I’m homesick for Australia, but it isn’t mine anymore. It’s an unwell country in crisis | Tara June Winch

Stranded in France, the Miles Franklin winner reflects on what her country looks like from the outside: violent, racist and in denial

• This is an edited version of a speech which opened the Sydney writers’ festival on 27 April

I’m on the Dfat flight waitlist, but nothing is leaving Paris. We lament all this on the “Stranded Aussies” forum. Home’s out of reach. Lately I’m reminded of that Neil Diamond song – with tweaked lyrics it would go: “Nowadays, I’m lost between two shores / France is fine, but it ain’t home / Australia is home, but it ain’t mine no more.”

It doesn’t feel like mine sometimes. Or if it does, it feels as if it’s the mine of 30 years ago. Why are 30-year-old royal commission recommendations still being debated, with nothing implemented? If we’ve said these things for decades, if the tools are there but without the societal or political will to implement change, then what good is time spent on the whittling of wood, the sharpening of stone to begin with? What good is a speech? What good is a royal commission? What is the point of all these reductionist words?

Related: Tara June Winch wins 2020 Miles Franklin award for her book The Yield: ‘It broke my heart to write it’

Related: It’s rare to be able to tell the truth – here’s what’s wrong with Australia’s mental health system | Adrian Plaskitt

This is an edited version of a speech made on 27 April at the Sydney writers’ festival. The festival continues until Sunday 2 May

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Children read more challenging books in lockdowns, data reveals

Report on reading habits of more than one million children also finds they read longer books, particularly during school closures

Children read longer books of greater difficulty during lockdown periods last year, and reported that reading made them feel better while isolated from the wider world, according to new research.

The annual What Kids Are Reading report from Renaissance Learning, which studies the reading habits of more than one million pupils in the UK and Ireland, found that while the number of books read overall dropped 17% in the year to July 2020, compared with the previous year, children read more during lockdowns and school closures. The data showed that the books read during lockdowns were more challenging, with primary school children and those in year seven reading more demanding texts in particular.

Related: ‘I’m fine with being called an activist’: Angie Thomas on her The Hate U Give prequel

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Women’s prize for fiction shortlist entirely first-time nominees

Susanna Clarke, Yaa Gyasi and Patricia Lockwood among the six authors up for the £30,000 award

This year’s shortlist for the Women’s prize for fiction is made up of authors who have never been nominated for the award before, with Yaa Gyasi, Susanna Clarke and Patricia Lockwood among those competing for £30,000.

The annual award for an “outstanding, ambitious, original” novel by a woman features several stories about “lives you haven’t read about before”, said chair of judges Bernardine Evaristo, the Booker prize-winning novelist. These include Claire Fuller’s fourth novel Unsettled Ground, about middle-aged twins who have grown up in isolation in rural Wiltshire, and Cherie Jones’ debut How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps Her House, a story of murder, abuse and violence that takes place in a community on Barbados. These sit beside Gyasi’s second novel Transcendent Kingdom, following a family of Ghanaian immigrants living in the American south.

Related: Yaa Gyasi: 'Toni Morrison blew away everything I thought I knew about literature'

Related: Patricia Lockwood: 'That's what's so attractive about the internet: you can exist there as a spirit in the void’

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DisneyMustPay: authors form task force to fight for missing payments

Coalition of author groups call for Disney to pay outstanding royalties owed to writers of novels and comics including Star Wars, Alien and Buffy the Vampire Slayer series it now owns

A task force made up of science fiction and fantasy, romance, crime and horror authors has been formed in an attempt to persuade Disney into paying authors outstanding royalties for novelisations and comics relating to their properties, including Star Wars, Alien and Indiana Jones.

The so-called DisneyMustPay Joint Task Force includes major writers Neil Gaiman, Tess Gerritsen, Mary Robinette Kowal and Chuck Wendig among its members. It has been formed by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America in partnership with the Author’s Guild, Horror Writers Association, National Writers Union, Novelists, Inc., Romance Writers of America, and Sisters in Crime.

Related: Star Wars author appeals to Disney in fight over royalties

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Florence Welch to adapt The Great Gatsby for Broadway musical

Florence + the Machine singer will collaborate with musician Thomas Bartlett and Pulitzer-winning playwright Martyna Majok on stage production

Florence Welch, frontwoman of Florence + the Machine, is to write music and lyrics for an adaptation of The Great Gatsby to be staged on Broadway.

