Belle Sauvage, has picked up its first award: the Waterstones book of the year.

The novel, which is already a bestseller on both sides of the Atlantic, begins 10 years before Northern Lights and tells the story of an apocalyptic flood and how a young boy, Malcolm, teams up with an older girl, Alice, to save the infant Lyra from a sinister plot.

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Cassandra Clare scoops £1m for first adult novels

The author, an established star of YA fiction with her Mortal Instruments series, has signed a two-book, seven-figure deal with Pan Macmillan

The writer Cassandra Clare, whose stories of the half-angel shadowhunters in the Mortal Instruments series have won her legions of teenage fans, has landed a book deal worth more than £1m for her first venture into writing for adults.

Clare’s Sword Catcher books will, said the author, tell of “a young man raised to be the body double for an unworthy prince, [and] a young woman destined to change the world”. Pan Macmillan said it “fought off stiff competition” to win UK and Commonwealth rights, excluding Canada, in two books, for which it paid seven figures. North American rights in the books have been acquired by Del Rey for an undisclosed sum.

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New Marvel editor-in-chief under fire for using Japanese pseudonym

CB Cebulski, newly appointed to prestigious role at the comics giant, has admitted writing under the name Akira Yoshida

Marvel Comics’ new editor-in-chief, CB Cebulski, has come under fire after it was revealed that he had written under the alias Akira Yoshida.

Cebulski, who was appointed earlier this month, confirmed to the comics site Bleeding Cool on Tuesday that he had spent “about a year” writing comics under the Japanese pseudonym Akira Yoshida.

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Elena Ferrante is writing again, publisher says

New work is understood to be a novel separate from screenplay for TV adaptation of Neapolitan series

Elena Ferrante is back. And she’s busy.

It has been just over a year since the Italian novelist behind My Brilliant Friend and the rest of the highly acclaimed Neapolitan series was outed by an investigative journalist who claimed to have discovered her true identity.

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Northamptonshire may close up to 28 of its 36 libraries

Authors including Alan Moore and Philip Pullman join readers condemning move being considered as a way to make £115m in savings

Proposals to axe more than half of Northamptonshire’s public libraries have been denounced by readers and authors. Up to 28 of the county’s 36 libraries could be closed if the plans get the go-ahead. The move has been branded “monstrous” by Watchmen creator Alan Moore.

Northamptonshire county council, which needs to claw back £115m in savings over the next four years, has launched a consultation on the future of its library service. Three options have been put forward: two would shut the doors of 21 libraries; the third would close 28, leaving only eight branches open.

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Word of the year 2017: Dictionary.com says 'complicit' topped 'totality'

While ‘intersex’, ‘horologist’ and ‘totality’ all saw spikes in searches this year, the dictionary website says searches for ‘complicit’ increased nearly 300%

Russian election influence, the ever-widening sexual harassment scandal, mass shootings and the opioid epidemic helped elevate the word “complicit” as the Dictionary.com word of the year for 2017.

Related: Fake news is 'very real' word of the year for 2017

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

Related: Word of the year 2016: for Merriam-Webster, 'surreal' trumps 'fascism'

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Max Tegmark and Ken MacLeod on artificial intelligence – books podcast

How would it feel to be outperformed by a machine? We discuss the AI revolution with physicist Max Tegmark and science fiction writer Ken MacLeod

As big data drives a sudden increase of artificial intelligences into our lives, we examine how it would feel if humans were no longer the smartest beings on the planet, with the physicist and AI campaigner Max Tegmark and the science fiction writer Ken MacLeod.

Tegmark begins the discussion by explaining why the issue is so urgent, and why we have to abandon our usual development strategy of learning from mistakes. The AIs in MacLeod’s latest series of novels are hardwired with constraints designed to preserve a central place for humanity, but can we ensure a superhuman mind will align its goals with ours? As artificial intelligence leaves the realm of science fiction, Tegmark argues, it’s time for all of us to imagine a future where human beings can play a part.

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Waterstones set to open five new branches this year

Managing director James Daunt says company is ‘making good money’ and has plans to open a further 10 to 15 shops in 2018

Waterstones is to open five new bookshops in the run-up to Christmas and plans up to 15 more for next year, according to managing director James Daunt. The news comes after reports that the chain’s Russian billionaire owner was considering the sale of the high street bookseller for an estimated £250m.

The new stores, in St Neots, Deal, Weybridge, Epsom and Blackheath in London mean that Waterstones will have opened 20 new shops since 2015. The chain was sold by HMV to Alexander Mamut in 2011, for £53m. Mamut, who installed independent bookseller James Daunt as managing director, appointed NM Rothschild in October to look into the sale of the chain.

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Places in the Darkness by Chris Brookmyre review – murder in zero-gravity

The Scottish writer puts his detectives aboard a city-in-space in a twisting, sci-fi-flavoured crime mystery

The award-winning Scottish crime author Chris Brookmyre tweeted a one-star Amazon review he received for his new novel, Places in the Darkness, earlier this month. “This needs a ‘serious science fiction’ warning, in capital letters,” raged the reader, who’d clearly been expecting another slice of Brookmyre’s excellent tartan noir. “I feel kind of bad,” responded Brookmyre, brimming with sarcasm. “My publishers should maybe have put a space station on the cover or something.”

