Bolsonaro tells students to read book by dictatorship-era torturer

Brazil’s president accused of ‘drinking from the sewers of history’ by recommending The Suffocated Truth

Brazil’s far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro, has prompted outrage after urging teenage students to read a book by a notorious dictatorship-era torturer accused of directing interrogations sessions where victims were were whipped, electrocuted and pounded with vine wood canes.

Bolsonaro, an outspoken fan of the 1964-1985 military regime during which hundreds of political opponents were murdered and thousands more tortured, met with students at the gates of the presidential palace in the capital Brasília on Monday.

Related: Brazil: tortured dissidents appalled by Bolsonaro's praise for dictatorship

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Theresa May: I would rather write Alpine whodunnit than memoir

Ex-PM says she would like to write novel based on ill-fated 19th century ascent of Matterhorn

He was the British mountaineer who led the first ascent of one of the most formidable mountains in the Alps. She was the prime minister who is likely to go down in history for ultimately failing to reach the summit of her own personal Matterhorn.

Yet in her first public interview since leaving Downing Street – at a book festival in where she was asked about what book she might now find the time to write – Theresa May revealed that it was the dark rumours surrounding how four of Edward Whymper’s climbing party fell to their doom that most appealed to her.

Related: Zermatt celebrates centenary of Matterhorn's first climb: from the archive, 17 July 1965

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Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell author to return after 16-year gap

Susanna Clarke, whose bestselling debut sold 4m copies, will publish her second book, Piranesi, in September 2020

Sixteen years after readers were introduced to the magical world of Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, Susanna Clarke is to publish her second novel.

Out in September next year, Clarke’s Piranesi will follow the story of its eponymous hero, who lives in the House, a building with “hundreds if not thousands of rooms and corridors, imprisoning an ocean. A watery labyrinth.” Occasionally, he sees his friend, The Other, who is doing scientific research into “A Great and Secret Knowledge”. Piranesi records his findings in his journal, but then messages begin to appear, and “a terrible truth unravels as evidence emerges of another person and perhaps even another world outside the House’s walls,” said Bloomsbury, which announced on Monday that it had acquired the novel in a two-book deal.

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Queensland literary awards 2019: Melissa Lucashenko and Trent Dalton shortlisted for top prize

Miles Franklin winner and bestselling novelist vie for $25,000 premier’s prize for a work of state significance

Miles Franklin award winner Melissa Lucashenko and journalist turned bestselling novelist Trent Dalton have been shortlisted for the highest honours in Queensland’s annual literary awards.

Lucashenko and Dalton join Krissy Kneen, Jake Goetz and Matthew Condon in vying for the $25,000 premier’s prize for a work of state significance, as the shortlist was announced on Monday for the 13-category Queensland literary awards, worth a total of $253,500.

Related: Miles Franklin 2019 winner Melissa Lucashenko: 'We need a revolution'

Related: Chris Hammer: 'I am a serial killer. I kill my darlings left, right and centre'

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Has the Great Train Robbery’s leader finally been unmasked?

Detective identifies gangster Billy Hill as mastermind of 1963 crime that still fascinates the public

Who was the mastermind? Who were the ones who got away? And why do we still want to know? Nearly 60 years after the Great Train Robbery, fresh claims are being made about who planned it and who were the robbers who were never caught. Never mind whodunnits; there’s now a genre of whoreallydunnits.

A book published this week, written by a former British Transport police detective with the help of one of the robbers, will claim that the mastermind of the heist was the late gangster Billy Hill, and that one of the team who got away with it was a relative of an Arsenal and England football player. It will also suggest that the person named recently as the “real” inside man was, in fact, a blameless postman. Already some of the new claims are being challenged by relatives of the men named.

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Edmund de Waal: ‘The Nazis banished my family from Vienna. Now we are returning’

Writer of the Hare With Amber Eyes tells why a new Austrian law is behind the first gathering at his ancestral Jewish home since 1938

The celebrated writer and ceramicist Edmund de Waal has said it is a “huge deal” for his family, whose Jewish ancestors were driven out of Vienna in 1938, that the Austrian government is to allow descendants of Nazi victims to reclaim their citizenship.

De Waal, author of the 2010 bestselling family memoir The Hare with Amber Eyes, said he and his relatives would be returning to Vienna in November for their first reunion in more than eight decades. It would “mean the world” to his 90-year-old father, Victor de Waal, a former dean of Canterbury cathedral, who came to Britain as a refugee at the age of 10, to reclaim the citizenship that was stolen from his family, he said.

Libraries are incredibly beautiful, powerful places of solace and resistance. They are under threat, not just in war zones but also in the UK

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Ken Stott: 'Ian Rankin is wrong. Rebus would have been a yes voter'

Actor disagrees with Edinburgh detective’s creator on thorny issue of Scottish independence

Ian Rankin’s fictional detective survived military service during the Northern Ireland Troubles, fist fights with criminals and bent cops in his native Edinburgh, and even a lifetime of heavy drinking and smoking.

But DI John Rebus is being forced to confront even more challenging circumstances: Scotland’s independence debate.

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US prisons accused of widespread 'arbitrary' book bans

George Orwell, John Updike and Barack Obama are among the names PEN America says have been illogically withheld from prisoners

In one prison in New York, authorities tried to ban a book of maps of the moon, arguing that it could “present risks of escape”. In Florida, prisons have prevented inmates from reading Klingon dictionaries and a colouring book about chickens. In Texas, prisons have a banned list of more than 10,000 books by authors including Alice Walker, John Updike, George Orwell and Joyce Carol Oates.

With bookshops and libraries across the US marking Banned Books Week, an annual celebration of the right to read, a new paper from PEN America says that the largest ban in the US is in state and federal prisons, where more than 2.2 million people are currently incarcerated. The free-speech organisation is calling on the US Congress to convene immediate hearings on book-banning in prisons, with a petition signed by almost 40,000 people saying that Congress must “shed light on this critical right to read where it is being thwarted most severely”.

Related: Want to write fiction in US prisons? It might be censored on 'security grounds' | Caits Meissner

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David Mitchell announces Utopia Avenue, his first novel in five years

Due out next summer, the novel will explore the power of music, following the career of the eponymous psychedelic band

Cloud Atlas author David Mitchell is to tackle the story of “the strangest British band you’ve never heard of” in his first novel for five years, Utopia Avenue.