F Scott Fitzgerald’s novel of love, class friction and callousness in 1920s New York will be adapted for the stage by Martyna Majok, who won the 2018 Pulitzer prize for drama for her play Cost of Living. She and Welch will write lyrics for songs composed by Welch and Thomas Bartlett, the musician and producer also known as Doveman.

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Phosphorescence: Julia Baird’s bestseller wins book of the year

Journalist takes top gong and the non-fiction category at the Australian Book Industry Awards, with Archie Roach and Holocaust survivor Eddie Jaku among other winners

A comforting and inspiring read for many during the pandemic lockdown months, Julia Baird’s Phosphorescence: On Awe, Wonder And Things That Sustain You When The World Goes Dark was awarded book of the year on Wednesday night at the Australian Book Industry Awards in Sydney.

The event brought together publishers, writers and booksellers after a year that saw book sales soar during lockdowns.

Related: Awe, wonder and the overview effect: how feeling small gives us much-needed perspective | Julia Baird

Related: Archie Roach's Took the Children Away: the story behind the stolen generations lament

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Publisher cancels Philip Roth biography after sexual abuse claims against Blake Bailey

WW Norton and Company has pledged to donate the amount of Bailey’s book advance to organisations that fight against sexual assault

The publisher of a highly anticipated and widely discussed biography of Philip Roth is pulling the book and cutting ties with author Blake Bailey, who faces multiple allegations of sexual harassment and assault.

WW Norton and Company, which previously released Bailey’s 2014 memoir The Splendid Things We Planned, said on Tuesday it was “permanently putting out of print our editions of Philip Roth: The Biography and The Splendid Things We Planned … Mr Bailey will be free to seek publication elsewhere if he chooses.”

Related: Philip Roth and Blake Bailey were an all-too-perfect match | Francine Prose

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Thousands of supporters join staff at Mike Pence’s publisher in campaign against book deal

Petition signed by more than 200 Simon & Schuster employees delivered to publishing house also calls for end to deals with members of Trump administration

More than 200 members of staff at Simon & Schuster have signed a petition calling for the publishing house to cancel its seven-figure book deal with former vice-president Mike Pence and commit to not signing any more book deals with members of Donald Trump’s administration.

The petition was delivered to the publisher on Monday, the Wall Street Journal reported. It was signed by 216 S&S employees – about 14% of the publisher’s staff –and backed by more than 3,500 supporters outside the company, including authors such as the National Book Award-winning writer Jesmyn Ward.

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UK book sales soared in 2020 despite pandemic

New figures from the Publishers Association show fiction and audiobooks did particularly well, with value of consumer sales up 7% on 2019 despite bookshop closures

Fiction sales in 2020 soared by more than £100m for UK publishers, as readers locked down at home made their escape into books, with audiobook sales also climbing by more than a third.

New figures from the Publishers Association show that fiction sales for UK publishers rose by 16% from £571m to £688m in 2020, with key titles cited for the rise including Maggie O’Farrell’s Women’s prize-winner Hamnet, Douglas Stuart’s Booker-winner Shuggie Bain, Richard Osman’s cosy crime novel The Thursday Murder Club, Bernardine Evaristo’s Girl, Woman, Other, and Delia Owens’ Where the Crawdads Sing. The bestselling title of last year was Charlie Mackesy’s philosophical picture book The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse.

Related: Book sales jump a third in first week of bookshops reopening in England and Wales

Related: A word in your ear… why the rise of audiobooks is a story worth celebrating

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Frances McDormand wins best actress Oscar for Nomadland

McDormand wins third Academy Award for her role in Chloé Zhao’s Nomadland

Frances McDormand has won the best actress Oscar for Nomadland at the 93rd Academy Awards, which are taking place in Los Angeles.

McDormand plays one of a group of retirees struggling to make ends meet, alongside a cast largely made up of non-professional actors. Written and directed by Chloé Zhao, the film was inspired by Jessica Bruder’s non-fiction book Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century.