Brookmyre is, it’s true, better known for his crime novels, particularly those starring his doesn’t-do-things-by-the-book reporter Jack Parlabane; the recent Black Widow won him both the Theakston crime novel of the year and the McIlvanney prize. Places in the Darkness does indeed see him boldly going into the realms of science fiction, so count yourself warned – if that space station filling the front cover hadn’t already given it away. It’s set on Earth’s first space station, Ciudad de Cielo, known as CdC, or Seedee. Built 70 years ago, with 100,000 residents, it’s “as close to a city without crime as mankind has seen”. There’s never been a homicide before, but Brookmyre opens with a doozy, his new setting allowing a writer who has never been afraid of diving right into the visceral side of a crime a whole new dimension to play with.

Related: Bedlam by Christopher Brookmyre – review

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A hero reborn: ‘China’s Tolkien’ aims to conquer western readers

The world’s most popular kung fu fantasy series is finally set to become a UK bestseller

Guo Jing, a young soldier among the massed ranks of Genghis Khan’s invading army and son of a murdered warrior, may soon become as familiar a questing literary figure as Frodo Baggins from Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, or Jon Snow from Game of Thrones. In fact, this Chinese fighting hero is already part of phenomenon that can match both of those epics in size. For the books of Guo Jing’s creator, the author known as Jin Yong, have already sold more than 300m copies.

The world’s biggest kung fu fantasy writer, Jin Yong enjoys huge popularity in the Chinese-speaking world. In the west, however, his name is barely known, largely due to the complexity of the world he has created and the puzzle that has posed for translators.

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Penelope Lively and Kamila Shamsie curate women's vote centenary reissues

Pair have chosen neglected books by female writers for a series launching to coincide with February’s anniversary of the Representation of the People Act

From a neglected novel for adults by the beloved children’s author E Nesbit to a provocative short-story collection from the Urdu writer Ismat Chughtai, a new series of “forgotten” classics by female authors is being launched by Penguin next year to mark the centenary of women getting the vote in the UK.

Penguin asked the authors Penelope Lively and Kamila Shamsie to choose two titles by women writers they “felt deserved to be better known in the UK”. Conscious that “writers can disappear, unread by later generations; certain books can be sidelined, where others by the same writer survive”, Lively plumped for Nesbit’s The Lark, first published in 1922. She called it “a charming and brilliantly entertaining novel … shot through with the lighthearted Nesbit touch”. The book sees two 18-year-old cousins left to earn their own living when their guardian gambles away their money.

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Darwin's annotated copy of On the Origin of Species goes to auction

Christie’s expects volume, which shows the author refining his theory in light of new research, to fetch between £300,000 and £500,000

After eluding scholars for decades, a copy of On the Origin of Species with handwritten revisions by Charles Darwin has come to light and is due to be auctioned next month.

Christie’s has put an estimate of £300,000 to £500,000 on the annotated book, which it said will allow “for the first time a precise reading of Darwin’s exact revisions without the veil of reconstruction and translation … [it] provides an insight into his working method, and documents the further development of his ideas for his ‘big book’.”

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Science fiction triggers 'poorer reading', study finds

US academics find words such as ‘airlock’ and ‘antigravity’ are cues for test subjects to assume a story isn’t worth a careful read

It might feature such thought-stretching concepts as time travel and warp drives, but reading science fiction actually makes you read more “stupidly”, according to new research.

In a paper published in the journal Scientific Study of Literature, Washington and Lee University professors Chris Gavaler and Dan Johnson set out to measure how identifying a text as science fiction makes readers automatically assume it is less worthwhile, in a literary sense, and thus devote less effort to reading it. They were prompted to do their experiment by a 2013 study which found that literary fiction made readers more empathetic than genre fiction.

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Science fiction triggers 'poorer reading', study finds

US academics find words such as ‘airlock’ and ‘antigravity’ are cues for test subjects to assume a story isn’t worth a careful read

It might feature such thought-stretching concepts as time travel and warp drives, but reading science fiction actually makes you read more “stupidly”, according to new research.

In a paper published in the journal Scientific Study of Literature, Washington and Lee University professors Chris Gavaler and Dan Johnson set out to measure how identifying a text as science fiction makes readers automatically assume it is less worthwhile, in a literary sense, and thus devote less effort to reading it. They were prompted to do their experiment by a 2013 study which found that literary fiction made readers more empathetic than genre fiction.

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Stars donate handmade book covers for House of Illustration charity auction

Fundraiser includes Peter Blake’s vision of Alice Through the Looking-Glass, Neil Gaiman’s Fahrenheit 451, Peter Capaldi’s Metamorphosis and more

A Hunchback of Notre Dame drawn by Quentin Blake, a portrait of Lewis Carroll’s Alice by Peter Blake and Peter Capaldi’s vision of Franz Kafka’s Gregor Samsa will go under the hammer to raise money for the House of Illustration.

More than 30 artists, illustrators, designers and other famous names, including Neil Gaiman and Maggi Hambling, have designed new dust jackets for classics ranging from The Jungle Book to Jane Eyre. The jackets will be wrapped around first editions of each book and auctioned at Sotheby’s on 11 December, with guide prices starting at £1,000.

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British risk complicity in Yemen 'famine crime', says Alex de Waal

Africa analyst believes UN inaction makes security council members accessories to crisis in Arab nation gripped by cholera, hunger and violence

• Listen to the podcast: ‘Famine as mass atrocity’
  

Britain is in danger of becoming complicit in the use of starvation as a weapon of war in Yemen, academic and author Alex de Waal has said.

“The UK and the US, and others on the security council risk becoming accessories to the worst famine crime of this decade,” said De Waal.

Related: 'Manmade catastrophe': Yemen conflict has killed 1,100 children, says UN

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Peter O'Toole less the drunken hell-raiser he made out, says author

Biographer Alexander Larman says actor’s archive reveals a ‘sensitive, organised man’ - who was writing two screenplays just before he died in 2013

Peter O’Toole was writing two screenplays just before his death at the age of 81, according to research that also suggests the actor’s hell-raising image was a myth that he cultivated himself.

