How to Make a Bomb by Rupert Thomson review – a stark study of male rage

The destructive desires of an inoffensive family man drive this subversive satire of existentialism

The best recent science fiction, fantasy and horror – reviews roundup

Calypso by Oliver K Langmead; Someone You Can Build a Nest In by John Wiswell; The Familiar by Leigh Bardugo; The Underhistory by Kaaron Warren; The Universe Delivers the Enemy You Need by Adam Marek

Tremor by Teju Cole audiobook review – colonialism’s long shadow

Atta Otigba and Yetide Badaki narrate a sprawling, multifaceted exploration of the entrenched hierarchies within the worlds of art, literature, history and pop culture

An African History of Africa by Zeinab Badawi review – an insider’s take

The journalist and broadcaster offers a refreshing corrective to narratives imposed on the continent by others

The Work by Bri Lee review – satirical art world romp tries to tick too many boxes

A novel that’s torn between two books – one is a half-hearted skewering of money and power, the other a modern romance

James by Percival Everett – Huckleberry Finn reimagined

A bravura rewriting of Mark Twain’s classic from the enslaved Jim’s point of view

Nostalgia: A History of a Dangerous Emotion by Agnes Arnold-Forster review – no place like home

This absorbing exploration of nostalgia raises questions about its slippery nature, and shows how it has been chillingly deployed in politics, from the cold war to Trumpism

A Body Made of Glass by Caroline Crampton review – anatomy of hypochondria

Memoir, cultural history and bleak humour characterise this brilliant personal exploration of health anxiety

Hagstone by Sinéad Gleeson review – portrait of an artist

Strange happenings haunt an Irish island in this debut about an artist’s isolated existence

The Promised Land review – Andrzej Wajda’s anti-capitalist comic opera is still razor sharp

Wajda takes three young entrepreneurs and follows their greed and ambition to toxic capitalism’s logical conclusion in this queasily disturbing satire

The Half Bird by Susan Smillie review – a life less ordinary

How the author swapped journalism for the freedom, adventure and terror of life on the ocean

Levitation for Beginners by Suzannah Dunn review – the dark side of a 70s childhood

The village life of a 10-year-old girl is disrupted by a newcomer in a tale of youthful mystery and shifting emotions

Crystal by Ellen Cranitch review – a devastating insight into drug dependency

The poet’s uncompromising second collection, about her husband’s addiction to crystal meth, is fascinating and troubling

Spinoza: Freedom’s Messiah by Ian Buruma review – a man of his time… and ours

A brisk and engaging biography of Baruch Spinoza, the man who inspired many secular Jewish thinkers, is least convincing when it offers him as an example of ‘cancel culture’

Shakespeare’s Sisters by Ramie Targoff review – four women who wrote the Renaissance

This lively, accessible insight into four female writers in Elizabethan and Jacobean England explores the complex political, patriarchal and religious backdrop to their lives