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Nomadland wins best picture Oscar as Chloé Zhao makes history with best director win

Film about retirees struggling to make ends meet takes the top prize at the Academy Awards, while Chloé Zhao becomes first woman of colour to take the directing prize

•Follow the Oscars 2021 – live!

Nomadland has won the best picture Oscar at the 93rd Academy Awards, which are taking place in Los Angeles.

A study of retirees struggling to make ends meet, Nomadland stars Frances McDormand alongside a group of non-professional actors, and is directed by Chinese-American film-maker Chloé Zhao. The film was inspired by Jessica Bruder’s non-fiction book Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century.

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Chinese Don Quixote is translated into Spanish after 100 years

Lin Shu’s forgotten 1922 text, The Story of the Enchanted Knight – with a less deluded Don Quixote – in edition for China and Spain

In the early 20th century a pioneering and appropriately idiosyncratic man of letters took it upon himself to translate the first part of Don Quixote into classical Chinese.

Undaunted by his lack of Spanish – or indeed any western language – and helped by a friend who had read two or three English translations, Lin Shu published The Story of the Enchanted Knight in 1922.

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International Booker prize shortlist led by books ‘pushing the boundaries’ of fiction

Writers including Maria Stepanova and Éric Vuillard are up for the £50,000 prize, with the judges swaying for essays and autofiction over ‘good, straightforward, old-fashioned novels’

From Maria Stepanova’s family memoir to a historical essay by Éric Vuillard, this year’s shortlist for the International Booker prize for translated fiction is highlighting works that “are really pushing the boundaries” of fiction and nonfiction.

The International Booker goes to “the finest fiction from around the world” that has been translated into English. Six books are now in the running for the £50,000 award, which is split equally between author and translator, all of them displaying “an extraordinary amount of ingenuity and originality”, said chair of judges Lucy Hughes-Hallett.

Related: 'Love’s labours should be lost': Maria Stepanova, Russia's next great writer

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Rausings targeted in protest against Berlin bookshop eviction

Sigrid Rausing denies financial interest in building, as court orders booksellers Kisch & Co to vacate Kreuzberg premises

A UK-based Swedish multi-billionaire family known for their philanthropic donations to literature, libraries and other arts, has become the target of angry protests in Berlin over the eviction of a community bookshop from a counter-culture neighbourhood.

The bookseller Kisch & Co, which has operated for the last 24 years from a historic building on one of the main thoroughfares in the Kreuzberg district of Germany’s capital, was on Thursday told by a criminal court to vacate its premises.

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Covid lockdowns lead to £1.1bn loss at UK events firm Informa

Revenues plunge by 42% but firm optimistic over business reopenings in major markets of US and China

Informa, the world’s biggest exhibitions group, has reported a loss of £1.1bn for 2020 as the coronavirus pandemic prevented gatherings around the world.

The company’s revenues plummeted by 42% to £1.7bn during the year, compared with £2.9bn in 2019, which was unaffected by the pandemic.

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‘A true work of art’: Evie Wyld wins $50,000 Stella prize for The Bass Rock

The author’s third novel spans three eras to give voice to the ‘collective grief’ of violence against women. In 2021, it couldn’t be more timely

“The Bass Rock is a story of three women’s lives over four centuries,” says Australian author Evie Wyld. “The thing that joins them all is their persecution by men.”

Wyld, who is based in the UK, won the 2021 Stella prize for Australian women’s writing on Thursday night. The celebration of her third novel couldn’t be more timely.

Related: Evie Wyld: ‘Women are always told to ignore their sixth sense’

Related: Stella prize 2021: finalists 'span the gamut' of human enterprise and experience

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Madoff Talks: uncovering what the family of the late Wall Street fraudster knew

A new book, based on unprecedented access to Bernie Madoff, suggests it may never be possible to separate knowledge from the web of lies

“What’s a Ponzi scheme?” Ruth Madoff asked her husband Bernard after he revealed to her that his respected investment company was actually one of the largest frauds in history, according to a new book examining the life of the late fraudster.

Just how much Madoff’s family knew about his massive scheme has been a riddle since he was convicted of orchestrating his $17.5bn scam in 2009. Ruth Madoff, the couple’s two sons and Bernard Madoff’s brother Peter all worked for the company.

