Prix Goncourt winner
France’s most prestigious literary prize has been awarded to Pierre Lemaitre, a writer previously best known for his crime novels.
-
-
D’Annunzio biography takes Johnson prize
Britain’s major prize for non-fiction has been won by a biography of the Italian poet Gabriele D’Annunzio.
-
Camus and Algeria
Albert Camus was born a hundred years ago this week. Towards the end of his short life he parted company from most French opinion on both left and right over the future of Algeria.
-
Mrs Thatcher, blood, guts and bumblebees
The winner of the main literary prize for serious non-fiction writing in Britain is about to be announced.
-
We’re All Done For
More figures on e-books and paper books, more trends and countertrends. What can it all mean?
-
The Function of Frogs and Princes
Jeanette Winterson makes a plea for the autonomy of the imagination and the role of the non-rational in explaining to us who we are.
-
Censorship Polish Style
The publisher of a controversial biography of Polish journalist Ryszard Kapuściński has agreed to withdraw the book after a protracted legal dispute.
-
Monster from the South Seas
Not everyone is impressed by the gargantuan Booker Prize winner.
-
Kaiserlich und Königlich
The old Austro-Hungarian empire collapsed into its component parts after the First World War, a victim of rising nationalism and Woodrow Wilson’s backing for national self-determination. Given the wave of fascism and authoritarianism that followed, leading to another war, many people thought something very valuable had been lost.
-
German Book Prize
One of Germany’s most prestigious literary prizes, awarded at the start of the Frankfurt Book Festival, has gone to the Hungarian-born Terézia Mora .