While working on a book about the actor, the biographer Alexander Larman had a glimpse of screen versions of the Seán O’Casey play Juno and the Paycock, and Chekhov’s work Uncle Vanya. He said O’Toole starred on stage in those plays, which each had characters with some similarities to O’Toole’s personality.

Related: Peter O'Toole obituary

Related: Peter O'Toole: a career in clips

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Doctor's diary This is Going to Hurt wins public vote for book of the year

Adam Kay’s firsthand account, first published as a rebuke to the health secretary during the dispute with junior doctors, takes readers’ choice award

A doctor’s irreverent and heartbreaking diaries, published as a rebuke to the government in the pay dispute with junior doctors, has been voted the nation’s favourite book of the year. Adam Kay’s This Is Going to Hurt came top in a poll of readers to win the Books Are My Bag readers’ choice award.

Voted for by 40,000 members of the public through bookshops, Kay’s book saw off competition from 2017 Man Booker prize winner George Saunders’s Lincoln in the Bardo and Philip Pullman’s hotly anticipated La Belle Sauvage.

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Helen Dunmore's final poems lead shortlists for 2017 Costa prizes

Inside the Wave, in which the poet reflected on her own impending death, joins diverse contenders in poetry, fiction, biography and children’s books

Helen Dunmore’s final poetry collection, in which the award-winning author contemplates her terminal cancer diagnosis and impending death, has been shortlisted for the Costa poetry award.

The line-up for this year’s Costas, which set out to reward the year’s “most enjoyable” books across novels, first novels, biographies, poetry and children’s books, is female-heavy, with 14 women on the 20-strong list.

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Robert Winston wins fourth Royal Society young people's book prize

TV academic’s Home Lab, a collection of scientific experiments that can be carried out at home, won over jury of young readers

TV professor Robert Winston has proved he has the winning formula as a science writer for children by scooping the prestigious Royal Society young people’s book prize for the fourth time with Home Lab, a collection of scientific experiments that can be done at home.

Voted for by young readers, the book was described as “really cool” by six-year-old judge Mohammed, and “brilliant” by eight-year-old judge Faith. It was given the ultimate stamp of approval by 10-year-old judge Ella: “I liked it so much that I went out and bought a copy of my own with my pocket money,” she said.

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Jennifer Egan and M John Harrison – books podcast

On this week’s show, we examine the writing life with a Pulitzer winner who is not afraid to experiment and talk with a short story writer about his most radical collection yet

This week we welcome M John Harrison, who comes to the studio to discuss his most radical collection of short stories yet, You Should Come With Me Now. He tells us about grounding strange fiction in normality, baffling the reader and why writing weird fiction has got harder in the era of Trump.

We also hear from Jennifer Egan, who came to a Guardian Live event to talk about her Pulitzer prize-winning novel, A Visit from the Goon Squad, and her latest novel, Manhattan Beach. Her devoted fans quizzed her about time, technology and how the chronology of publication doesn’t always reflect the order in which novels emerge from the writer’s pen.

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Leading writers donate work to crowdfunded charity book

Ben Okri, Carol Ann Duffy and Frank Cottrell Boyce are among the contributors to Alt-Write, an anthology of ‘creative reactions to uncertain times’

Ben Okri, Carol Ann Duffy and Frank Cottrell Boyce are among the contributors to Alt-Write, a new collection of writing from major authors intended to “debunk xenophobic myths and … help [readers] discover the natural human quality of empathy”.

Okri is contributing his poem Grenfell Tower, June 2017, written after the disaster, Cottrell Boyce has written a “fable about the lost”, The Burning Bush, and Duffy is donating her poem History to the anthology. Aimed at young adults, with all profits to go to the UN refugee agency UNHCR, the anthology, subtitled “Creative reactions to uncertain times”, will feature work from 50 authors and illustrators who also include Benjamin Zephaniah, Piers Torday, Michael Rosen, Chris Riddell, Sarah McIntyre, Celia Rees, Philip Ardagh, Alex Wheatle and Jackie Kay.

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John Lewis plagiarism row gives Christmas sales boost to Mr Underbed

After Chris Riddell pointed out the similarity of the retailer’s seasonal TV ad to his picture book, demand for the latter has rocketed

Copies of Chris Riddell’s picture book about a friendly blue monster who lives under a little boy’s bed, Mr Underbed, have sold out in the days since the former children’s laureate accused John Lewis of “help[ing] themselves” to the story for their Christmas TV ad.

Riddell pointed out the similarities between his debut picture book, which was published in 1986, and John Lewis’s commercial, which features the monster Moz, last Thursday. “John Lewis help themselves to my picture book,” tweeted Riddell, adding: “The idea of a monster under the bed is by no means new but the ad does seem to bear a close resemblance to my creation – a big blue unthreatening monster who rocks the bed and snores loudly.”

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Watership Down author's personal library reveals precious treasures

Richard Adams’s books, going to auction in December, include a first edition of Jane Austen’s Emma, Shakespeare’s Second Folio and Boswell’s Life of Johnson

The vast library of the late Richard Adams, which ranges from a rare copy of Milton’s epic poem Lycidas to a first edition of Jane Austen’s Emma, is to be sold at auction next month.

Running to thousands of books, the Watership Down author’s collection includes a rare copy of the Shakespeare Second Folio of 1632, Boswell’s Life of Johnson and a Bible that once belonged to Charles II. Adams, who died last year aged 96, also owned a host of first editions by 19th-century English novelists including Austen, George Eliot, Charles Dickens and Anthony Trollope.