Related: Bernie Madoff, financier behind largest Ponzi scheme in history, dies in prison

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Publisher halts Philip Roth book amid sexual abuse claims against biographer

WW Norton to pause shipping Blake Bailey’s authorised biography as women claim Bailey groomed them as their high-school teacher

The publisher of a new, bestselling Philip Roth biography has temporarily halted the book’s shipping and promotion as its author, Blake Bailey, faces multiple allegations of sexual harassment and abuse from women who were once his high-school students.

Related: Philip Roth by Blake Bailey review – how a literary giant treated women

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Book sales jump a third in first week of bookshops reopening in England and Wales

Booksellers report giddy customers browsing and smelling books, with 3.7m print books shifted in first week after lockdown

Booksellers have reported their customers “acting like kids in a sweet shop”, with print sales jumping a third in the first week of bookshops opening their doors after lockdown.

Related: Readers on the bookshops they miss most: ‘I can’t wait to take my lockdown baby!’

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Monte Hellman, cult director and Reservoir Dogs executive producer, dies aged 91

Director of cult classics Two-Lane Blacktop and Cockfighter also directed Jack Nicholson and helped Quentin Tarantino with his feature debut

Monte Hellman, the director behind 1970s cult classics Two Lane Blacktop and Cockfighter, as well as being instrumental in getting Quentin Tarantino’s directorial debut Reservoir Dogs off the ground, has died aged 91. His daughter Melissa, who produced his 2010 film Road to Nowhere, confirmed the news to the Hollywood Reporter, saying Hellman had died in hospital after a fall at his home.

Hellman was born Monte Himmelman in 1929, and after studying theatre at Stanford University set up a theatre company in Los Angeles. Like many directors of his generation, Hellman gained early experience working for Roger Corman’s low-budget exploitation-movie factory. Corman hired him to make Beast from Haunted Cave, shot simultaneously with the same cast and crew as another Corman film, Ski Troop Attack. (“It wasn’t fun to make at all,” he said.) Along with contemporaries such as Francis Ford Coppola and Jack Nicholson, Hellman became a regular Corman collaborator, at first helping to rework and reshoot material. According to Hellman: “Corman was great because he really gave you a lot of freedom. All he cared about was that you came in on budget and that he had a product he could sell.”

Related: King of the road movie: Monte Hellman on his new film

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Mike Pence’s publisher refuses to cancel memoir after staff protest

Simon & Schuster president Jonathan Karp says seven-figure book deal will go ahead, after open letter from employees accuses publisher of being ‘on the wrong side of justice’

Simon & Schuster has said it will not pull out of a seven-figure book deal with Mike Pence after some of its employees called for the contract to be scrapped, stating that “we come to work each day to publish, not cancel”.

An open letter circulated by staff at S&S said that the publisher had “chosen complicity in perpetuating white supremacy by publishing Pence”, in a two-book deal struck earlier this month and reported to be worth $3-4m (£2.1-2.8m). The letter, which did not reveal how many members of staff had signed, said that the former vice-president had “made a career out of discriminating against marginalised groups and denying resources to BIPOC and LGBTQA+ communities”, and demanded his book deal be cancelled.

Related: Simon & Schuster refuses to distribute book by officer who shot Breonna Taylor

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Jane Austen’s tea drinking not under ‘interrogation’, says museum

Jane Austen’s House says decision to update displays with information on slavery links have been ‘misrepresented’, including tea detail that was reported as ‘woke madness’

Staff at the museum Jane Austen’s House are reassuring fans of the Pride and Prejudice author that they have never and will never “interrogate Jane Austen, her characters or her readers for drinking tea”.

The museum issued the statement on Tuesday, after the Telegraph reported that Austen’s tea drinking would “face ‘historical interrogation’” by the museum over the author’s family’s links to slavery. The Express and Daily Mail reported on it as “woke madness”, “a revisionist attack” and “Black Lives Matter-inspired”.

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‘A surge of hope’: public helps create poem celebrating coming of spring

Writer Elizabeth-Jane Burnett brings together 400 voices for optimistic riposte to events of past year

Some described chance encounters with birds and animals beginning to chirrup and scurry as the days lengthened and warmed; others focused on feelings of relief, hope and lingering melancholy after a long and challenging winter.