Announcing the book, which will be released next June, Mitchell quoted the maxim that “writing about music is like dancing about architecture”, saying that Utopia Avenue stemmed from it.

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‘It’s a beacon for the city’: inside the new New York library that cost $40m to build

The project earned criticism for its price tag, but it is being seen as a positive sign for the health of New York libraries

Strategically positioned on the bank of the East River, across the water from the United Nations headquarters, New York city has a shimmering new addition to its skylines.

Unusually for such prime real estate set among parkland, panoramic views of Manhattan and convenient transport links, this $40m development in Queens is neither an upscale apartment block, exclusive members club or the offices of a huge corporation.

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$625,000 'genius grants' go to Ocean Vuong and six other writers

The MacArthur Foundation honours, which encourage winners to ‘continue to innovate’, also won by Valeria Luiselli, Lynda Berry and Emily Wilson

Ocean Vuong, the award-winning poet who came to the US with his family aged two as a refugee from Vietnam, is one of seven writers to be awarded a so-called “genius grant” of $625,000 (£504,000) by the MacArthur Foundation.

The no-strings-attached fellowships are intended to allow recipients to “continue to innovate, take risks, and pursue their vision”. Vuong was chosen alongside six other writers: graphic novelist Lynda Barry, cultural historian Saidiya Hartman, the Booker-longlisted author Valeria Luiselli, American historian Kelly Lytle Hernandez, literary scholar Jeffrey Miller and classicist Emily Wilson, who in 2017 was the first woman to publish a translation of Homer’s Odyssey in English.

Related: Ocean Vuong and the new Great American Novel - books podcast

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Journalist Tom Bower confirms he is writing Boris Johnson biography

Journalist is said to specialise in books about ‘men with something to hide’

With mounting calls to resign following a damning supreme court ruling and a brewing conflict of interest scandal, Boris Johnson is likely hoping nothing else adds to his list of woes.

But the prime minister has another potential pitfall on the horizon as, the Guardian has learned, the investigative author Tom Bower is writing a biography of him.

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David Cameron's memoir fails to top Tony Blair’s in first week sales

For the Record, the former PM’s account of his time in office sold close to 21,000 copies in its first week, behind Margaret Atwood’s The Testaments, which topped 100,000

Almost 21,000 people rushed out to buy a copy of David Cameron’s memoir in its first week on sale, placing it second on the latest book charts to Margaret Atwood’s The Testaments and, historically, behind Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair for the title of fastest-selling political memoir by a former prime minister.

Published on last Tuesday, For the Record had sold 20,792 copies by Saturday, according to figures just released by official book sales monitor Nielsen BookScan. When Blair’s A Journey was published in 2010 – amid cancellation of launch events over protests from anti-war campaigners – it sold 92,060 copies in its first four days on sale. At the time, this made it the fastest-selling autobiography since Nielsen began to track book sales in 1998.

Related: For the Record: David Cameron's memoir is honest but still wrong

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After 80 years, Darkness at Noon's original text is finally translated

Arthur Koestler’s classic story of Stalinist purges has hitherto been known through an incomplete translation by his girlfriend – until a student found the original in an archive

When it was first published in 1940, Arthur Koestler’s dystopian indictment of Stalinism, Darkness at Noon, was hailed as a seminal work. The bestselling story of a once-powerful Soviet revolutionary, who is arrested and tried for treason by the regime he helped establish, was deemed “a piece of brilliant literature” by George Orwell. Today it is regarded as one of the works that alerted the west to the realities of Stalin’s regime and is one of the most celebrated political novels of the 20th century.

Now, almost 80 years later, the Hungarian-British author’s original text is being published in English for the first time after a German student discovered a carbon copy that had been lost since 1940.

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'Brilliant exposé' of gender data gap wins Royal Society science book prize

Invisible Women by Caroline Criado Perez, which reveals bias towards men in measures of human life, hailed as vital work

• The deadly truth about a world built for men – from stab vests to car crashes

Caroline Criado Perez’s exposé of the gender data gap that has created a world biased against women has won her the Royal Society science book prize.

Criado Perez’s Invisible Women, which explores how everything from speech-recognition software to bulletproof vests, from medical tests to office temperature controls are designed for men as a default, was called a brilliant exposé by chair of judges and Oxford professor Nigel Shadbolt.

Related: Invisible Women by Caroline Criado Perez – a world designed for men

Related: The deadly truth about a world built for men – from stab vests to car crashes

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'It has saved countless lives': readers' picks of the best books this century

After we published our list of the greatest books since 2000, you sent in your own suggestions – from Chinese sci-fi to a history of music

• Our list: the 100 best books of the 21st century
• An interview with the author of our No 1

“London: The Biography by Peter Ackroyd (2000) made me fall in love with London all over again. The blood of the city’s history soaked into the clay. Quiet hidden corners, conspiratorial whispers in coffee houses, the dirty Thames and the Great Stink. Invasions, bridges, fires and fog. It’s a very human tale told with the verve of a novelist, the detail of a diarist and the grace of a poet.” – dylan37

“The one novel I’ve read from the century to date that I am sure will stay with me for the rest of my life, for personal as well as for general reasons, is The Hunger Angel by Herta Müller (translated by Philip Boehm in 2012). It was published in German as Atemschaukel in 2009, just before she (deservedly) won the Nobel prize for literature. It’s an extraordinarily dense and poetic work and one that seems to transcend language – so perfectly written that text and idea are fused, yet still overflowing with humanity.” – nilpferd

Related: 'People hope my book will be China's Star Wars': Liu Cixin on China's exploding sci-fi scene

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Hundreds of authors protest after Kamila Shamsie's book award is revoked

Nelly Sachs prize was withdrawn over Shamsie’s support for boycotting Israel, prompting more than 250 fellow writers to defend her stance

Arundhati Roy, JM Coetzee and Sally Rooney are among more than 250 writers who have defended Kamila Shamsie after a German literary prize withdrew an award over her support for the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel.