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Sri Lankan civil war novel takes DSC prize for south Asian literature

Anuk Arudpragasam’s The Story of a Brief Marriage takes the $25,000 award with a novel ‘exploring the tragic heart of war with quiet eloquence’

A novel that condenses the horrors of the 26-year Sri Lankan civil war into an intimate love story has won the 2017 DSC prize for south Asian literature, the region’s richest book prize. Anuk Arudpragasam’s The Story of a Brief Marriage beat four shortlisted rivals to win the $25,000 (£19,000) award presented at the Dhaka literary festival in Bangladesh.

Announcing the winner, Ritu Menon, chair of judges, praised the novel for its “intensity and rich detail … exploring the tragic heart of war with such quiet eloquence”. She added: “It is also a testament to the redemptive power of love, and to the human spirit’s capacity for hope.”

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Small indie publishers report booming sales

In a sector that has struggled elsewhere, figures for 60 of the smallest players in the UK industry show sales up 79% in the last year

Independent publishers have unleashed a boom in sales, according to new research. Latest figures from Inpress, which works with 60 of the smallest players in the books industry, revealed sales up 79% in the last year – a performance hailed by Inpress managing director Sophie O’Neill as phenomenal.

“It’s down to a mix of really good books such as Audre Lorde’s Your Silence Will Not Protect You from the feminist Silver Press,” O’Neill said, “and Dead Ink’s crowdfunded book Know Your Place – which is like The Good Immigrant except about class – and great attention to detail.”

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‘It’s Peter Pan for grown-ups’: play by Barrie is back on stage

Rare revival of the author’s play Dear Brutus will drop adults into a Neverland-like world

Neverland, the magical place made famous by JM Barrie’s Peter Pan, will be closer than you think this Christmas – not just for lost boys but for grown-ups as well. The enchanting garden in Scotland that gave Barrie the idea for his classic children’s story also later inspired him to write another play, this time placing a group of fictional adult characters alone in a beautiful natural environment. And now the little-known work, Dear Brutus, is to be revived on the London stage for the first time in more than 20 years.

In a time of austerity and hard political challenges, the director of the play believes the British public’s need to escape to the solace and freedom of a magical world could not be greater. “Although the concerns of Barrie’s audience were different, they probably felt very similar in terms of their anxiety. Our audience, in the middle of fears about terrorism and politics, I am sure really want to escape the world around them,” said Jonathan O’Boyle, director of Dear Brutus, which opens at Southwark Playhouse on 29 November.

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Vladimir Nabokov's dream diary reveals experiments with 'backwards timeflow'

Newly published collection of the Lolita author’s notes shows him investigating theory that dreams can be inspired by future events

A 1964 diary in which Vladimir Nabokov recorded more than 50 of his dreams – ranging from the erotic to the violent to the surreal – is about to be published for the first time.

“Intensely erotic dream. Blood on sheet,” the novelist writes on 13 December 1964. “End of dream: my sister O, strangely young and languorous … Then stand near a window, sighing, half-seeing view, brooding over the possible consequence of incest.”

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Baillie Gifford prize goes to Aids chronicle How to Survive a Plague

David France’s book was praised by judges for its ‘incredibly visceral’ history, drawing on the author’s own experiences as a young gay man in the 80s

David France’s account of the Aids epidemic, How to Survive a Plague, has won the Baillie Gifford prize for non-fiction, as chair of judges Sir Peter Bazalgette hailed the importance of serious non-fiction as an “antidote to 140-character culture”.

Opening with a quote from Paul Monet, “Grief is a sword, or it is nothing”, France’s book chronicles how the activist community fought to develop the drugs that would turn HIV into a largely treatable condition. It covers the years between 1981 and 1996, when, as France puts it, “there was no effective medical treatment for an HIV infection and death was almost certain”, and how with the founding of Act Up (Aids Coalition to Unleash Power) and TAG (Treatment Action Group), activists paved the way towards a medical breakthrough.

Related: How to Survive a Plague by David France – review

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Mr Underbed author accuses John Lewis Christmas ad of plagiarism

Chris Riddell points out similarities between Moz the monster and a character from his 1986 picturebook

A renowned writer and illustrator of children’s books has suggested John Lewis may have plagiarised one of his stories for its latest Christmas advert, which was launched to great fanfare last week.

Chris Riddell, who until recently was the children’s laureate, posted his own version of the advert on social media, comparing it to scenes in his similarly themed book Mr Underbed. He posted: “John Lewis help themselves to my picture book.”

John Lewis helps themselves to my picture book. https://t.co/mrVHmalTwh

Related: John Lewis Christmas ad 2017: watch the video of Moz the monster

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Brambly Hedge creator Jill Barklem dies aged 66

Writer and illustrator of children’s book series about a community of mice in the English countryside had sold more than 7m copies

Jill Barklem, whose intricate Brambly Hedge stories have delighted children for decades, has died at the age of 66.

Her publisher HarperCollins Children’s Books said this morning that the author died peacefully in London on Wednesday following a long illness. Barklem had sold more than 7m copies of her Brambly Hedge books, which tell the tales of a community of mice in the English countryside.

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Raymond Chandler attacks US healthcare in newly-discovered story

It’s All Right - He Only Died was found in The Big Sleep author’s archives with a note underlining his contempt for doctors who turned away poor patients

A lost story by Raymond Chandler, written almost at the end of his life, sees the author taking on a different sort of villain to the hardboiled criminals of his beloved Philip Marlowe stories: the US healthcare system.