The observations, thoughts and sentiments of members of the public who were invited to contribute to a crowdsourced poem celebrating the coming of spring 2021 have been weaved together into a new poem by the nature writer Elizabeth-Jane Burnett.

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Richard Dawkins loses ‘humanist of the year’ title over trans comments

American Humanist Association criticises academic for comments about identity using ‘the guise of scientific discourse’, and withdraws its 1996 honour

The American Humanist Association has withdrawn its humanist of the year award from Richard Dawkins, 25 years after he received the honour, criticising the academic and author for “demean[ing] marginalised groups” using “the guise of scientific discourse”.

The AHA honoured Dawkins, whose books include The Selfish Gene and The God Delusion, in 1996 for his “significant contributions” in communicating scientific concepts to the public. On Monday, it announced that it was withdrawing the award, referring to a tweet sent by Dawkins earlier this month, in which he compared trans people to Rachel Dolezal, the civil rights activist who posed as a black woman for years.

I do not intend to disparage trans people. I see that my academic “Discuss” question has been misconstrued as such and I deplore this. It was also not my intent to ally in any way with Republican bigots in US now exploiting this issue .

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Annie Mac leaves BBC Radio 1 after 17 years

The Irish presenter – about to debut as a novelist – will be replaced on new music show Future Sounds by Clara Amfo

Annie Mac is to leave BBC Radio 1 after 17 years. The Irish presenter – full name Annie MacManus – presents the new music show Future Sounds on weekdays between 6pm and 8pm, as well as a dance music-oriented Friday night show. Clara Amfo, the BBC broadcaster who competed in the most recent series of Strictly Come Dancing, will take over Mac’s Future Sounds show from September, with Danny Howard replacing Mac in the Friday night Dance Party slot.

The BBC said that Mac had fronted “some incredible moments on BBC Radio 1, from live sessions to landmark interviews with the world’s biggest artists. Sending all of our love, appreciation and luck for the future to Annie.” Mac told her followers on Twitter and Instagram that it was “hard to articulate what this job has meant to me”, going on to outline her career trajectory since joining the station as a production assistant in 2002, and landing her first solo show – Annie Mac’s Mashup – in 2004.

Related: Annie Mac: ‘I'm happy in chaos and noise’

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David Hare pens furious poem about Boris Johnson’s handling of pandemic

Exasperated satirical poem pours scorn on PM described as ‘dogmeat wrapped in the union flag’

David Hare has channelled Jonathan Swift to write a furious, exasperated satirical poem pouring bile on Boris Johnson and his handling of the pandemic.

The poem, read by Hare in a new Guardian film, came from a feeling of there being a “tremendous dereliction in the public realm at the moment”, the playwright said.

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Michaela Coel debuts as an author with Misfits: A Personal Manifesto

Out in September in the UK and the US, the creator of I May Destroy You is set to write ‘a rousing and bold case against fitting in’

I May Destroy You and Chewing Gum creator and actor Michaela Coel is writing her first book, titled Misfits: A Personal Manifesto.

To be published in the UK and US in September, the book will draw on topics covered in Coel’s MacTaggart lecture at the Edinburgh Festival in 2018. In her speech, which drew audible gasps from the audience, Coel spoke about the barriers and racism she had experienced as a young black woman working in the television industry, as well as her own sexual assault.

Related: Michaela Coel on MacTaggart lecture: 'I feel better having shared'

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‘Semi-literate’: writers in bitter row over Bob Dylan books

Howard Sounes and Clinton Heylin clash over their respective biographies of singer-songwriter

No one can dish out an insult like a writer. That’s what two acclaimed authors of books on Bob Dylan are quickly learning, as they become embroiled in a bitter row over who’s work is more authentic and accurate.

Howard Sounes and Clinton Heylin have lashed out at each other over their respective biographies of the Nobel-winning singer-songwriter.

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In the Instagram age, you actually can judge a book by its cover

Social media is now a vital platform to promote new titles. And that means jacket designs that hit you ‘hard and quick’

Last week’s big literary event was not the publication of a new book, the million-pound signing of a celebrity author or the announcement of a prestigious prize. Instead, it was the unveiling of a cover: the jacket of the forthcoming novel by Sally Rooney.