In an open letter published today in the London Review of Books, the writers, who also include Noam Chomsky, Amit Chaudhuri, William Dalrymple,Yann Martel, Jeanette Winterson and Ben Okri, say that the Nelly Sachs prize has chosen to “punish an author for her human rights advocacy”. Michael Ondaatje, a former winner of the award, is one of the signatories to the letter.

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The best recent science fiction and fantasy – reviews roundup

A Little Hatred by Joe Abercrombie; The Undoing of Arlo Knott by Heather Child; World Engines: Destroyer by Stephen Baxter; Overdrawn by NJ Crosskey and Cold Storage by David Koepp

Joe Abercrombie returns to the fantasy world of his bestselling First Law series with A Little Hatred (Gollancz, £18.99), the first volume in a new trilogy. The Union is under threat from enemies on its northern border and ravaged by industrial revolution sweeping the land. Abercrombie examines the effects of social upheaval and the use and abuse of power through the viewpoints of a large cast, from kings, princes, warriors and seers to businessmen and women; the characterisation is little short of brilliant. The plot is labyrinthine, with trademark Abercrombie twists and turns and reversals of fortune. He writes of slum life with graphic realism, and his rendering of battle scenes is to die for. The novel culminates in a rousing finale that sets the scene for the second volume. The complex world of A Little Hatred is best appreciated if the reader is acquainted with the First Law books.

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The 100 best books of the 21st century

Dazzling debut novels, searing polemics, the history of humanity and trailblazing memoirs ... Read our pick of the best books since 2000

• Read an interview with the author of our No 1 book
  
• Read Ali Smith on Autumn
• Read David Mitchell on Cloud Atlas

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'Lost' Françoise Sagan novel causes stir in France

Unfinished story, Four Corners of the Heart, was found by her son after her death in 2004

A “lost” novel by Françoise Sagan has been published in France.

Four Corners of the Heart, an unfinished 200-page story by the author of Bonjour Tristesse – which caused a sensation with its portrayal of the empty lives of the idle rich – was found by her son Denis Westhoff after her death in 2004.

Related: Françoise Sagan: 'She did what she wanted'

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Canadian author Graeme Gibson dies aged 85

Long-term partner of Margaret Atwood had dementia but continued to travel with her on book tour for The Testaments

The Canadian author and conservationist Graeme Gibson has died at the age of 85. Gibson was the long-term partner of Margaret Atwood, and was with the novelist while she toured to promote her new book, The Testaments.

Atwood said in a statement this afternoon that her family was “devastated by the loss of Graeme, our beloved father, grandfather, and spouse, but we are happy that he achieved the kind of swift exit he wanted and avoided the decline into further dementia that he feared”.

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Nearly half of all book reviews in Australia in 2018 were of works by female authors

Stella Count researchers say gender parity reached by most publications

Researchers have praised most Australian publications for reaching gender parity in their book review sections last year.

Of published book reviews in Australia in 2018 49% were for books written by women, according to research published on Thursday by the Stella Count.

Related: Australia's creative industry is shockingly white. Don't be discouraged | Beverley Wang

Related: ‘Do black people read?’ What my years in publishing have taught me about diversity in books | Natalie Jerome

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Man jailed for stealing 7,000 books from Scottish universities

Darren Barr also faces assets seizure under legislation normally used for drug gangs

A prolific book thief has been jailed for 25 months after he stole more than 7,000 books from three universities in Edinburgh, before selling them online.

Darren Barr, 28, from Kinross in Perthshire, is believed to have made more than £30,000 by selling the textbooks through the online book markets WeBuyBooks, Ziffit and Zapper.

Related: Edinburgh gives female medical students their degrees – 150 years late

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'Barcelona with rain': Galway promises deluge of culture in 2020

Irish west coast city welcomes Margaret Atwood and celebrates Homer as European capital of culture

Homer’s Odyssey is to be read aloud on the wind-battered beaches of Ireland’s west coast to celebrate claims that some of the mythical journey took place there, as part of Galway’s stint as European capital of culture in 2020.

A blizzard of arts events was announced on Wednesday, including the light artist Kari Kola turning the mountains of Connemara green on St Patrick’s Day; a visit by Margaret Atwood on international women’s day; and a multi-art celebration of the writer JM Synge.

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David Cameron book: more relevations from Downing Street years

Ex-PM’s memoir details Syria frustrations and early support for EU referendum

As David Cameron’s autobiography is finally released after days of extracts and interviews, there are still significant details of his account that had not come to light.

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Inconceivable! Rumour of The Princess Bride remake sends fans into pit of despair

Cary Elwes sums up reaction: ‘There’s a shortage of perfect movies in this world. It would be a pity to damage this one’

There’s no official news that a Princess Bride remake is in the works – don’t panic – but the mere mention of the idea has been descended on by fans of the original, with the actor Jamie Lee Curtis, the film’s original star Cary Elwes, and even the US senator Ted Cruz among those declaring it “inconceivable”.

The drama began with a Variety profile of the film’s producer Norman Lear. In the article, Sony Pictures Entertainment chief executive, Tony Vinciquerra, was quoted as saying: “Very famous people whose names I won’t use, but they want to redo The Princess Bride … Not a month goes by when we don’t have an idea coming from some very big name wanting to do things with Norman.”

There’s a shortage of perfect movies in this world. It would be a pity to damage this one. https://t.co/5N8Q3P2e5G

Oh really? Well, I married the six fingered man, obviously why we have stayed together for 35 years and there is only ONE The Princess Bride and it’s William Goldman and @robreiner’s. “Life is pain highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something!” https://t.co/hv33UIZKN3

NOOOOOOOO!!!!!! Sonny, The Princess Bride is the greatest thing, in the world—except for a nice MLT, mutton, lettuce and tomato sandwich, where the mutton is nice and lean and the tomato is ripe. They’re so perky, I love that. DON’T MESS WITH PERFECTION. https://t.co/A2lWFlq2yB

I would never dare.

You've fallen for one of the two classic blunders! The first being never get involved in a land war in Asia but only slightly lesser known: never go in on a Princess Bride reboot! https://t.co/1AZkr41gDI

I’m rarely a “don’t remake this” kind of guy, because I make an effort to be near-pathologically optimistic, and I try very hard to believe that there may be some genius version of a remake that I lack the vision to imagine.