Found in Chandler’s archives at the Bodleian Library in Oxford by Andrew Gulli, managing editor of the Strand magazine, the story, It’s All Right – He Only Died, opens as a “filthy figure on a stretcher” arrives at a hospital. The man, who smells of whisky, has been hit by a truck, and staff at the hospital are loth to treat him because they assume he will be unable to pay for his care. “The hospital rule was adamant: A fifty dollar deposit or no admission,” writes Chandler.

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Michael Rosen rewrites A Christmas Carol for modern age of austerity

In Bah! Humbug! the former children’s laureate updates Charles Dickens’s Christmas classic for an era when poverty is again being blamed on the poor

Some 174 years after Charles Dickens forged his outrage at poverty into the quintessential festive story, the former children’s laureate Michael Rosen has reimagined A Christmas Carol for a new age of austerity defined by the neo-Victorian belief that “poverty is caused by poor people”.

The children’s author and poet’s new version of A Christmas Carol, Bah! Humbug!, illustrated by Tony Ross, sees schoolboy Harry Gruber take the role of Scrooge in his school play, while his miserable, work-obsessed father snipes from the sidelines.

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Gnomon by Nick Harkaway review – a future of total surveillance

In this dystopian mashup of history, mythology and omniscient AI, anything can happen – and it does

In post-Brexit Britain of the late 21st century, ambient electronic surveillance is total, for the good of the people. An omniscient AI called the Witness knows and sees all, ensuring the success of the System as a whole: a society of permanent direct democracy, in which everyone votes on everything all the time. Everyone is fitter, happier, more productive. What’s not to like?

Regrettably, of course, some sub-optimal citizens will occasionally be obliged to undergo involuntary interrogations by the Witness police, who use mind-reading technology. But this is rare and benign – until one woman, a refusenik called Diana Hunter who somehow lives off-grid, dies during her police interview. That’s not supposed to happen. Enter Witness inspector Mielikki Neith, a true believer in the panopticon utopia. She plays back the recording of the interrogation, to experience Hunter’s own feelings and to try to understand what happened.

It reads like the first draft of what might have been a tighter 400-page book rather than a rambling 700-pager

Of all the characters, the most interesting is actually the least human, and the one after whom the novel is named

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National Book Awards: Jesmyn Ward wins major prize for Sing, Unburied, Sing

Author takes out top prize for fiction for the second time with novel about race, poverty, loss and family in America’s south

Jesmyn Ward has won one of the highest awards in American literature for the second time, taking home the National Book Award’s top prize for fiction for her critically lauded novel about race, poverty, loss and family in America’s south: Sing, Unburied, Sing.

At the ceremony, held in New York and hosted by actor Cynthia Nixon, Ward saw off competition from Elliot Ackerman (Dark at the Crossing), Lisa Ko (The Leavers), Min Jin Lee (Pachinko) and Carmen Maria Machado (Her Body and Other Parties: Stories).

Related: Jesmyn Ward: ‘So much of life is pain and sorrow and wilful ignorance’

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Nicola Barker wins Goldsmiths prize for her novel H(a)ppy

Barker beats novels by Will Self and Jon McGregor to take home the £10,000 literary prize for her narrative-bending vision of a dystopian future

Nicola Barker’s H(a)ppy has won this year’s Goldsmiths prize for “fiction at its most novel”, praised by judges as a work of “vaulting ambition”.

Related: H(a)ppy by Nicola Barker review – visionary satire of a new information age

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Neil Gaiman and Ai Weiwei join major names writing to jailed authors

Marking PEN International’s Day of the Imprisoned Writer, authors and artists have written letters of hope and solidarity to colleagues in prison

The cartoonist Ramón Esono Ebalé, arrested in Equatorial Guinea earlier this year, may share the same planet as the writer Neil Gaiman. But according to the latter, they “live in different worlds”.

“I am perfectly free to write whatever I wish, to be as imaginative as I want to be, to create people and places, to challenge the things that I believe need to be challenged, and you are not,” Gaiman declared in a letter to the imprisoned cartoonist. “It is the truth of the worlds that you and I occupy, but it is something that I do not and cannot accept.”

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Artemis by Andy Weir review – follow-up to The Martian

His self-published debut sold 5m copies. The follow-up offers the same flat, sweary prose, fistfights and scientific mini-lectures - on the moon

Andy Weir’s first novel, The Martian, enjoyed a measure of success liable to make other writers slump slack-jawed and drooling, like Homer Simpson before a doughnut. Initially self-published, it became a word-of-mouth hit, got picked up by a regular publisher, sold 5m copies and was made into a blockbuster film by Ridley Scott. Straight out of the gates with a global hit.

Indeed, the book was such a blockbuster you probably know its story: an astronaut, stranded on Mars, has to use his scientific expertise to stay alive for two years until rescue can reach him. This simple narrative tug – will he survive or not? – gives Weir a line on which to hang a large number of interesting facts and little lectures. The reader learns a lot about the Martian environment, how to grow potatoes, how to get into orbit and so on. That’s the sweet spot The Martian hit: a likable protagonist in peril, saved by his own resourcefulness in a tale that leaves readers better informed about science than they were before they read it.

Weir adheres to the principle that if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it (and if it is broke, patch it up with duct tape)

Related: Science fiction roundup – reviews

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New book to give insider view of 'nasty daily clashes' at Trump's volatile White House

Michael Wolff’s Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House is based on 200 interviews with Trump, his team and people in and around the administration

An explosive new book promises to blow the lid off a volatile White House that skidded from crisis to crisis in the first nine months of Donald Trump’s administration and is awash with intrigue “so corrosive and lethal” it threatens to “paralyze the new presidency”.

