Prime Minister’s Literary awards 2021: Amanda Lohrey wins $80,000 fiction prize for The Labyrinth

Tasmanian author honoured for poignant novel which also won the Miles Franklin and Voss literary prizes

Grace Nichols’ ‘pioneering voice’ wins her Queen’s gold medal for poetry

Poet laureate Simon Armitage, who chaired this year’s award committee, said the Guyanese writer’s works ‘echo with the rhymes and rhythms of her family and ancestors’

The Greeks by Roderick Beaton review – a global history

This survey reflects the depth and complexity of Greece, a small country with a world-conquering ethos

Nobel winner Abdulrazak Gurnah says ‘writing cannot be just about polemics’

The Zanzibari novelist spoke of migration, colonialism and how he became a writer in his acceptance lecture on Tuesdsay

US author to give away £10,000 prize cash over role of sponsor in opioid crisis

Investigative reporter Patrick Radden Keefe will give money from business book of the year shortlisting to charity over involvement of McKinsey firm

Is Superman Circumcised? wins oddest book title of the year award

Study of the superhero’s Jewish influences beats off stiff competition to come first in this year’s Diagram prize

Julia and the Shark’s writers on their pandemic-driven book lauded by Waterstones

The novel written and illustrated by husband-and-wife duo, Kiran Millwood Hargrave and Tom de Freston, has been named children’s gift of the year by Waterstones, while Paul McCartney’s The Lyrics wins book of 2021

Costa prize 2021 shortlists highlight climate anxiety

Jessie Greengrass’s novel The High House, set in a flood-devastated Suffolk was one of several of the nominees to focus on global heating, said judges

National Book awards: Jason Mott wins US literary prize for ‘masterful’ novel Hell of a Book

The North Carolina novelist has won the National Book Foundation’s award for fiction for his dark absurdist novel

Baillie Gifford prize goes to ‘controlled fury’ of Empire of Pain

Judges praise Patrick Radden Keefe’s investigation of the Sackler family and its role in the opioid crisis for its rigour, bravery and narrative energy

Islands of Abandonment by Cal Flyn audiobook review – post-human landscapes

From Chernobyl to remote Scotland, Flyn brings to life areas that have been abandoned by people and recolonised by nature, plus the rest of the week’s picks

Isabel Waidner wins Goldsmiths prize for ‘mindbending’ Sterling Karat Gold

Waidner’s third novel follows a non-binary migrant who is arrested in London in what has been described as ‘Kafka’s The Trial written for the era of gaslighting’

Christos Tsiolkas wins $60,000 Melbourne prize for literature

Melbourne writer honoured for ‘outstanding contribution to Australian literature and to cultural and intellectual life’

The Books of Jacob by Olga Tokarczuk review – a messiah’s story

The Nobel laureate’s visionary epic about 18th-century religious leader Jacob Frank takes on the biggest philosophical themes

John Agard becomes first poet to win BookTrust lifetime achievement award

Reading charity pays tribute to ‘incredible words’ of Afro-Guyanese author, who came to Britain in 1977 where he has become a staple of English lessons