All that said, don’t remake the Princess Bride. https://t.co/5LvQmoBe12

The Princess Bride vs. any potential remake. pic.twitter.com/Bs7XPdhcoV

Do not touch The Princess Bride.

Do not remake it.

Do not enhance it.

Do not remaster it.

Keep you damn dirty hands off The Princess Bride. pic.twitter.com/VgbWCnOBUI

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Merriam-Webster dictionary adds 'they' as nonbinary pronoun

America’s oldest dictionary claps back at grammar snobs as it embraces more inclusive definition

Attention grammar snobs: ”they” can officially be used as a singular, nonbinary pronoun. Merriam-Webster, the oldest dictionary publisher in America, officially recognized the usage today, when it added 533 words to its online dictionary.

The recognition of “they” as a singular, non-gender-specific pronoun comes as its usage grows in popularity, especially among people who identify as neither male nor female. However, these adoptees frequently face critics who claim the usage is not “grammatically correct”.

Related: Manholes or maintenance holes? The city rejecting gendered language

Dad joke: “A wholesome joke of the type said to be told by fathers with a punchline that is often an obvious or predictable pun or play on words and usually judged to be endearingly corny or unfunny.”

Vacay, sesh, inspo: Vacation, session (jamming, drinking or otherwise), inspiration

Coulrophobia: abnormal fear of clowns

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Handmaid's sales: Margaret Atwood's The Testaments is immediate hit

Novelist’s return to the dystopia of Gilead sold more than 100,000 copies in hardback in its first week on sale in the UK

A hardback copy of Margaret Atwood’s follow-up to The Handmaid’s Tale, The Testaments, was sold every four seconds in the UK last week, according to sales figures that show the dystopian novel racing to the top of this week’s book charts.

Published at midnight on Monday, The Testaments had sold 103,177 hardbacks by Saturday, according to official book sales monitor Nielsen BookScan. Set 15 years after the end of The Handmaid’s Tale, the novel traces the continued evolution of Atwood’s totalitarian state of Gilead, where women are reduced to their wombs and justification is found in the Bible for every abuse of power.

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Thousands demand Oxford dictionaries 'eliminate sexist definitions'

Nearly 30,000 people have signed petition calling on the publisher to cut entries that ‘discriminate against and patronise women’

Almost 30,000 people have signed a petition calling for Oxford University Press to change the “sexist” definitions of the word “woman” in some of its dictionaries.

Launched this summer by Maria Beatrice Giovanardi, the petition points out that Oxford dictionaries contain words such as “bitch, besom, piece, bit, mare, baggage, wench, petticoat, frail, bird, bint, biddy, filly” as synonyms for woman. Sentences chosen to show usage of the word woman include: “Ms September will embody the professional, intelligent yet sexy career woman” and “I told you to be home when I get home, little woman”. Such sentences depict “women as sex objects, subordinate, and/or an irritation to men”, the petition says.

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Russian culture minister dismisses comics as 'for those who can't read well'

Vladimir Medinsky’s comments have sparked backlash from fans and boosted sales, according to one Russian publisher

The Russian culture minister’s dismissal of comic books as “for those who can’t read well” has sparked a backlash from fans but also boosted sales of the genre, according to one publisher.

The minister, Vladimir Medinsky, told an audience at the Moscow international book fair that comics are “like chewing gum, it’s not food”. “Comic books are aimed at children who are only learning to read,” he added. “I think it’s pathetic for adults to read comic books.”

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The Far Side trails 'new online era' for Gary Larson's beloved cartoons

Immediate excitement has greeted one of the first sign of life from the hugely popular franchise since the publicity-shy artist retired it in 1995

Fans of the surreal, the bizarre and sardonic anthropomorphic cows are in a fervour after The Far Side cartoonist Gary Larson’s website was updated this weekend with promises of “a new online era”, 24 years after the reclusive creator retired at the age of 44.

Larson’s iconic Far Side cartoons were syndicated in more than 1,900 daily newspapers from 1980 to 1995, treating readers to daily offerings from his offbeat visions of the world. In one of his most famous cartoons, a female chimpanzee finds a blonde hair in her mate’s fur, and asks him: “Been doing more ‘research’ with that Jane Goodall tramp?” (Goodall approved.) In another – voted one of his best by scientists – a boffin with a large rectal thermometer stands behind a brontosaurus, the caption reading: “Professor Higgenbottom was never heard from again, leaving the cold-blooded/warm-blooded controversy still unresolved.” His image of a caveman pointing to the tail of a stegosaurus and letting his audience know that it is called “the thagomizer, after the late Thag Simmonds”, led paleontologists to adopt the invented term.

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Won’t stick: reports of Margaret Atwood’s 2019 Booker prize win greatly exaggerated

Organisers rush to clarify that judges have not yet decided beyond the shortlist after bookshop brands copies of The Testaments as the winner

The Booker prize has stressed that it has not – yet, anyway – selected Margaret Atwood’s much-heralded sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale as this year’s winner, after a bookseller mistakenly displayed copies declaring it the 2019 victor.

Novelist and academic Matthew Sperling posted an image from an unnamed bookshop of Atwood’s The Testaments on Twitter on Monday. Pictured alongside Lucy Ellmann’s Ducks, Newburyport, which bore a sticker highlighting its shortlisting, The Testaments instead boasted a sticker branding it the winner. “Don’t think you were supposed to use those stickers yet, lads...” wrote Sperling.

Don’t think you were supposed to use those stickers yet, lads... pic.twitter.com/cuiKJCV7AC

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When Milton met Shakespeare: poet's notes on Bard appear to have been found

Hailed as one of the most significant archival discoveries of modern times, text seems to show the Paradise Lost poet making careful annotations on his edition of Shakespeare’s plays

Almost 400 years after the first folio of Shakespeare was published in 1623, scholars believe they have identified the early owner of one copy of the text, who made hundreds of insightful annotations throughout: John Milton.