Provocative media critic and columnist Michael Wolff has written what is billed as the first inside account of the inner workings of the Trump White House in a “shocking, fly-on-the-wall” account that portrays a fiery but inexperienced president surrounded by warring factions of advisors and officials.

Related: Is the Trump administration is afflicted with 'Moscow memory'? | Richard Wolffe

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Seamus Heaney's biographer races to see poet's faxes before they fade

Fintan O’Toole, who is to write the life of the Nobel laureate, said he is anxious to record surviving documents written in ‘his favourite communication mode’

A race is on to track down faxes sent by Seamus Heaney before they fade. The outdated technology was the preferred form of communication for the late Nobel laureate and will be a vital source for Fintan O’Toole, who has just been signed up to write an authorised biography of the Irish poet.

“My one terror is that his favourite communication mode was the fax, and faxes fade. So I’m going to have to find out who has faxes from him, and read them quickly. At the end, [Heaney’s publisher] Faber had a fax machine that was kept just for Seamus,” said O’Toole.

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DC Comics fires editor accused of sexual harassment by three women

Eddie Berganza, a top editor at the company who oversaw Superman and Wonder Woman properties, faces allegations from several colleagues

DC Comics on Monday fired the editor Eddie Berganza following accusations of sexual harassment made against him by three women in the past.

Berganza had been suspended after an extensive report into the allegations was published last Friday by BuzzFeed.

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Pioneering work by female entomologist goes up for auction

Three-hundred-year-old guide to the insects of Suriname by artist and explorer Maria Sibylla Merian is expected to fetch £120,000

A rare first edition of the 300-year-old book in which the entomologist, artist and explorer Maria Sibylla Merian details the insects of Suriname is expected to fetch up to £120,000 when it is auctioned at Sotheby’s on Tuesday.

Showing exquisitely detailed images of the plants, insects, spiders, butterflies and amphibians of Suriname at the turn of the 18th century, Merian’s Metamorphosis insectorum surinamensium caused a sensation when it was published in 1705, with George III acquiring her work for the royal collection. Sotheby’s said it was “one of the most important natural history books of the period”, with very few studies of insects having been done previously, and Merian one of the first naturalists to observe them directly, as well as one of the first female scientific explorers.

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DC Comics suspends group editor over sexual harassment claims

Eddie Berganza removed from his duties as group editor, soon after publication of article detailing allegations by three women

DC Comics has suspended group editor Eddie Berganza following allegations of sexual harassment made against him by three women.

The suspension follows Buzzfeed’s extensive report into the allegations. One of the women, Liz Gehrlein Marsham, claimed that Berganza, a top editor at DC Comics who oversees properties including Superman and Wonder Woman, forcibly kissed her at a bar in December 2006, when she had worked for the company for less than three weeks. Later that evening, she alleged, he tried to grope her.

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Author vows book exposing Chinese influence will go ahead after publisher pulls out

Allen & Unwin had cancelled plans to print Clive Hamilton’s Silent Invasion over fear of legal action by the Chinese government

Prominent Charles Sturt University author and ethicist Professor Clive Hamilton says his book exposing the Chinese Communist party’s activities in Australia will still be published, despite Allen & Unwin cancelling plans to print it at the 11th hour.

On Monday, Hamilton revealed legal advice that the Chinese government may sue for defamation had spooked Allen & Unwin. The book, called Silent Invasion, is a comprehensive analysis of the Chinese government’s methods of asserting influence in Australia – not only in media and politics, as had been previously reported, but in a range of others areas.

Related: Australia unsure how ‘assertive’ China will act, Penny Wong says

Related: Australian ministers write to China to confirm approval of Carmichael mine

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Theatre to serve Nigel Slater’s Toast with a side order of ham

Audience to be given food during stage version of Nigel Slater’s memoir

Toast: The Story of a Boy’s Hunger, the bestselling food memoir by Observer writer Nigel Slater, is to be brought to the stage. Audiences will be treated to more than just the author’s memories, as the show’s director plans to offer samples of the dishes and tastes that are so central to the story.

A series of “communal eating interventions”, involving a slice of bread-and-butter pudding, or a jam tart, are to be staged, while the potent kitchen smells of boiled ham and cabbage are to be wafted across the stalls at the Lowry theatre, Salford, next year.

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‘We can't be quiet’: Gruffalo co-creator and EU illustrators draw for Europe

Axel Scheffler and other children’s illustrators channel ‘anger and sadness and disbelief’ over Brexit into gallery of images

The Gruffalo’s co-creator, Axel Scheffler, has enlisted leading children’s illustrators to create thought-provoking visions of Europe in response to Brexit.

Drawings for Europe brings together 17 illustrators from across the continent in a project that aims to promote the strengths of the European community.

Related: 'There's no such thing as a Brusselo!'

Related: Axel Scheffler opens his sketchbooks – in pictures

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Survey finds more than half of people in book trade have experienced sexual harassment

Poll by the Bookseller finds 54% of female respondents reporting sexual ‘harassment, assault or predatory behaviour’

A survey suggests that more than half of people working in the books industry have experienced sexual harassment, with 54% of women and 34% of men reporting “harassment, assault or predatory behaviour”.

The anonymous online poll was conducted by the industry magazine the Bookseller, gathering together responses from 388 people including booksellers, agents, authors and event organisers.

