Category Archives: Books

French-Algerian author Boualem Sansal sentenced to five years in prison

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French president Emmanuel Macron has called for authorities to free the novelist who was convicted in Algeria for allegedly undermining the country’s territorial integrity

French president Emmanuel Macron has called on Algeria to free Boualem Sansal, after the French-Algerian novelist was on Thursday sentenced to five years in prison and fined for allegedly undermining Algeria’s territorial integrity.

Sansal was arrested on 16 November at Algiers airport on arrival from Paris, after saying in an interview with a far-right French media outlet Frontières that France unfairly ceded Moroccan territory to Algeria during the colonial era.

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Iowa law banning books including 1984 and Ulysses blocked by US federal judge

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Judge rules that law banning school libraries and classrooms from carrying books depicting sex acts had been applied unconstitutionally

A lawsuit brought by publishers and authors including John Green and Jodi Picoult has led to a portion of a law banning Iowa school libraries and classrooms from carrying books depicting sex acts being halted.

On Tuesday, a federal judge temporarily blocked the measure, writing that it had been applied unconstitutionally in many schools and that books of “undeniable political, artistic, literary, and/or scientific value” had been caught up in it, including Ulysses by James Joyce, Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell, Beloved by Toni Morrison and The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini.

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‘Impressive, ingenious and affecting’ poem about missing an absent son wins National Poetry Competition

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Fiona Larkin’s poem uses Finnish grammar to explore her feelings about her son’s move from the UK to Brisbane

A poem inspired by the writer’s experience missing her son after he moved from the UK to Australia has won this year’s £5,000 National Poetry Competition.

Fiona Larkin’s poem, Absence has a grammar, was picked from nearly 22,000 entries.

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Mutiny brews in French bookshops over Hachette owner’s media grip

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Booksellers take stand against influence of conservative billionaire by limiting orders of his company’s books and placing them on lower shelves

A conservative Catholic billionaire and media owner is facing an independent bookshop rebellion in France over his influence in the publishing world.

Dozens of independent booksellers are trying to counter the growing influence of Vincent Bolloré, whose vast cultural empire includes television, radio, the Sunday paper Le Journal du Dimanche, and also, since 2023, the biggest book publishing and distribution conglomerate in France, Hachette Livre.

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Norwegian writer Dag Solstad dies aged 83

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A hugely influential novelist and critic, Solstad won the Norwegian Critics prize three times, and his work was translated by Haruki Murakami

Dag Solstad, a towering figure of Norwegian letters admired by literary greats around the world, has died aged 83.

Known for prose combining existential despair, political subjects and a droll sense of humour, Solstad won the Norwegian critics prize for literature an unprecedented three times.

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Sydney writers’ festival 2025: tallying authors’ views on Israel-Gaza ‘tokenistic and unfortunate’, organisers say

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After the shock resignation of the festival’s chair, the Sydney writers’ festival unveils its starry 2025 program in ‘an incredibly polarised environment’

Over the past two years, programming a writers’ festival has become one of the most politically fraught undertakings in the Australian cultural sphere. Both Sydney and Melbourne writers’ festivals have seen board members resign over programming decisions, while Adelaide and Perth have fended off calls for the de-platforming of speakers on both sides of the Israel-Gaza conflict.

Literary events are traditionally lauded for their “restraint, reason and tolerance in the face of opposing views” – but writers’ festivals are now issuing safety tips and employing security as they navigate “the frontier between social media’s echo chambers of outrage and the traditional public square’s conventions”, the University of Melbourne journalism academic Denis Muller observed in the Conversation last year, after the resignation of the Melbourne writers’ festival’s deputy chair, Leslie Reti.

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Macron says French-Algerian author under ‘arbitrary detention’ in Algeria

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French president concerned for health of Boualem Sansal who has gone on hunger strike over his imprisonment

The French president, Emmanuel Macron, has said he is concerned about the “arbitrary detention” and health of Boualem Sansal, days after the French-Algerian author began a hunger strike over his imprisonment in Algeria.

