The Latest Breaking News from Marcel Proust

Walking around my neighborhood in the evening, I am hit by the smells of summer: fresh-cut grass, hamburgers grilling and a hint of swimming pool chlorine. These are also the smells of summers from my adolescence, and they remind me of Friday evenings at the community pool with my friends…

One of the leading gay writers of his generation known for his bestseller A Boy’s Own Story and his biography of Jean Genet

Literature to tomber amoureuse with

The Norwegian writer Karl Ove Knausgaard is a 21st-century literary phenomenon. Talked up as a contender for the Nobel Prize in Literature, he has been compared to some of the greatest writers of all time: Fyodor Dostovesky, Marcel Proust, Roberto Bolaño. His work challenges conventional assumptions about content and form,…

People who worry excessively about their health tend to die earlier than those who don’t, a recent study from Sweden has found. It seems strange that hypochondriacs who, by definition, worry yet have nothing wrong with them, should enjoy shorter lifespans than the rest of us. Let’s find out more.

Leakey's is the largest second-hand bookshop in the UK, founded in 1979 by Charles Leakey. His son, Sam, and I talked in his office at the shop in Inverness, Scotland. Sam told me they collect as many books as they can and readers buy as many as they wish. I…

David Johnson writes: She admitted, without being boastful, that she had read Proust twice

Guardian Australia’s weekend wrap of essential reads from the past seven days, selected by Imogen Dewey

From '2001: A Space Odyssey' to Marcel Proust.