The astonishing find, which academics say could be one of the most important literary discoveries of modern times, was made by Cambridge University fellow Jason Scott-Warren when he was reading an article about the anonymous annotator by Pennsylvania State University English professor Claire Bourne. Bourne’s study of this copy, which has been housed in the Free Library of Philadelphia since 1944, dated the annotator to the mid-17th century, finding them alive to “the sense, accuracy, and interpretative possibility of the dialogue”. She also provided many images of the handwritten notes, which struck Scott-Warren as looking oddly similar to Milton’s hand.

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Monica Lewinsky and Zadie Smith to headline new feminist ideas festival in Australia

Helen Garner, Jia Tolentino and Aminatou Sow will also feature in November’s Broadside festival in Melbourne hosted by the Wheeler Centre

Monica Lewinsky will embark on her first ever speaking tour of Australia and Zadie Smith will return for the first time in nearly two decades to headline a new feminist ideas festival.

Hosted by Melbourne’s Wheeler Centre in November, the Broadside festival will feature more than 30 high-profile local and international guests, including Helen Garner, Mona Eltahawy, Ariel Levy, Courtney Barnett and Aileen Moreton-Robinson.

Related: 'Identity is a pain in the arse': Zadie Smith on political correctness

Related: Monica Lewinsky to produce American Crime Story drama about Clinton scandal

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Five things we learned from David Cameron's memoir

Extracts from former PM’s book reveal thoughts on Johnson, Gove and referendum regret

Extracts from the former prime minister David Cameron’s memoir For the Record have been published in the Times and Sunday Times. Here are five things we learned from the book.

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Solaris review – love and loneliness collide in best take yet on sci-fi classic

Royal Lyceum, Edinburgh
David Greig follows Tarkovsky and Soderbergh with this bold, rewarding take on Stanisław Lem’s novel about a sentient planet speaking to its visitors

If a sentient planet existed, it would be unfathomably hard to explain. How to put into words a consciousness so vast, ancient and alien? We’d struggle to begin.

It seems only right, then, that each time it is told, the story of Solaris shifts in shape. First, came the 1961 novel by Stanisław Lem, coupling dense tracts of tech-speak with an unknown terror worthy of Edgar Allan Poe. Where the 1972 Tarkovsky movie was spare and reflective, the 2002 Soderbergh version was all about the wish-fulfilment romance between George Clooney, as a newly arrived spaceman, and Natascha McElhone, an apparition of his former wife.

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Jailed Turkish writer Ahmet Altan: My words cannot be imprisoned

Newly nominated for a Baillie Gifford literary prize, the political prisoner has written a novel from behind bars

“You can imprison me but you cannot keep me here,” writes Ahmet Altan at the end of his acclaimed book I Will Never See the World Again. “Because, like all writers, I have magic. I can pass through your walls with ease.”

The novelist’s series of essays, smuggled out of jail among notes to his lawyers, was lauded by critics as an instant classic when it was published in Britain in spring this year, and last week it was longlisted for the £50,000 Baillie Gifford nonfiction prize.

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Julie, the lovestruck woman in a painting, who inspired an arthouse hit

The Souvenir and The Goldfinch, both based on celebrated artworks, are set to pique a revival of interest in the originals

She is the young heroine of a romantic novel that once rocked the whole of France and she is also the star of a charming portrait housed at London’s Wallace Collection. Now, thanks to an art-house hit – a film delighting critics and winning five-star reviews – the spotlight has swung once again on to Julie D’Etange, the enigmatic subject of Jean-Honoré Fragonard’s little painting The Souvenir.

His picture shows a young woman in a luxurious pink satin dress carving her lover’s initials into a tree, in a scene drawn from Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s 1761 book Julie. Written in letter form, the story charts the path of her illicit love for Saint-Preux, a former lover and tutor, reintroduced into her life by her unsuspecting husband.

Related: The Souvenir review – Joanna Hogg back on form with sly, disconcerting drama

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#MeToo: the ‘unprecedented’ movement that launched a wave of books

After the published revelations against Harvey Weinstein, a flood of books has begun to reshape gender relations

The #MeToo movement can reasonably be described as kicking off on 5 October 2017, with a New York Times report Harvey Weinstein Paid Off Sexual Harassment Accusers for Decades that contained the accounts of eight women who said they were sexually harassed or assaulted by the now-disgraced Hollywood producer.

Weinstein is now facing a trial for his alleged crimes. But what followed the Times’ story was a deluge of accusations of sexual misconduct toward women by men – often with a straight-forward power dynamic between older, professionally accomplished men and younger, often vulnerable, women trying to establish a career. Many of the biggest names in media, the arts and politics were brought down.

Related: She Said: an inside look at the story that brought down Harvey Weinstein

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Cameron suspected Cummings of 'dripping poison' into Gove's ear

In an extract from his memoir, serialised in the Times, former PM makes claim about Boris Johnson’s senior aide

Dominic Cummings has developed a somewhat unsavoury reputation since taking over as Boris Johnson’s senior aide. But his nefarious influence over the machinations of No 10 stretches back much further, the former prime minister David Cameron claims in his forthcoming memoir.

Extracts printed in Saturday’s Times reveal that, in 2013, Cameron suspected a “bilious” Cummings of “dripping his poison” into the ear of Michael Gove, even though he was no longer serving as a special adviser to the then education secretary.

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Is Cameron's real regret about EU referendum the fact he didn't win?

In an interview to promote his book, the former PM still says Brexit poll was necessary

• Cameron accuses Johnson and Gove of behaving appallingly over Brexit

Readjusting to being a former prime minister can’t be easy. Tony Blair described having to learn to use a mobile phone, after years when aides took charge of all his communications. Theresa May was to be seen earlier this week pottering about in the palace of Westminster, not a flunky in sight, buying herself lunch.

But the sense from David Cameron’s Times interview is that the hardest readjustment has been getting used to the idea of not always being a winner.

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For the Record: signs of trouble before David Cameron book hits shelves

Preorders appear sluggish and some shops in remain-voting areas say they won’t stock memoir

It is the fruit of three years’ work, at least some of which is presumed to have taken place inside a £25,000 shepherd’s hut.

The much-anticipated publication next week of For the Record, David Cameron’s 752-page book promising a candid account of his time in politics, is expected to be the moment a man widely blamed for Britain’s greatest postwar crisis will make a concerted bid for control of his tainted legacy.