On Tuesday, Pen America issued a statement calling for the immediate release of 75-year-old Sansal, noting that “his hunger strike adds to grave concerns for his wellbeing”.

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From The Sheep-Pig to His Dark Materials: the best audiobooks for children and teens

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As research reveals children want to listen to books rather than read them, here are some of the best audiobooks to enjoy

The popularity of audiobooks among young children and teenagers is on the rise with National Literacy Trust research showing for the first time that young people enjoy listening to books more than they do reading them.

Here are some of the best audiobooks on offer for kids and teens according to authors, critics and experts.

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Don’t gift our work to AI billionaires: Mark Haddon, Michal Rosen and other creatives urge government

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More than 2,000 cultural figures challenge Whitehall’s eagerness ‘to ­wrap our lives’ work in attractive paper for automated competitors’

Original British art and creative skill is in peril thanks to the rise of AI and the government’s plans to loosen ­copyright rules, some of the UK’s leading cultural figures have said.

More than 2,000 people, including leading creative names such as Mark Haddon, Axel Scheffler, Benji Davies and Michael Rosen, have signed a ­letter published in the Observer today calling on the government to keep the legal safeguards that offer artists and writers the prospect of a ­sustainable income.

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Literary gold … or betrayal of trust? Joan Didion journal opens ethical minefield

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Soon we can all read the late author’s private notes about her therapy. But should we?

In 1998, the late journalist Joan Didion wrote a scathing essay about the posthumous publication of True at First Light, a travel journal and fictional memoir by Ernest Hemingway, 38 years after the author killed himself. “This is a man to whom words mattered. He worked at them, he understood them, he got inside them,” Didion wrote. “His wish to be survived by only the words he determined fit for publication would have seemed clear enough.”

Just over a year later, in December 1999, Didion began writing her own journal about her sessions with a psychiatrist. She addressed these notes – detailing her struggles with alcoholism, anxiety, guilt and depression, a sometimes fraught relationship with her adopted daughter Quintana and reflections on her childhood and legacy – to her husband, John Gregory Dunne.

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Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner refused to sign memo saying Trump was not antisemitic, book says

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Pair declined to give public endorsement of Trump in wake of 7 October attacks, All or Nothing by Michael Wolff reveals

Donald Trump’s Jewish daughter and son-in-law, Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, refused to sign a statement saying Trump was not antisemitic, according to a new book by the veteran Trump tell-all author Michael Wolff.

“As he kept seeming to be incapable of offering absolute support for Israel in the wake of October 7,” Wolff writes, referring to the deadly 2023 attacks by Hamas, “Trump, not for the first time, turned to Jared for Jewish cover, explicitly asking him and Ivanka for a public endorsement.

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Writer quits Society of Authors over union’s ‘betrayal’ of Jerusalem bookshop raided by Israeli police

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Matthew Teller, whose books include Nine Quarters of Jerusalem, said the society’s response to the event which saw two leading booksellers detained was ‘an abject failure’

A writer has left the Society of Authors (SoA) in protest after the UK’s largest writers’ body made a statement on a recent Israeli police raid on a Palestinian-owned bookstore without mentioning Israel, Palestine or the names of the booksellers who were arrested.

Matthew Teller, the author of books including Nine Quarters of Jerusalem, said the SoA’s statement “added insult to the injury” and was a “betrayal”, leading to him cancelling his membership on Tuesday.

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Top Republican condemns Elon Musk for ‘supplication’ to China in new book

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Exclusive: Tom Cotton, Senate intelligence chair, risks angering key Trump ally with harsh words for ‘tech titans’

In a new book, the Arkansas senator Tom Cotton condemns Elon Musk for “chasing Chinese dollars” and having “shamefully supplicated China’s Communist rulers”, in order to advance his own interests as chief executive of companies including Tesla and SpaceX.

It’s an explosive charge from the Republican chair of the powerful Senate intelligence committee, given that Musk, the world’s richest person, is a major donor and close adviser to Donald Trump, now working at the heart of the president’s administration to slash costs and reshape the federal government.

