An Observer debut novelist of the year asks us to see the world through the eyes of a young woman with learning difficulties

The novelist on her Jamaican upbringing, arguing with her Black readership, and why it took 20 years to return to writing

The Indian writer on angering the grammar police, and why the domestic is as important as the political

The Australian novelist on imaginary horse racing and why Tolstoy should have been arrested for War and Peace

The American author on life in Tokyo, the gay writers who shaped him, and his new novel Palaver

A growing audience of readers are flocking to buy extreme books that combine romance and fantasy themes

The International Booker-winning author on ephemera, why her childhood belongs in a museum, and the Brothers Grimm

Fifty years after its publication, the Danish author’s strange but playful final book, Vilhelm’s Room, receives a spirited English translation

The Chinese-American author on the terror of Trump, why no party is complete without a whiteboard and how the hell of academia inspired her new book

Joanna Pocock’s account of two Greyhound bus journeys, 17 years apart, charts the US’s fracturing society and depleted landscape

The novelist on growing up in Trinidad and how JM Coetzee’s Disgrace made her a writer

The Northern Irish writer's witty debut novel The Benefactors is a daring deconstruction of time

The American writer on Simone de Beauvoir’s ‘feminist Mad Men’, how Lacan helps with boyfriend trouble, and the Annie Ernaux book everyone should read

The American essayist on being a tortoise at the mayfly party, her love of nature and why she needs a librarian

Choice is an illusion for an abused wife in this shocking debut from writer Florence Knapp