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Ian McEwan announces surprise Brexit satire, The Cockroach

Out this month, the Kafkaesque novella sees a man wake up as prime minister and is described by the author as a ‘therapeutic response’ to Brexit turmoil

In Kafka’s Metamorphosis, Gregor Samsa awoke to discover that he had been transformed into a monstrous beetle. Now, in Ian McEwan’s surprising next project, Jim Sams wakes and finds he must endure a worse fate: he has become the British prime minister.

Announced on Thursday, and to be published in just two weeks time on 27 September, The Cockroach is McEwan’s 16th work of fiction and his second to be published this year, after the novel Machines Like Me. Following the transformation, Sams – who was “ignored or loathed” in his previous life – finds himself with new powers and a new mission: to carry out the will of the people.

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Turkish author imprisoned for life nominated for £50,000 book award

Assembled from notes, Ahmet Altan’s I Will Never See the World Again is up for Baillie Gifford prize alongside Guardian and Observer journalists Amelia Gentleman and Laura Cumming

Three years almost to the day since the Turkish author Ahmet Altan was first jailed in the wake of the country’s failed coup, he has been longlisted for the £50,000 Baillie Gifford prize for non-fiction for his prison memoir, I Will Never See the World Again.

First imprisoned in 2016, Altan received a life sentence in 2018 for sending out “subliminal messages in favour of a coup” on television and attempting to overthrow the government. PEN America has called his imprisonment “a horrific assault on freedom of expression” and authors including JM Coetzee and AS Byatt have demanded his release in an open letter saying that his “crime is not supporting a coup but the effectiveness of his criticism of the current government”.

Related: Secrets, lies and the girl who disappeared from a British beach

Related: Serhii Plokhy: 'Chernobyl exposed Soviet secrecy'

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Angela Carter's 'carnival' London home receives blue plaque

The novelist wrote some of her most famous books at the Clapham house, where she also tutored the young Kazuo Ishiguro

The house in Clapham, south London, where the acclaimed author Angela Carter lived for the last 16 years of her life has been commemorated with a blue plaque by English Heritage.

Carter lived at 107, The Chase from 1976 until her death from lung cancer in 1992, aged 51. There, she wrote seminal works including The Bloody Chamber, her acclaimed erotic retellings of fairytales, Nights at the Circus and Wise Children, also tutoring her then student, now Nobel laureate, Kazuo Ishiguro at her kitchen table, and entertaining writers including Salman Rushdie, Ian McEwan and JG Ballard.

Related: Angela's influence: what we owe to Carter

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Lyra McKee anthology to show 'subtlety and courage' of murdered reporter

Collection of the campaigning journalist’s work will be published next year to mark the anniversary of her killing

An anthology of work by the investigative journalist Lyra McKee, who was fatally shot by New IRA gunmen, will be published next year on the first anniversary of her death, Faber & Faber has announced.

The 29-year-old was reporting on unrest in Derry on 18 April while standing close to a police vehicle when she was killed by activists from the dissident republican group. Both marking her loss and celebrating her work, Lyra McKee: Lost, Found, Remembered will be published in April 2020.

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Kandace Siobhan Walker's 'singular, haunting tale' wins BAME short story prize

Deep Heart beat almost 200 others to win the £1,000 award set up by the Guardian and 4th Estate in 2015

• Read the story below

Kandace Siobhan Walker has won the 2019 Guardian 4th Estate short story prize with Deep Heart, a poignant exploration of kinship and community.

The story follows three sisters running wild in the isolated island community where they live with their grandparents. When one of the girls disappears, her sisters search for her in the forest. Moving elegantly between problematic depictions of authority, cruelty and loss, Walker scooped the award from an all-female shortlist, which was whittled down from nearly 200 entries.

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More Handmaid's Tale sequels? 'Never say never', says Margaret Atwood

Canadian author of The Testaments refuses to rule it out, saying she was pushed to writing the sequel by US moves to police women’s bodies

The growing similarities between the US and her fictional regime of Gilead, where women’s bodies are policed by a totalitarian state, helped prompt Margaret Atwood into writing her sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale, the author has said.

Speaking publicly for the first time about The Testaments, which is released worldwide on Tuesday, 34 years after the story of Offred ended in The Handmaid’s Tale, Atwood said that there had been “many requests for a sequel” over the intervening years, but she “always said no”.

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'She's a prophet': handmaids gather for Margaret Atwood's midnight launch of The Testaments

With cocktails and craftivism, fans and authors including Neil Gaiman and Jeanette Winterson countdown release of sequel

The last time bookshops saw this much action at midnight on a weekday, a certain boy wizard was on the shelves.

“There’s not another Potter out?” a passing man asks the growing queue outside Waterstones in London’s Piccadilly, where a parade of women dressed in red flowing robes and white bonnets are silently gliding by.

Related: The Testaments, 34 years in the making: the longest gaps between sequels

Related: The Testaments by Margaret Atwood – first look review

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Publishers announce new Elena Ferrante novel out in November

The book, title currently unknown, is set in Naples, like her breakthrough work, My Brilliant Friend

Elena Ferrante, the Italian author whose Neapolitan novels became a global phenomenon, is to publish a new book in Italy on 7 November.

Ferrante’s Italian publisher, Edizioni E/O, made the announcement with a terse tweet on Monday morning. Her English-language publisher, Europa Editions, followed suit, with a short extract indicating that the story was set in Naples.

It begins like this. #ElenaFerrante #NewNovel Translated by Ann Goldstein. pic.twitter.com/wHoNW5yBB2

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Thomas Piketty's new magnum opus published on Thursday

French economist’s Capital and Ideology expands on themes in Capital in the 21st Century, which sold 2m copies

Six years after being catapulted to fame with a blockbuster about the concentration of wealth, the French economist Thomas Piketty has returned with a new magnum opus.

Abiding by the rule that every bestseller demands a follow-up, Capital and Ideology expands on the themes sketched out in Capital in the 21st Century, which sold 2m copies worldwide after its publication in 2013.