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Alfred Wainwright may have had autism, biographer says

Book discusses famous fell walker’s obsessiveness and need for a ‘compulsive rigidity’ as he compiled intricate Lakeland guidebooks

He was famed for his stubborn nature, insisting his intricate Lakeland guidebooks be printed in his own handwriting and balking at any outing that would involve him missing an episode of his beloved Coronation Street. Now a new biography of the renowned fell walker Alfred Wainwright by one of his closest associates argues that he may have been on the autistic spectrum.

The claim is made by Richard Else, a Bafta-winning film maker who coaxed Wainwright on to television in the 1980s and became so close to him in his later years that they were often mistaken for father and son. The pair made three BBC series and travelled more than 5,000 miles together, exploring the Lake District, Scotland and the Pennine Way, as well as Wainwright’s own creation – the Coast to Coast walk.

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Guides to building fires set to be this Christmas's hottest books

From The Art of Fire to The Little Book of Building Fires, retailers are seeing strong sales of practical guides to ancient ‘ur-skills’ ahead of the festive season

Like anyone holding a large store of flammable material, booksellers and publishers are often cautious of fire. But this winter they’re hoping to set tills ablaze with a stack of books about starting fires which is being described as the natural progression from last year’s candle-filled hygge trend.

From Daniel Hume’s The Art of Fire to Sally Coulthard’s The Little Book of Building Fires and Paul Heiney’s Playing With Fire, all out this winter, bookshops are fast filling up with this latest craze. New titles such as Bear Grylls’s How to Stay Alive (a “survival guide for any situation”), David Scarfe’s The Wild Book (“outdoor activities to unleash your inner child”), and Daniel Beard’s Do It Yourself Bushcraft also feed into a trend that publishers say was sparked by the surprise success of Lars Mytting’s guide to chopping and stacking wood, Norwegian Wood.

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Tom Stoppard is 'bashful' winner of lifetime achievement award

David Cohen prize goes to playwright and screenwriter acclaimed by judges for his ‘unfailingly creative, innovative and brilliant work’

The playwright Tom Stoppard has won the David Cohen prize for a lifetime’s achievement in literature, hailed as a “giant of 20th-century British drama” with an “outstanding and enduring body of unfailingly creative, innovative and brilliant work”.

On hearing the news, Stoppard, who is 80, said: “Winning a lifetime achievement award, one’s first thought is: ‘Surely not yet.’ And one’s second is: ‘Just in time, mate’ … Quite frankly, it has always meant a lot to me, the idea that one is writing for the future as well. I’m never convinced it will work out that way. We still don’t know in the long run, it’s impossible to say. History is full of the names of writers who at one time seemed to be permanently established and who slowly disappeared from view. I’ll absolutely own up to writing for the present and for posterity – but as Lytton Strachey said: ‘What has posterity ever done for me?’”

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George Orwell returns to loom over BBC

A larger-than-life statue of the author and former BBC employee has been unveiled outside Broadcasting House in London

On the threshold of the building he once described as a cross between a girl’s boarding school and a lunatic asylum, on an appropriately grey and drizzly day, George Orwell has returned to the BBC, cigarette in hand.

On the wall behind him a suitable confrontational quote from Animal Farm has been inscribed: “If liberty means anything at all it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.”

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Weinstein accuser Rose McGowan's memoir Brave 'will pull no punches'

The actor has alleged that the film producer raped her in 1997, and her book promises to ‘shine a light on a business built on systemic misogyny’

Rose McGowan’s memoir Brave, a book that the New Yorker claimed on Monday was the subject of an investigation by a private security agency hired by the film producer Harvey Weinstein’s lawyers, will be published on 30 January 2018 by HarperCollins.

Related: Weinstein hired ex-Mossad agents to suppress abuse allegations, report claims

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South African security services move to ban exposé of Jacob Zuma government

Jacques Pauw’s book The President’s Keepers has been served with a cease and desist letter, but publisher and author insist it will not be withdrawn

The South African author of an explosive book that promises to expose “the darkest secret at the heart of Jacob Zuma’s compromised government” has vowed that he is not intimidated by efforts from the country’s state security agency to have the book banned from sale.

Investigative journalist Jacques Pauw’s The President’s Keepers is an study of what he calls “the people who have brought our country to the brink of a mafia state”. Moving from the Western Cape to Pretoria, Johannesburg and Russia, The President’s Keepers follows “a trail of lies and spies, cronies, cash and kingmakers as Pauw prises open the web of deceit that surrounds the fourth president of the democratic era”, says the publisher, NB.

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Macron appoints author Leïla Slimani to champion French language

Award-winning writer made Francophone affairs minister to ‘represent the open face of Francophonie to a multicultural world’

The president of France, Emmanuel Macron, has given a young, prize-winning writer the job of promoting the French language and culture.

Leïla Slimani was made the president’s personal representative and given a wide remit as Francophone affairs minister after a meeting at the Élysée Palace on Monday.

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

Related: Should France embrace gender-neutral words? Bien sur!

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'We're told to be grateful we even have readers': pirated ebooks threaten the future of book series

With 4m or 17% of all online ebooks being pirated, novelists including Maggie Stiefvater and Samantha Shannon say theft by fans puts their books at risk

The bestselling American fantasy novelist Maggie Stiefvater is leading a chorus of writers warning readers that if they download pirated ebooks, then authors will not be able to continue writing because they will be unable to make a living.

Stiefvater, author of the Shiver and Raven Cycle series, raised the issue after she was contacted on Twitter by a reader who told her: “I never bought ur books I read them online pirated.” On her website, Stiefvater later explained that, when ebook sales for the third book in the Raven Cycle – Blue Lily, Lily Blue – “dropped precipitously”, her publisher decided to cut the print run of the next book in the series to less than half of its predecessors.

