Books

Zadie Smith and Anne Enright: the art of paying attention

In rigorous, curious essays, two novelists examine the way we live now

Paperback of the week: Driver by Mattia Filice

A French train driver’s 20-year career across the tracks is distilled into a remarkable free-verse novel about the rhythms of work

Salman Rushdie’s The Eleventh Hour: For once, words fail him

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

What to read to understand friendship

Three books that explore the complicated fellowships that shape a life

Why women keep secrets

The Book of Revelations finds Juliet Nicolson exploring the history and politics of female secrecy

Philip Pullman’s The Rose Field: a manifesto for how to be human

The epic conclusion to The Book of Dust is an urgent critique of capitalism from a storyteller of exceptional power

Mariana Enríquez: ‘The fear of the old female body is out of control’

The Argentinian writer on her cemetery obsession, horror’s fixation with ageing, and the novel she tossed on the barbecue

Klaus Kinski, misguided messiah

A car-crash fascination drew Benjamin Myers to write a novel about the German actor’s infamous stage show

What to read to understand the information age

From the printing press to the triumph of video: three books on how media revolutions have shaped us

Seamus Heaney’s poems for a darkening age

Collected in a landmark new edition, the late Irish writer’s work is attuned to wonder, replete with humanity and rooted in the tragedies of history

The hijackers who invented modern terrorism

Jason Burke’s The Revolutionists is a riveting account of the militant groups whose spectacular crimes captured the world’s attention in the 1970s

Phillis Wheatley, the first Black nature poet

Enslaved as a child, the 18th-century writer was a pioneer of nature poetry

How Isabella Burley became fashion’s most influential ‘shop girl’

The creative force behind Climax Books has risen from shop girl to It girl

How Ringo Starr made the Beatles

Tom Doyle's biography shows how the drummer defined the band's sound

The tragedy and courage of Virginia Giuffre

The posthumous memoir Nobody’s Girl cuts through the tabloid stories about Jeffrey Epstein and Prince Andrew to reveal the stark reality of a lifetime of abuse

Who should pay the debts of slavery?

The Tory historian Nigel Biggar mounts a contradictory defence of empire, while in The Big Payback Lenny Henry and Marcus Ryder make the case for reparations

What to read to understand the body

Three books to illuminate the science, beauty and strangeness of the human anatomy

Cashing in on Harper Lee

The Land of Sweet Forever is a cynical, barrel-scraping trawl through the To Kill a Mockingbird author’s slight early works