Related: Capital in the Twenty-first Century by Thomas Piketty – review

Related: Thomas Piketty's Capital: everything you need to know about the surprise bestseller

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Marvel artist calls for LGBTQ solidarity in Brazil after gay kiss row

Jim Cheung says ‘LGBTQ community is here to stay’ after Rio de Janiero mayor attempts to seize copies of Avengers: The Children’s Crusade

The artist of an Avengers comic targeted by the mayor of Rio de Janeiro for featuring a gay kiss has called on the people of Brazil to focus on “ways to unite, rather than help sow the seeds of conflict and division”.

Related: Brazil paper publishes gay kiss illustration in censorship row

Teddy & Billy (2019) . It was with great surprise today, to learn that the mayor of Rio de Janeiro decided to ban the sale of my (and Allan Heinberg's) book, Avengers:The Children's Crusade, for alleged inappropriate material. . For those not familiar with the work from 2010, the controversy involves a kiss between two male characters. . Now I don't know what prompted the mayor to seek out a work that is almost a decade old, and that had already been on sale for many years, but I can say honestly, that there was no hidden motivation or agendas behind the work in promoting any particular lifestyle, nor targeting any unique audience. The scene merely depicts a tender moment between two characters who are in an established relationship. . As an artist, my passion is to tell stories; stories of great heroism, compassion and love, with as authentic and diverse characters as possible. Characters that depict every walk of life and color, whether they be black or white, brown, yellow or green. . The fact that this book, from almost a decade ago, is now being drawn into the spotlight by the mayor perhaps only highlights how out of touch he might be with the current times. The LGBTQ community is here to stay, and I have nothing but love and support for those who continue to struggle for validity and a voice to be heard. . I hope the beautiful people of Brazil, the wonderfully diverse and proud nation, will see through this political 'noise' and place their focus on the light, and on ways to unite, rather than help sow the seeds of conflict and division . #TeddyAltman #Hulkling #BillyKaplan #Wiccan #YoungAvengers #AvengersChildrensCrusade #MarvelComics #Marvel #Comics #MCU #pencils #pencildrawing #process #JimCheung #LoveNotHate #LGBTQ

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Jojo Moyes: government must tackle ‘shameful’ adult literacy levels

Bestselling author condemns lack of support for charity the Reading Agency, after saving a key scheme from closure

Bestselling author Jojo Moyes has called on the government and the publishing industry to do more about the UK’s “shameful” adult literacy record. In 2018, Moyes, writer of global hits including Me Before You and The Girl You Left Behind, donated three years of funding to charity the Reading Agency for its Quick Reads scheme, saving the scheme from closure when its previous sponsorship ran out.

While she was “proud to be able to help out as a private individual”, she is furious at what she calls governmental and industry failure to understand the importance of Quick Reads.

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The Second Sleep by Robert Harris review – a ‘genre-bending thriller’

The future Britain looks medieval in Robert Harris’s dystopian tale. But who ruined everything?

“All of my books are about power,” Robert Harris acknowledged in a recent interview. While that power is most often political – the fall of a charismatic former prime minister in The Ghost, Chamberlain’s struggle for peace in Munich, the failure of the Roman republic in his wonderful Cicero trilogy – he has explored its perils in other, more insidious guises: technology in The Fear Index, religion in Conclave, the devastating force of nature in Pompeii. What connects them all is a preoccupation with power at its overweening apogee, on the brink of combustion and collapse. Charged always with contemporary resonance, it is a fascination that in his best books comes unsettlingly close to prescience.

The Second Sleep is driven by the same preoccupation. Described as a “genre-bending thriller”, it appears to open conventionally enough “late on the afternoon of Tuesday the ninth of April in the Year of our Risen Lord 1468”. A young cleric, Christopher Fairfax, is making his way resentfully to a remote corner of Wessex on the orders of his bishop to officiate at the burial of a village priest. An hour’s ride past a market town where “three executed felons hung rotting from their gibbets”, his aged horse sliding on the muddy road, he is afraid that he has been misdirected; that he will be caught out of doors after curfew, risking a night in jail. By the time he finally reaches his destination, he is determined to conclude his unpleasant business as swiftly as he is able.

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Exclusive: John le Carré's new novel set amid 'lunatic' Brexit intrigue

Agent Running in the Field, due out next month, reflects ‘the divisions in Britain, and between Britain and Europe’.

• Read an extract below
  

Just as intrigue over Brexit is expected to reach peak intensity next month, Britain’s master spy novelist John le Carré will be releasing a new novel, set in 2018, where the UK is ruled by “a minority Tory cabinet of 10th-raters”, and the country’s new prime minister Boris Johnson is at that point merely “a pig-ignorant foreign secretary”.

An early extract from Le Carré’s 25th novel, Agent Running in the Field, is published in Saturday’s Guardian. It shows Nat, a 47-year-old member of Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service (MI5), revealing his career choices to his daughter. As she picks away at his beliefs, Nat admits to serious reservations about the idea of England “as the mother of all democracies”, describing the country as in freefall, with “a minority Tory cabinet of 10th-raters … Labour no better. The sheer bloody lunacy of Brexit.”

Le Carré’s editor at Viking, Mary Mount, said that the novelist “doesn’t pull his punches” when it comes to Johnson.

Related: From cold war spy to angry old man: the politics of John le Carré

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French novelist ruled out of major prize after antisemitic drawings emerge

Yann Moix, 51, says he is ashamed of his student magazine work but judges of the prestigious Prix Goncourt feel he has courted too much controversy

Judges of France’s top literary award, the Goncourt prize, have said they decided not to include popular author Yann Moix’s autobiographical novel Orléans on their shortlist after the emergence of antisemitic drawings and texts made by Moix in his 20s.

The offending works, published in a student magazine, were uncovered by L’Express in late August, shortly after the publication of Moix’s novel, which depicts childhood abuse he allegedly suffered himself. The French author, now 51, who won the Goncourt for his first novel in 1996, initially only admitted responsibility for the drawings before acknowledging he had also written the texts.

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Newcastle bookseller bans Michael Owen memoir over slights to city

Huge sports book retailer based in city says Reboot’s account of sour relationship with the city’s team has made it the first book they will ban

A sports bookshop in Newcastle upon Tyne has announced that it will not stock Michael Owen’s new memoir Reboot, after early extracts revealed the footballer’s reluctance to move from Real Madrid to Newcastle United in 2005, writing: “I don’t need to justify myself to fucking Newcastle fans.”