[Ebook pirates] tend to be from better-off socio-economic groups ... It’s not teenagers in their rooms.

Related: Most UK authors' annual incomes still well below minimum wage, survey shows

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How Kipling helped quell an Indian mutiny in first world war trenches

British intelligence enlisted Jungle Book author to counter German propaganda by rewriting soldiers’ letters home

He was one of Britain’s most celebrated writers of the 20th century, the Nobel prizewinning author of The Jungle Book. But Rudyard Kipling’s work for British intelligence during the first world war has been lost in the mists of time.

Now new research has highlighted the extraordinary role the author of Kim and the poem If played in pushing out pro-empire propaganda designed to temper the threat of an insurrection among Indian soldiers fighting in France.

Related: Rudyard Kipling’s writing enjoyed by Indians | Brief letters

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Scurrilous manuscript that could have undone John Donne discovered

Ostensibly a library catalogue in Latin, poet’s early work is in fact a string of smutty jokes about contemporary figures in febrile years before the gunpowder plot

A manuscript of an early work by John Donne, a scurrilous academic joke which could have cost the poet his reputation if not his head if it had fallen into the wrong hands, has been discovered in a tin trunk full of shreds of ancient documents, in the archives of Westminster Abbey.

The manuscript may be the earliest surviving copy of what is ostensibly a library catalogue in Latin: the numbered book titles are all invented, and Donne’s list is in fact a string of savage and frequently smutty jokes, many about named contemporary figures.

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A new chapter begins: Manchester named Unesco City of Literature

Thriving festivals, flourishing publishers and now Unesco status … Manchester’s literary scene only gets stronger

When the announcement was made that Manchester had been awarded Unesco City of Literature status my social media feeds filled up with photographs of victorious colleagues and acquaintances who had worked fantastically hard across different institutions to make it happen. They looked happy and tired in equal measure.

Manchester is home to two thriving creative writing MA programmes – at the Manchester Writing School at Manchester Metropolitan University (where I teach) and the Centre for New Writing at the University of Manchester. Staff and students from both regularly intermingle at live-literature nights such as Verbose, Bad Language, The Other Room and many more. The Manchester international festival, which takes place every two years, transformed the city in the summer. The annual Manchester literature festival wrapped up a couple of weeks ago. And, on 3 November, the national creative writing graduate fair, run by Comma Press with the Manchester Writing School, will bring agents, publishers and writers together in a frenzy of literary speed dating.

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Welsh-language novels 'enjoying golden age' despite reported sales decline

Despite news this week that sales had fallen dramatically, the Welsh Books Council’s chief says that the sector is showing real growth

The head of the Welsh Books Council (WBC) has hailed a “golden age for the Welsh-language novel” despite reports of a dramatic decline in sales.

BBC Cymru Fyw reported earlier this week that sales of Welsh-language children’s books through the WBC’s distribution centre had fallen by 16% to 196,000 in the six years to 2017, while sales of Welsh-language books for adults were also down, by 18% to 118,000. These figures come a year after the Welsh government backed down over proposed cuts to the WBC after hundreds of authors, including Philip Pullman and Sarah Waters, said it would have a “significant and deleterious impact” on Welsh literature.

I live in England, and often people ask me, ‘Are books published in Welsh?’ I doubt they’d ask the same of Norwegian

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John Updike revealed as a prolific letter writer to readers and strangers

Adding to his vast output as a novelist, short-story writer, poet and critic, a collection of his letters will reveal his startlingly abundant correspondence

Postal workers in Beverly, Massachusetts, no doubt learned by heart the route from their depot to the home of author John Updike, on the area’s north shore. In his biography of the celebrated writer, Adam Begley tells us that Updike’s wife Martha warned that “if he had access to email, he would spend every waking hour responding to messages, so he steered clear, relying on the postal service and FedEx”.

Katie Roiphe wrote in The Violet Hour: Great Writers at the End: “Updike’s correspondence is so charming and lively and wonderful that it evokes the man more powerfully than his published bits of autobiography. It may not be surprising that much of the work of friendship, for Updike, existed on the page.”

Related: Top 10 John Updike short stories

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Fake news is 'very real' word of the year for 2017

Donald Trump’s apocryphal invention, which dates back to the noughties, takes title in dictionary’s annual reckoning of the most-used new expressions

“Fake news” has acquired a certain legitimacy after being named word of the year by Collins, following what the dictionary called its “ubiquitous presence” over the last 12 months.

Collins Dictionary’s lexicographers, who monitor the 4.5bn-word Collins corpus, said that usage of the term had increased by 365% since 2016. The phrase, often capitalised, is frequently a feature of Donald Trump’s rhetoric; in the last few days alone he has tweeted of how “the Fake News is working overtime” in relation to the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential elections, and of how “Fake News [is] weak!”

Fake news

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Richell prize: Sam Coley wins literary award for 'captivating' road trip tale

Judges describe the 32-year-old law student’s novel, State Highway One, as ‘a gripping read’ about grief and home

• Read the opening chapter of State Highway One by Sam Coley

Sam Coley has won the 2017 Richell prize for emerging writers for his novel about siblings dealing with grief while road-tripping along New Zealand’s main highway.

Coley’s manuscript, titled State Highway One, stood out among 579 entries to win $10,000 prize money and a year-long mentorship with Hachette Australia.

Related: Hairy Maclary author Lynley Dodd on the secret lives of pets

Related: Lucy Treloar on writing about Indigenous Australians: 'I felt filled with conflict'

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