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A portrait of southern Africa’s Khoisan peoples tells of how the ‘original affluent society’ suffered from its encounter with modernity
A Christmas reunion, headline news and poetry are woven together in this inspired second instalment of a projected quartet
Far from being work-shy, millennials may in fact be too diligent and productive for their own good
A biography of Joseph Conrad persuasively casts the Polish-British author as an eerily prescient voice for our times
Armed conflict never turns out quite as the generals expect in this history of military futurology
The follow-up to ‘The Loney’ deploys myth, landscape and the tropes of horror to chilling effect
From Stephen King to Knausgaard, there’s an urge to share inner doubts with readers
An essay collection traces the development of a public intellectual against the backdrop of the Obama years
A deft study of five writers who dreamt of empowering future generations of women
‘Mad Men’ creator Matthew Weiner’s dark debut novel explores the collision of privilege and hardship
An intriguing debut novel about a bullied Japanese girl forced to reinvent herself
The former Greek finance minister seeks to demystify his discipline
Nobel-winner Jean Tirole sets out how a humbled discipline can fulfil its responsibilities in the public sphere
An analysis of the world’s special forces and their role in the future of warfare
‘The Mandibles: A Coda’ is inspired by the news of 2017
The Nobel laureate talks about Africa’s literary renaissance, drinking wine not water, and why ‘by all logic he should not be alive’
A modern fable with more than a touch of Lewis Carroll to it
A compelling vision of a robot society just as amoral, embattled and corrupt as the human one it replaced
Nigerian astronauts seek to avert disaster on the International Space Station
Jyotsna Singh talks to Victor Mallet about efforts to clean up the Ganges river
Is sleep the answer to health and happiness? Or is the future sleepless?
Its focus on education has forged a modern society, with a longstanding reform agenda
From ‘All We Saw’
A biography of a river under threat and a metaphor for the country it runs through
‘How would I earn my living if I had to give up writing? As a detective’
The author’s second novel is an enjoyable tale of tricky family dynamics set in a wealthy Cleveland suburb
A brutal civil war tears apart the United States in an assured dystopian debut novel
The spirit of modernism is alive in a high-spirited dissection of ‘The Waves’
Lear is recast as a sclerotic, ailing media magnate, medicated by his malevolent daughters
A gripping account of the Russian leader attempts to present him as a human being
The poet’s suffocatingly close relationship with her mother dominates the first instalment of her correspondences
A grim and painstakingly detailed account of the revolutionary invention of antiseptic
We return again and again to frightening narratives — to look at death and look away from it
How the ‘Tales of the City’ author became America’s chronicler of sexual liberation
