Four women tell of the rise and fall of a notorious real-life mobster in this evocative second novel from the Costa prize winnerIn the late 1940s and early 50s, notorious gangster turned pirate Boysie Singh terrorised Port of Spain and the Gulf of Paria. Boysie and his gang transported human cargo from Trinidad and Tobago to Venezuela, robbing their...

An absorbing study of five Labour radicals – Jeremy Corbyn, Diane Abbott, John McDonnell, Ken Livingstone, plus Benn himself – makes a convincing case for their cultural victories but romanticises Corbyn’s years as the party’s leaderThis might seem like an eccentric book. As Labour prepares for power after four consecutive general election defeats,...

The author of bestseller Yellowface on her agent’s fears about publishing the novel, the joys of a social media purge and being a workaholic who gets bored easilyRebecca F Kuang, 27, is an American writer. She and her family emigrated to the US from Guangzhou, China, when she was four; she grew up in Dallas, Texas. Her first novel, The Poppy War, a...

Inscrutable bureaucracy and monstrous insects may not sound immediately appealing, but once you’re lost in Kafka’s world you won’t want to escapeKafka has become such a cultural icon that even the most private, obscure, or fragmentary of his writings have reached huge audiences: diaries, letters, unpublished notes, mystifying aphorisms, or conversation...

They can communicate with each other about threats, summon help from predatory killers – and some can even count – but does this mean plants are conscious?Last month, at a gathering at New York University, a group of prominent biologists and philosophers widened the perimeter of a very exclusive club. They declared that there is “a realistic possibility”...

At 84, The Handmaid’s Tale author is as outspoken as ever. She talks about aging, culture wars - and why “the orange guy” can’t be allowed back into the White House “I’m the great sage on top of the mountain,” Margaret Atwood says with a smile, on a video call from her home in Toronto. “If you’ve lived to a certain age people think you know something...