“It’s quite rare that a publisher will reveal a jacket and make such a big deal about who designed it, or even mention who designed it,” says Danny Arter, creative editor of The Bookseller, a magazine reporting on the publishing industry. But in recent years, book cover design has taken on a higher profile, and we may be seeing a new heyday for book design.

Related: The Guardian view on the writing business: readers must ultimately benefit | Editorial

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Poet laureate Simon Armitage publishes elegy for Prince Philip

The Patriarchs – An Elegy deliberately avoids the sycophancy Philip hated, the poet says, and is instead ‘in service of all people like him’

• Read the full poem below
  

Simon Armitage has written a poem to mark the death of Prince Philip, his first to address the royals in his time as poet laureate, saying that the obituaries had taught him that Prince Philip “hated sycophancy – I didn’t want to write anything that would have sounded sycophantic in his ears”.

Titled The Patriarchs – An Elegy, the poem is published for the first time on the day of the duke’s funeral. It opens on a snowy morning – “the weather is a peculiarly British obsession,” said Armitage – and expands into a dedication to the men of Prince Philip’s generation, “great-grandfathers from birth”.

Related: Lockdown: Simon Armitage writes poem about coronavirus outbreak

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Simon & Schuster refuses to distribute book by officer who shot Breonna Taylor

US publishing giant was due to distribute Jonathan Mattingly’s The Fight for Truth for rightwing outlet Post Hill Press

Simon & Schuster has said that it will not be distributing a book by one of the police officers who shot Breonna Taylor, after a small publisher whose books are distributed through S&S announced the book to widespread criticism.

The Fight for Truth: The Inside Story Behind the Breonna Taylor Tragedy is by Sgt Jonathan Mattingly, a Louisville, Kentucky, officer who shot Taylor and was wounded in the raid on her home in March last year. The book is being published by Post Hill Press, a small independent that specialises in “conservative politics” and Christian titles, and home to authors including far-right conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer and the embattled Republican congressman Matt Gaetz.

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Ted Cruz threatens to burn John Boehner’s book over criticisms

Former Republican House speaker called the Texas senator ‘Lucifer in the flesh’

• Review: John Boehner’s lament for pre-Trump Republicans

Republican senator Ted Cruz has responded to fiery criticism from John Boehner with a tactic beloved of authoritarian regimes: threatening to burn his book.

Related: Trump’s obsession with Deep State conspiracy 'delusional', John Boehner says

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Rathbones Folio prize paid £30,000 to scammers posing as the winner

‘Sophisticated cyber-criminals’ took Valeria Luiselli’s winnings, though a similar fraud attempt on the Baillie Gifford prize was foiled

The Rathbones Folio prize has revealed that it paid £30,000 prize money to scammers posing as the author Valeria Luiselli, who won the award in 2020.

Publishing industry magazine the Bookseller revealed on Wednesday that the Folio, which is awarded to the year’s best work of literature regardless of form, was scammed by “sophisticated cyber-criminals”. The scammers posed as the Mexican author Luiselli, who had won with her novel Lost Children Archive, and requested that the £30,000 payment be made through PayPal.

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Leeds Playhouse marks 50 years with dramas rolling back the decades

Alice Nutter, Simon Armitage and Maxine Peake will contribute to season offering a ‘northern perspective’ on how life has changed since the 1970s

A series of new plays about Yorkshire life across the decades, from the 1970s to the modern day, will mark the 50th anniversary of Leeds Playhouse this summer. Maxine Peake, Simon Armitage and Alice Nutter are among the playwrights who have been commissioned to write the short dramas, which will be staged in groups of three at the theatre and streamed online.

The Playhouse’s artistic director, James Brining, said: “We’re in our sixth decade now so we commissioned six writers to create monologues of 15-20 minutes each, all set in a different decade.” The pieces give a “northern perspective on how things have shifted over that time” he added.

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Children’s laureates campaign for £100m a year to fix primary school libraries

Current laureate Cressida Cowell leads demands to ringfence funds to renew ‘deteriorating’ facilities that fail to appeal to students

All of the UK’s children’s laureates, including Cressida Cowell, Quentin Blake, Philip Pullman and Michael Rosen, are uniting to call for the government to dedicate £100m a year to revitalising “deteriorating” primary school libraries across the country, amid fears that literacy levels have dropped severely during the pandemic.

