The Latest Breaking News on Books

Blue Ruin by Hari Kunzru review – sex, drugs and conceptual art

The novelist’s love triangle has its sights set on the elite insularity of the New York art world but its plot is programmatic

The Guardian - UK · May 19, 2024

How Bridgerton’s real life Lady Whistledown scandalised 18th-century society

The subversive work of Eliza Haywood, the feminist forerunner of the TV show’s gossip columnist, is about to be republished

The Guardian - UK · May 19, 2024

English review – acclaimed Iran-set classroom drama is a bit too well-behaved

The RSC’s European premiere of Sanaz Toossi’s Pulitzer prize-winning play tailors its intriguing characters a little too neatly

The Guardian - UK · May 19, 2024

‘Modern death is clinical, antiseptic’: the festival that wants to revive the Irish wake

Artists, singers, writers and scholars gather in County Mayo as a ‘clarion call’ to protect the rite of passage they believe is under threat

The Guardian - UK · May 19, 2024

Rebus review – Richard Rankin is the most irresistible incarnation yet

The all-new Rebus is physical and forceful with a fag in hand and a willingness to crack skulls – but in a world full of shows about troubled, maverick cops, will he possibly be able to stand out?

The Guardian - UK · May 18, 2024

Sam Taylor: ‘Translating is like X-raying a book. You get a deep tissue read’

The US-based writer and translator on his new novel set in 1930s Vienna, his deep connection with the authors he has worked with and why he always returns to Donna Tartt’s The Secret History

The Guardian - UK · May 18, 2024

Netflix’s One Hundred Years of Solitude brings fame to Gabriel García Márquez’s Colombian hometown

Locals hope TV adaptation of One Hundred Years of Solitude will bring new life to Aracataca, birthplace of author’s magical realism

The Guardian - UK · May 18, 2024

On my radar: Claire Messud’s cultural highlights

The novelist on the continuing relevance of Ibsen, the joyful quilt art of Faith Ringgold and where to find British scotch eggs in New York

The Guardian - UK · May 18, 2024

‘She’s in the pantheon now’: Kristi Noem and the politicians who hit self-destruct

The dog-killing South Dakota governor’s VP hopes are in tatters. But she’s not the first politician to flame out with an own goal

The Guardian - US · May 18, 2024

The Darkness Has Not Overcome: limp pro-Trump piety for a second coming

Cliff Sims wrote Team of Vipers, an early Trump tell-all. His new book is nowhere near as compelling – even the bits he repeats

The Guardian - US · May 18, 2024