Dream Sequence by Adam Foulds review – precision of observation

This story of an ambitious actor and his obsessed fan is brilliantly written, but lacks contemporary resonance

‘A star is born’: TS Eliot prize goes to Hannah Sullivan’s debut

Poet’s ‘absolutely exhilarating’ first collection Three Poems takes £25,000 prize

Samuel Beckett rejected as unsuitable for the Nobel prize in 1968

Newly released papers show the committee chairman’s doubts in 1968 whether a prize for the Irish author would be in the spirit of the award

Normal People: how Sally Rooney’s novel became the literary phenomenon of the decade

Booksellers are keeping stashes behind counters, others are having to put signs in windows to say it’s in stock … What is it about the novel that has resonated with so many people?

Costa first novel award winner recalls ‘awful’ time writing his book

Stuart Turton’s The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle wins £5,000 honour, alongside Sally Rooney who is the youngest author ever to win best novel

Pat Barker: ‘You could argue that time’s up: we’re at the end of patriarchy’

The author of the Regeneration trilogy on Brexit, #MeToo – and rewriting the Iliad from a female perspective for her Costa-shortlisted novel The Silence of the Girls

A new start: Sarah Hall on trauma and the unexpected tonic of extreme reading

The birth of her child, the death of her mother and the breakdown of her marriage hit the author at once. Then she was asked to judge the Booker prize

Pieces of Me by Natalie Hart review – a woman in fragments

Shortlisted for the Costa debut novel award, this is a memorable, cohesive story of a fractured life

Keira Knightley: ‘I can’t act the flirt or mother to get my voice heard. It makes me feel sick’

The star of Colette on Harvey Weinstein, Disney princesses and why her visceral essay about childbirth and the Duchess of Cambridge hit a nerve

The big literary quiz of the year: authors test your knowledge of 2018’s books

From salmon fishing to textavism, naked tennis to Trump’s thirst for Diet Coke ... pit your wits against authors like Will Self and Anne Enright in our bumper quiz

Land of the Living by Georgina Harding review – a soldier’s return

Tense and illuminating, this masterly meditation on trauma, survival and the idea of home moves between the Burmese jungle and the bleak flatlands of Norfolk

Gwendoline Riley’s ‘brutal’ novel about toxic marriage wins Geoffrey Faber prize

With her novel First Love, the 39-year-old author joins eminent former winners including Seamus Heaney and Alice Oswald

Tell Them of Battles, Kings and Elephants by Mathias Énard review – Michelangelo in Constantinople

As a surveyor of east-west relations, the French novelist was drawn to the idea of a Renaissance artist taking an Islamic sabbatical - but the result is fiddly and unpersuasive

Prime Minister’s Literary awards 2018: Gerald Murnane wins for ‘exquisite’ novel

Border Districts described as ‘crowning achievement of a singular literary career’, beating works by Peter Carey and Richard Flanagan

There’s more to this bad fiction than bad sex – between the lines is privilege

Only a famous white man could get away with publishing a book as dreadful as James Frey’s novel, says the Guardian’s books site editor Sian Cain