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Initially slow, the show about Shakespeare and his family weaves a beguiling narrative web around the creation of life and art

Authors, critics and Guardian readers discuss the titles they have read over the last month. Join the conversation in the comments

Barbara Kingsolver won the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2023 for her novel 'Demon Copperhead' on June 14, 2023. Previously, she won the Women’s Prize for Fiction in 2010 for her novel 'The Lacuna'. This makes her the first author to win the award twice.

Kingsolver’s ‘Demon Copperhead’ won by unanimous decision

Winning for Demon Copperhead, a ‘deeply powerful’, US-set Dickens update, the American novelist becomes the first writer to win the contest for a second time

Historical novel The Marriage Portrait has sold 72,819 copies – more than any other title on the 2023 Women’s prize shortlist

From stories about the US opioid crisis, to novels set in 16th century Italy, this year’s Women’s Prize for Fiction shortlist has something for everyone

First-time novelists are joined by two former winners on the diverse list, as the six ‘ambitious and hard-hitting’ contenders are revealed

The RSC has reopened its refurbished Swan Theatre with an eagerly anticipated adaptation of Maggie O’Farrell’s bestselling novel Hamnet, said Sam Marlowe in The Stage. As “snug and supple” a fit for the Stratford stage as one of the bespoke gloves made by William Shakespeare’s bullying father, it imagines the…

The Time Traveler’s Wife and Hamnet are among novels written, and largely read, by women coming to the British stage

O’Farrell’s novel about Shakespeare losing his young son to the plague struck a powerful chord in lockdown. She and Chakrabarti discuss class, place and loss in their theatre adaptation