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Books
Your essential guide from The Observer’s books desk
Thursday, 4 December 2025
The Nobel laureate’s blackly comic new novel Vaim is set in a place of fjords, small boats and passive, bewildered, anxious men
Stephen Greenblatt’s account of the audacious rise and violent fall of Shakespeare’s rival brings Elizabethan London to thrilling life
The Australian neuroscientist puts forward his case for how we might achieve eternal life – but without sweating the philosophical stuff
The war reporter and cartoonist on documenting riots in India and violence in the Middle East – and indulging his love of the Rolling Stones
Wednesday, 3 December 2025
A new biography of the tech firm’s hawkish CEO Alex Karp shows how he has driven the rise of the surveillance state
Tuesday, 2 December 2025
The 2025 Goldsmiths prize winner is a fitfully brilliant tale set in the art world that blends the arcane with the mundane and the uncanny
Friday, 28 November 2025
Mick Herron, Elif Shafak, Lenny Henry, Deborah Levy, Robert Harris and others share new discoveries and old favourites
Thursday, 27 November 2025
The essential guide to what to give this Christmas
Christmas recommendations for young readers, from toddlers to teens
Your essential guide, from The Observer’s books desk (with help from Robert Harris, Elif Shafak, Lenny Henry, Deborah Levy and more)
The International Booker-winning author on ephemera, why her childhood belongs in a museum, and the Brothers Grimm
Avoid Keira Knightley’s plodding debut in favour of these inspiring new children’s books
Saturday, 22 November 2025
From Narnia to the Shetlands, three books that capture the season of fire and ice
Sunday, 23 November 2025
Republican, royalist, chaplain, schemer, spy – the builder of Downing Street was a man of multiple identities
The Czech writer’s star has faded – but a volume of newly translated prose is a reminder of his dazzling skill
Friday, 21 November 2025
The third instalment of the thrilling Danish series about a women stuck in a time loop takes a politically subversive turn
Thursday, 20 November 2025
In two new books, Stephanie Burt and Maggie Nelson make the case for the singer to be studied alongside Pope and Plath
One Aladdin Two Lamps draws on Middle Eastern folk tales and Winterson’s own childhood to celebrate the shape-shifting power of narrative
Wednesday, 19 November 2025
Your essential guide, from The Observer’s books desk