In an impassioned letter to prime minister Boris Johnson, Cowell, the current laureate, calls for £100m to be ringfenced for building new and restoring neglected libraries every year, saying that millions of children are “missing out on opportunities to discover the life-changing magic of reading”.

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‘Epoch-making’ paper on importance of handwashing goes to auction

A scientific journal covering a Hungarian doctor’s discovery is up for sale, alongside a letter from Edward Jenner, apologising for a delay in vaccine supply

After the last year, handwashing is anything but a novelty. But a 19th-century Hungarian doctor’s “epoch-making” – and controversial – announcement on the importance of clean hands is going up for auction.

Ignaz Semmelweis was a young house officer at the first obstetrical clinic of the Vienna General Hospital’s teaching unit. In 1847, he spotted that there was an extremely high rate of maternal and neonatal mortality in one of the hospital’s maternity wards – around 13% – while in the others the death rate was only 2%. The first clinic was used as a teaching facility for medical students, while the second was used to teach midwives. Semmelweis concluded that the medical students were carrying infections from the autopsy dissection rooms into the delivery rooms, and instigated a policy of strict handwashing using chlorinated limewater. The mortality rate subsequently dropped dramatically, to around 1%.

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Mother of all book deals: Mike Pence signs seven-figure deal for memoirs

• Ex-vice-president is first of Trump circle to snag lucrative deal
• Simon & Schuster to pay $3-4m for two books

Mike Pence has signed a two-book deal for his memoir that is reported to be worth millions of dollars, making him one of the first of former president Donald Trump’s inner circle to announce such a lucrative arrangement.

Pence’s autobiography, currently untitled, is scheduled to come out in 2023. CNN reported that the former vice-president’s deal is worth seven figures, somewhere between $3m and $4m.

Related: The martyrdom of Mike Pence | Sidney Blumenthal

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Granta names world’s best young Spanish-language writers

List celebrating authors under-35 includes Cubans for first time and more authors of colour

A mystical murder story set to the rhythms of Inca ritual dancing, a tale of quotidian corruption in Equatorial Guinea, and a psychedelic musing on exile in outer space are among the stories in an eclectic new collection intended to showcase the best young writers of Spanish-language fiction.

Eleven years after publishing its first collection of the finest up-and-coming authors in Spanish, Granta magazine is releasing a second volume that brings together 25 writers aged under 35 and currently at work on four continents.

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Women’s prize condemns online attack on trans nominee Torrey Peters

Open letter had claimed that the longlisting of the Detransition, Baby author signalled that female writers were unworthy of their own prize

The Women’s prize for fiction has issued a strongly worded statement saying that it “deplores any attempts to malign or bully” authors nominated for the prize, after trans novelist Torrey Peters was targeted in an open letter.

The US writer, who is nominated for the £30,000 award for her debut novel Detransition, Baby, was the subject of a letter published online on Tuesday by the Wild Women Writing Club. The letter, which is signed by several dead women writers including Emily Dickinson and Daphne du Maurier, claims that some signatories were using pseudonyms “because of the threat of harassment by trans extremists and/or cancellation by the book industry”.

Related: Detransition, Baby by Torrey Peters review – a comedy of manners

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Jordan Peterson ‘shocked’ by Captain America villain espousing ‘10 rules for life’

Ta-Nehisi Coates’s new comic sees Red Skull mobilising young men against ‘the feminist trap’ and other Petersonian targets

In the new issue of Captain America, the superhero’s longtime nemesis Red Skull espouses his views about “10 rules for life”, “the feminist trap” and “chaos and order” – and Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson is none too pleased.

Written by the award-winning author Ta-Nehisi Coates, the Marvel comic features a version of the villain who looks to radicalise young men by telling them “what they’ve always longed to hear … That they’re secretly great. That the whole world is against them. That if they’re men, they’ll fight back. And bingo – that’s their purpose. That’s what they’ll live for. And that’s what they’ll die for.”