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Israeli police raid Jerusalem bookshops and arrest Palestinian owners

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Raid on Educational Bookshop branches described by rights groups as part of harassment campaign against Palestinian intellectuals

Israeli police have raided a leading Palestinian-owned bookshop in Jerusalem and detained two of its owners, citing a children’s colouring book as evidence of incitement to terrorism.

The police ransacked two branches of the Educational Bookshop on Sunday afternoon, using Google Translate to examine the stock then detaining Mahmoud Muna, 41, and his nephew Ahmed Muna, 33, on suspicion of “violating public order”.

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Tom Robbins, comic novelist of US counterculture, dies aged 92

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Author of books including Even Cowgirls Get the Blues and Another Roadside Attraction, was known for his outlandish tales of sex, drugs and mysticism

Tom Robbins, whose novels read like a hit of literary LSD, filled with fantastical characters, manic metaphors and counterculture whimsy, has died aged 92.

The author of works including Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, Another Roadside Attraction and Still Life With Woodpecker, died on Sunday, his wife, Alexa Robbins, wrote on Facebook. The post did not cite a cause.

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‘Stand up for what’s right’: Melville House co-founder on publishing Jack Smith and Tulsa reports

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Stunned by Donald Trump’s return, Dennis Johnson saw a chance to hit back by publishing official reports into shameful episodes in US history

A US publishing house has decided to publish official reports into sensitive matters in US politics and history against the backdrop of a new Donald Trump administration committed to a radical rightwing agenda of reshaping American government and fiercely aggressive against its opponents, especially in the media.

The publisher, Melville House, will on Tuesday release The Jack Smith Report, a print and ebook edition of the special counsel’s summation of his investigation of Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election.

The Jack Smith Report is published in the US on Tuesday

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Rediscovered, a young English novelist’s warning of the Nazi threat

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Crooked Cross, Sally Carson’s ‘electrifying masterpiece’ from 1934, to be republished

Sally Carson was not an oracle or a prophet, just a young woman from Dorset, born in 1901. Yet she foresaw a dark and violent future for Europe and gave voice to those fears in a 1934 novel that is now being hailed as “an electrifying masterpiece”.

Carson’s book, Crooked Cross, predicted the scale of the Nazi threat and is to be republished for the first time this spring, ahead of the 80th anniversary of the end of the second world war. Controversial in its day, her novel had to walk a careful path to avoid the accusation that it was alarmist about the Fuhrer’s aims. A stage adaptation of her story was even censored, shorn of all its “Heil Hitlers”.

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Salman Rushdie set to testify as attempted murder trial gets under way

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Hadi Matar, 26, accused of stabbing author 10 times in case likely to draw world’s media to tiny upstate New York town

A man accused of attacking Salman Rushdie as he was being introduced at a literary lecture in New York state in 2022 is going on trial this week in a case likely to create global headlines.

The trial could upend life in the tiny upstate New York village of Mayville, whose population of less than 1,500 is not accustomed to finding itself at the center of a media circus covering the attempted assassination of one of the world’s most famous writers.

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David Lynch, Twin Peaks and Mulholland Drive director, dies aged 78

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Film-maker who specialised in surreal, noir style mysteries made a string of influential, critically acclaimed works including Wild at Heart and Eraserhead

David Lynch, the maverick American director who sustained a successful mainstream career while also probing the bizarre, the radical and the experimental, has died aged 78.

“It is with deep regret that we, his family, announce the passing of the man and the artist, David Lynch,” read a Facebook post. “We would appreciate some privacy at this time. There’s a big hole in the world now that he’s no longer with us. But, as he would say, “Keep your eye on the donut and not on the hole.” It’s a beautiful day with golden sunshine and blue skies all the way.”

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Over 100 famous works by Australian authors rescued from oblivion by literary heritage endeavour

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Three-year project returns out-of-print classics – including six Miles Franklin winners – to circulation and into ebook format for the first time

More than 160 books by noted Australian authors have been rescued from oblivion, including six winners of the Miles Franklin literary award.

The three-year project, which culminated at the end of last year, has put out-of-print titles by Thea Astley, Mem Fox, Charmian Clift and Anita Heiss back in circulation and into ebook format for the first time.

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