Chernobyl: History of a Tragedy by Serhii Plokhy review – death of the Soviet dream
This account of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster is both moving and rigorously researched
Natives: Race and Class in the Ruins of Empire by Akala – review
In a powerful, polemical narrative, the rapper charts his past and the history of black Britain
How Democracy Ends review – is people politics doomed?
Representative government is experiencing a calamitous midlife crisis, argues David Runciman in this scintillating if gloomy treatise
Trump/Russia review: Le Carré meets Mario Puzo in Moscow and Manhattan
Seth Hettena has written a history of the president’s dealings with Russia that reads like a page-turning mob thriller
Andrew Sean Greer, Pulitzer-winner: ‘I have to watch I don’t get arrogant’
The US novelist on winning the big literary prize, anxiety at 3am and why gay characters deserve a happy ending
On Chesil Beach review – pleasingly thorny, until the end
It’s a shame this handsome adaptation of Ian McEwan’s novel eventually gives in to convention
Book clinic: novels to unwind with
From Anna Karenina to a bank manager’s adventures with his eccentric aunt, our expert selects the best escapist reads
The best recent crime novels – review roundup
Snap by Belinda Bauer; The Old Religion by Martyn Waites; Thirteen by Steve Cavanagh; The Good Son by You-jeong Jeong; Our Kind of Cruelty by Araminta Hall and The House Swap by Rebecca Fleet
The Shadow in the Garden by James Atlas review – what it is like to write biography
Atlas is best known for his study of Saul Bellow, written while the novelist was still alive. It was an unequal, fraught relationship and the biographer feels (a little) guilty
Julian Barnes on William Trevor’s final stories – a master of the short form
The great Irish writer displays all his trademark evasive precision in Last Stories, a posthumous collection
You by Phil Whitaker review – the parent’s tale
A cry for help and understanding from an estranged father
Mixing It by Wendy Webster review – diversity in second world war Britain
A fascinating study of official and popular responses to overseas arrivals and a population more diverse than ever before
The Outsider by Stephen King review – an impossible alibi
The master of horror hits a home run, with this mystery of a baseball youth team coach accused of murder
The Girl on the Train review – is Paula Hawkins’s bestseller unadaptable?
Joe Murphy directs an adaptation of the 2015 thriller with Jill Halfpenny playing an amateur sleuth drawn to the case of a missing woman
The Devils’ Dance by Hamid Ismailov review – a landmark Uzbek novel
A lost novel about a 19th-century slave girl, and the fate of its real-life author who was imprisoned under Stalin, are reimagined with powerful results