From Dr Seuss to All Quiet on the Western Front: 19 books to help you find hope, sense and resistance in difficult times

Writers, activists and politicians on the books they turn to for wisdom and perspective – and to restore their faith in human nature

‘There’s a sense of our freedoms becoming vulnerable’: novelist Alan Hollinghurst

A knighthood, a lifetime achievement award and a hit theatre production of The Line of Beauty… the author on a year of personal success and political change

Scott Galloway on the masculinity crisis: ‘I worry we are evolving a new breed of asexual, asocial males’

When his book Notes on Being a Man was released last month, it raced to the top of the bestseller lists. The US author, tech entrepreneur and podcaster explains his theories on dating, crying – and the rise of Donald Trump

‘I took literary revenge against the people who stole my youth’: Romanian author Mircea Cărtărescu

As the first part of his acclaimed Blinding trilogy is released in the UK, the novelist talks about communism, Vladimir Nabokov – and those Nobel rumours

‘If I was American, I’d be worried about my country’: Margaret Atwood answers questions from Ai Weiwei, Rebecca Solnit and more

Democracy, birds and hangover cures – famous fans put their questions to the visionary author

‘I knew I was doing something I shouldn’t’: Karl Ove Knausgård on the fallout from My Struggle and the dark side of ambition

The Norwegian author on his autofictional epic, moving to London, and the psychopath at the heart of his new novel

Can ceramics be demonic? Edmund de Waal’s obsession with a deeply disturbing Dane

The great potter explains why he turned his decades-long fixation with Axel Salto – maker of unsettling stoneware full of tentacle sproutings and knotty growths – into a new show

‘It’s notoriously hard to write about sex’: David Szalay on Flesh, his astounding Booker prize-winner

The novel’s protagonist is violent, libidinous and so inarticulate he says ‘OK’ some 500 times. So how did the author turn his story into a tragic masterpiece?

‘Erin Patterson remains mysterious to me’: Helen Garner, Sarah Krasnostein and Chloe Hooper on the mushroom murders

Three of Australia’s most acclaimed writers have teamed up to write The Mushroom Tapes, about the weeks they spent at the triple-murder trial, picking apart lies, media ethics and evil

‘I’m never surprised when I read about a woman murdering a man’: Helen Garner on her Baillie Gifford prize-winning diaries

Her first book outraged Australian critics – but now she’s scooped the UK’s top nonfiction prize. She talks about female anger, becoming cool at 82 – and why winning made her feel like a stunned mullet

‘It is the scariest of times’: Margaret Atwood on defying Trump, banned books – and her score-settling memoir

At 86, she’s a literary seer and saint – and queen of the Canadian resistance. So what does the writer make of our dystopian world?

Matthew Reilly: ‘In Australia, there’s a sense of community. In America, it is always the individual first.’

The best-selling thriller writer on golf, writing an autistic hero and why he’s not afraid to make political statements in Trump’s America

Photographer Coreen Simpson’s illustrious career capturing Toni Morrison and Muhammad Ali: ‘I’ve never gotten bored’

Star-studded work from Simpson, whose instincts also led to success in jewelry design, is assembled in a new photo book

The Beijing courier who went viral: how Hu Anyan wrote about delivering parcels – and became a bestseller

Like so many others, his days have been spent in the gig economy, moving from one precarious job to another, often tied to a gruelling 996 shift pattern. He discusses the harsh realities of modern working life in China, and far beyond

Lily King: ‘What is life without love?’

The American author discusses our need for fiction in an age of disconnection, the challenges of growing up with 14 step-siblings, and why she’s going ‘all in’ on romance