Shadow State by Luke Harding review – Putin’s poisonous path to victory

This compelling account shows how sowing chaos in the west has led the Russian leader to a post-cold war triumph

British Summer Time Begins review – lyrical social history

Ysenda Maxtone Graham eloquently captures the quirky nature of the bygone British summer break

Our Time Is Now review: Stacey Abrams for attorney general, if not VP to Biden

An eloquent and moving call for voting rights reform shows the former Georgia House minority leader is ready for higher office

Bread Winner by Emma Griffin review – victims of the Victorian economy

Britain had never been richer, so how did working families become trapped in a nightmare of dirt and want? An intimate history, from darning to dinners in the gutter

The Wild Laughter by Caoilinn Hughes review – an Irish Cain and Abel

Resentment seethes between two brothers as their father lies dying in the wake of boom and bust

The Old Guard review – Netflix immortality thriller won’t live long in the memory

Not even Charlize Theron can save an action movie crying out for a comic touch to match the silliness of its premise

London’s New Scene by Lisa Tickner review – seven events that smashed the art world

From the pop art of Peter Blake, Pauline Boty and David Hockney to Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blow-Up … how 60s’ London came to lead the way

Fracture by Andrés Neuman review – the damage of the past

The Argentinian writer’s best novel yet follows a Japanese man investigating his country’s history of trauma and survival

Birdsong review – innovative lockdown staging of Faulks’s war saga

This socially distanced adaptation of Sebastian Faulks’s novel cleverly moves between times and places, with only an author narration striking a wayward note

Four new collections up for the Forward poetry prizes – review roundup

Postcolonial Love Poem by Natalie Diaz; Citadel by Martha Sprackland; Magnolia 木蘭 by Nina Mingya Powles; and The Air Year by Caroline Bird

Paying the Land by Joe Sacco review – a triumph of empathy

The painful history of the Northwestern Territory’s indigenous people takes the celebrated cartoonist away from AK47s and mortar shells, and into a different kind of war

Small Pleasures by Clare Chambers review – a suburban mystery

There is compassion and quiet humour to be found in this tale of a putative virgin birth in postwar Britain

Sex Robots & Vegan Meat by Jenny Kleeman review – the future of food, birth and death?

A pleasingly sceptical investigation into the innovations that could change the way we eat, have sex and die

Young adult books roundup – review

Three tales of sibling secrets and a slick Hunger Games prequel

Small Hours: The Long Night of John Martyn by Graeme Thomson – review

A painstaking story of the guitarist’s shocking life