The autofiction pioneer’s fourth novel Transcription is a dense, slippery meditation on technology and filial strife

The novelist on writing lockdown fiction, how a brain injury helped him finish his new novel, and why he worries about his exes

The novelist on Trump parlour games, writing about his former flames, and how a brain injury helped him finish his new novel

The writer on her new novel and her lifelong quest to write 'the one true book’

The reclusive author’s novel Vineland inspired Oscar frontrunner One Battle After Another, and his satire captures the mood of the moment

The Goldsmiths prize-winner’s fifth novel channels The Comedy of Errors by way of Samuel Beckett

In the blackly comic Howl, the 7 October attacks gives the novelist a safe space to reckon with his own rage

The writer and publisher on the prize he created to champion independent imprints, and why we should be paying more for books

An awkward middle-aged composer teams up with a hotshot saxophonist in an exquisite odd-couple novel

Featuring a GP, a teacher, a former zoologist and a pair of poets, The Observer’s list of rising stars reveals the eight names to watch this year

His new novel Vigil is a tender morality tale in which a dying oil executive faces a supernatural reckoning

The novelist says Departure(s) is his last book, and claims it’s a true story – but with Barnes nothing is certain

John Tottenham’s debut novel Service is a winning mix of scabrous workplace comedy and mischievous metafiction

What the French writer learned from documenting the trial of the terrorists behind the 2015 Bataclan massacre

The Booker prize-winning author of Flesh on class, punctuation, and what he learned from Amis and Updike

The addictive, sparely written tale of masculinity, money and migration confirms Szalay as the finest stylist in British fiction

After his remarkable memoir, Knife, the writer showcases his worst habits in a rambling, uneven short-story collection

The author on keeping his liberal instincts in check, his love of breaking the literary fourth wall, and not fitting comfortably into the world

With the six chosen novels spanning radically different approaches, this year’s judges face a literary reckoning

The Secret of Secrets, his first novel in eight years, draws on digital-era fears in comically wooden prose