Newcastle-based The Back Page, which describes itself as the largest stockist of sports books in the world, said that Reboot is “the first book we have ever totally refused to stock”.

Related: The Fiver | Shearer, Owen and a major ruction on Social Media Disgrace Twitter

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Doctor Who, Star Wars, Alien … why do we love novelisations?

As a child in the lost age before video on demand, these screen-to-book stories drew me further into sci-fi – as well as many authors working today

The death this week of Terrance Dicks, the prolific Dr Who writer who penned more than 60 novels extending the TV Time Lord’s adventures, made me realise something: I love novelisations.

The appeal of my stack of those old slim Target paperbacks, written by the likes of Dicks, Malcolm Hulke and others, was obvious in my childhood, growing up as I did at the tail end of the Jon Pertwee years. Tom Baker was “my” Doctor, so the chances of ever seeing the old William Hartnell or Patrick Troughton adventures were absolutely zero. In the days before endless repeats and on-demand viewing, paperbacks were the only way I could experience those stories.

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Margaret Atwood’s Handmaid’s Tale sequel escapes from tight secrecy

Strict measures meant to keep all details of The Testaments confidential until publication have fallen through for some US readers

Hundreds of readers in the US have received early copies of Margaret Atwood’s heavily embargoed follow-up to The Handmaid’s Tale, The Testaments, after copies were shipped out early by Amazon.

Security around the novel had been as tight as anything mounted for JK Rowling or Dan Brown’s blockbuster releases – the judges for the Booker prize, who shortlisted The Testaments for the award on Wednesday, were warned they would be held liable if their watermarked copies leaked. But since Tuesday, readers have been posting images on Twitter of their freshly delivered copies, a week before the novel’s official release on 10 September.

Related: The Testaments by Margaret Atwood – read the exclusive first extract

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Louise Adler appointed publisher-at-large at Hachette Australia

New role comes seven months after publisher’s controversial resignation from Melbourne University Publishing

Louise Adler has been appointed to a new role at Hachette Australia, seven months after her controversial resignation from Melbourne University Publishing.

Adler takes up the new role at Hachette immediately, under the title publisher-at-large. “Whilst I’d prefer to be known as thin, I’ve happily yielded to the summons to be publisher-at-large,” Adler said.

Related: Melbourne University Publishing CEO quits over 'narrow' new focus

.@HachetteAus catalogue is a mirror of my life: infancy with Babar, childhood with Enid Blyton, adolescence with Mme Bovary, and chaperoned by Larousse in my father’s native tongue. An irresistible invitation to join the company from their visionary Australian CEO, @LSherwinStark

Related: 'A real loss': MUP and the 'terrible' decision that rocked Australian publishing

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Booker prize: Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale sequel makes shortlist

The Testaments, still under wraps before publication next Tuesday, joins final six alongside Salman Rushdie’s latest and a 1,000-page monologue

The Testaments, Margaret Atwood’s much-anticipated sequel to her feminist dystopia The Handmaid’s Tale, has landed her a place on the Booker prize shortlist – despite the fact that barely anyone has read it yet.

With little publicly known beyond that it is set more than 15 years after Atwood’s hero Offred escaped a theocratic future US, the plot of The Testaments remains under lock and key for most readers until its global release date on 10 September, with midnight launches and bookshop parties planned around the world.

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Doctor Who writer and script editor Terrance Dicks dies aged 84

Tributes flood in to writer behind second Doctor’s swansong as well as prolific author of novelisations

The former Doctor Who writer and script editor Terrance Dicks has died aged 84.

Dicks had a long association with the BBC’s longest-running sci-fi show, writing episodes from the late 1960s until the early 1980s. He also served as its script editor from 1968 to 1974 and wrote numerous Doctor Who novels.

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Doctor Who writer and script editor Terrance Dicks dies aged 84

Tributes flood in to writer behind second Doctor’s swansong as well as prolific author of novelisations

The former Doctor Who writer and script editor Terrance Dicks has died aged 84.

Dicks had a long association with the BBC’s longest-running sci-fi show, writing episodes from the late 1960s until the early 1980s. He also served as its script editor from 1968 to 1974 and wrote numerous Doctor Who novels.

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Harry Potter books removed from Catholic school 'on exorcists' advice'

Pastor at St Edward junior school in Nashville says JK Rowling’s use of ‘actual spells’ risks conjuring evil spirits.

A Catholic junior school in Nashville has removed the Harry Potter books from its library, saying they include “actual curses and spells, which when read by a human being risk conjuring evil spirits”.

Local paper the Tennessean reported that the pastor at St Edward Catholic school had emailed parents about JK Rowling’s series to tell them that he had been in contact with “several” exorcists who had recommended removing the books from the library.

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Lionel Shriver returns to Australia and doubles down on 'fascistic' identity politics

Three years after controversial speech in Brisbane, US author denounces cultural ‘control’, ‘obedience’ and ‘conformism’

Three years after vowing never to return to Australia, author Lionel Shriver says she stands by her controversial keynote speech at the Brisbane writers’ festival in 2016, calling identity politics “fascistic”.

Sunday night marked the American novelist’s first appearance in Australia since that controversial tour, despite her having released two books in the intervening years.

Related: As Lionel Shriver made light of identity, I had no choice but to walk out on her | Yassmin Abdel-Magied

To tell me that identity comes down to these little boxes that we were born into is depressing and also politically regressive

Related: We need to talk about cultural appropriation: why Lionel Shriver's speech touched a nerve

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After 83 plays, Alan Ayckbourn publishes his first novel at 80

The Divide, which is set in a dystopian future England, has been adapted from a six-hour, two-part play

At 80, after writing 83 plays and earning seven Evening Standard theatre awards, two Oliviers, one Tony and a knighthood, Alan Ayckbourn will publish his debut novel this month.

Set in a dystopian England a century from now, the British playwright and director imagines a world in which a plague has ravaged the population and men and women are strictly segregated. The story is told through Soween and her older brother Elihu, who grow up under a brutal dictatorship. Railing against the tyranny of a mendacious leader known as the Preacher, Elihu threatens to ignite a bloody revolution.

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