Do I really live in a universe where Ta-Nehisi Coates has written a Captain America comic featuring a parody of my ideas as part of the philosophy of the arch villain Red Skull? https://t.co/waFsAvWlfd

Related: President Supervillain: behind the alarmingly accurate Trump-Marvel mashup

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‘This is not an easy treasure hunt’: puzzle book offers readers chance to win €750,000 golden casket

Clues in The Golden Treasure of the Entente Cordiale could lead readers in the UK and France to a historic treasure presented by Britain to the French president in 1903

For all the armchair puzzlers for whom sudokus and crosswords have palled over the long months of lockdown, a fiendish new literary conundrum is about to slide on to bookshelves – with a rather lucrative and unusual reward.

Artist Michel Becker tracked down and bought the golden casket given to France by England ahead of the signing of the entente cordiale on 8 April 1904, which attempted to end centuries of antagonism between the two countries. Presented to French president Émile Loubet in July 1903, the casket was wrought by Goldsmiths and Silversmiths Company in London and contained a scroll celebrating friendship between the two countries. Valued at €750,000 (£646,000), the intricately decorated box is now the prize for whoever solves the clues in Becker’s forthcoming treasure hunt book, The Golden Treasure of the Entente Cordiale.

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Trump’s obsession with Deep State conspiracy 'delusional', John Boehner says

• Former House speaker writes in memoir: ‘That’s horseshit’
• Boehner is critical of Trump’s takeover of the Republican party
• US politics – live coverage
  

Donald Trump’s obsession with the Deep State conspiracy theory, which holds that a permanent secret government of bureaucrats and intelligence officials existed to thwart his agenda in office, was destructive and delusional, John Boehner says in a new book.

Related: Katie Hill: Matt Gaetz backed me but he must quit if nude-photo reports are true

Related: In Deep review: Trump v intelligence – and Obama v the people

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Dave Grohl to publish memoir, The Storyteller

First autobiography from Foo Fighters and Nirvana musician will chart ‘all the experiences I’ve had in my life – incredible, difficult, funny and emotional’

Dave Grohl has announced the publication of his first memoir, entitled The Storyteller.

The Foo Fighters frontman and Nirvana drummer wrote the book during the pandemic when his band were unable to tour, and after he began posting short stories from his career on Instagram. “I soon found that the reward I felt every time I posted a story was the same as the feeling I get when playing a song to an audience, so I kept on writing,” he says. “The response from readers was as soul-filling as any applause in an arena. So, I took stock of all the experiences I’ve had in my life – incredible, difficult, funny and emotional – and decided it was time to finally put them into words.”

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Sharp rise in parents seeking to ban anti-racist books in US schools

The American Library Association’s annual Top 10 ‘most challenged’ books is usually dominated by LGBTQ+ reading, but 2020 registered other anxieties

Demands by parents to remove books from library shelves addressing racism soared in the US in 2020, the American Library Association has revealed.

An annual list that is regularly dominated by titles covering LGBTQ+ issues, the ALA’s Top 10 most challenged books contains a number of anti-racism titles for the first time in 2020. Although the list was topped for the third year running by Alex Gino’s George, the story of a fourth-grade transgender girl, Ibram X Kendi and Jason Reynolds’ Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You, a history of racism for children and teens, was the year’s second most challenged title. In their complaints, parents claimed that Stamped contained “selective storytelling incidents” and “does not encompass racism against all people”, said the ALA.

Related: Jason Reynolds: 'Snoop Dogg once told white folks: 'I know you hate me. But your kids don't.' That's how I feel'

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Soviet TV version of Lord of the Rings rediscovered after 30 years

Film posted on YouTube delights fans with its rudimentary sets and ludicrous green-screen effects

A Soviet television adaptation of The Lord of the Rings thought to have been lost to time was rediscovered and posted on YouTube last week, delighting Russian-language fans of JRR Tolkien.

The 1991 made-for-TV film, Khraniteli, based on Tolkien’s The Fellowship of the Ring, is the only adaptation of his Lord of the Rings trilogy believed to have been made in the Soviet Union.

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John le Carré, chronicler of Englishness, died Irish, son reveals

Author was so opposed to Brexit that he took Irish citizenship to remain European

John le Carré, the great embodiment and chronicler of Englishness, saved his greatest twist not for his thrillers but the twilight of his own life: he died an Irishman.

The creator of the quintessential English spy George Smiley was so opposed to Brexit that in order to remain European, and to reflect his heritage, he took Irish citizenship before his death last December aged 89, his son has revealed.

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