Sham review – Takashi Miike revisits infamous ‘murder teacher’ trial in unflinching courtroom drama

Based on a real-life case of a teacher charged with abusing a child, Japan’s master of the extreme doesn’t sit on the fence in this two-sided retelling

The Good Society by Kate Pickett review – the Spirit Level author takes stock

A whistle-stop tour of the greatest hits of progressive policy fails to take account of a central conundrum

Rebel English Academy by Mohammed Hanif review – a sure-fire Booker contender

This funny and subversive novel reckons with life under martial law in late-70s Pakistan

Dead Souls review – Alex Cox rides into sunset with anti-Trump spaghetti western

The Repo Man director relocates Gogol’s surreal novella to the old west in what he says will be his final film

The best recent translated fiction – review roundup

White Moss by Anna Nerkagi | The Old Fire by Elisa Shua Dusapin | The Roof Beneath Their Feet by Geetanjali Shree | Berlin Shuffle by Ulrich Alexander Boschwitz

Wise by Frank Tallis review – how to turn your midlife crisis into a hero’s journey

A psychologist’s gripping guide to surviving dark nights of the soul offers both comfort and insight

‘Unjust and inhuman’: how royal family ignored a Black abolitionist’s plea to end the slave trade

In this adapted extract from The Crown’s Silence, which examines the royal family’s links with slavery from Elizabeth I to the present, Ottobah Cugoano directly appeals to the monarchy – but is met with silence

Robert Crumb review – sexual deviancy elevated to an art form

Though they were created for comic books, the artist’s horny and hilarious drawings of his own neuroses, and of glamazons in thigh-high boots, are unnervingly powerful on gallery walls

Virgin by Hollie McNish audiobook review – myth-shattering poetry about purity and sex

The author and spoken word artist’s delivery is full of tenderness and humour as she confronts the outdated notions of innocence that surround women

Lost Lambs by Madeline Cash review – clever comedy for our conspiracy theory age

This tender satire of a dysfunctional American family’s search for moral guidance is precisely what our times need

The Puma by Daniel Wiles review – a visceral tale of cyclical violence

A father and son move to the Patagonian woods – but intensity wanes when a search for home becomes an obsessive quest for revenge

Two Women Living Together by Kim Hana and Hwang Sunwoo review – the Korean bestseller about platonic partnership

A quietly revolutionary account of cohabiting captured a nation’s heart – but what does it mean for the rest of the world?

Glyph by Ali Smith review – bearing witness to the war in Gaza

This second novel in a sharp duology offers a powerful interrogation of language in the age of mechanical mass destruction

A Guardian and a Thief by Megha Majumdar review – survival in a climate-ravaged Kolkata

This moral thriller offers a perceptive account of specifically Indian anxieties

The Bed Trick by Izabella Scott review – a bizarre story of sexual duplicity

A brilliant analysis of the trial of Gayle Newland and the literary and social antecedents of ‘sex by deception’