Monthly Spotlight

The author of Washington Black talks to us about the tireless research she conducted for the novel, her passion for the classics – and why she’ll always return to The Catcher in the Rye 

From unreliable narrators and heartbreaking revelations to ‘the perfect novel’, here is our guide to the 1989 Booker Prize winner’s finest fiction 

Whether you’re new to Normal People or have read it and would like to explore it more deeply, here is our comprehensive guide

In this personal essay, Michèle Roberts pays tribute to the late A.S. Byatt and praises her 1990 Booker-winning novel

Longlisted for the Booker Prize in 2002, Any Human Heart tells the extraordinary story of a life lived to the fullest.

The authors at the centre of Iris Murdoch’s best novel embody the tortured philosopher in search of perfection and the prolific, publicly celebrated novelist  

The translator of our October Book of the Month talks about the impact of being shortlisted for the International Booker Prize in 2022, the Japanese fiction boom – and why this 20th-century novel speaks to 21st-century readers

Shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2016, His Bloody Project reveals the provisional nature of truth through a fictional 19th-century triple murder in a remote Scottish crofting community

Muriel Spark was a writer of astonishing productivity, writing 22 titles which were varied in subject matter. So which one should you read first?

Max Porter explains the process behind the publication of The Vegetarian by Han Kang, and why it was essential that it reached new readers
 

Andrea Levy, the author of The Long Song, died in 2019. Here we reproduce some of her comments on the book, including how and why she wrote it

Doris Lessing’s caustic satire, The Good Terrorist still reads as a bracing antidote to political righteousnes. Here, John Mullen discussed the novel’s impact.

In this archive video, the author of Beyond Black explains how writing the book laid the groundwork for her Tudor novels – and how she might have ended up working as a professional psychic

In this guest post, singer-songwriter Dua Lipa explains why Hanya Yanagihara’s A Little Life does exactly what great literature is supposed to do