Locating the books with the strongest sense of place

The Ondaatje prize shortlist includes novels from Rahul Bhattacharya and Teju Cole, but which are your favourite books which evoke 'the spirit of a place'?

Third of Australia’s top prize-winning books out of print

Alison Flood: Twenty of the 53 winners of the Miles Franklin award are no longer in print – is the Booker in similarly rough shape?

The sound and fury of book-prize brouhaha leaves literature nowhere

Robert McCrum: As the fuss surrounding the Pulitzer and Orwell prizes shows, book awards are increasingly more about hype than substance

Should judges always pick a winner?

The Pulitzer prize for fiction will not be awarded this year after the jury couldn't raise a majority for any of the candidates. But is this such a bad thing? Alex Clark and Nick Fraser talk it through

Writer Idol gives books prizes the Simon Cowell treatment

Billy Mills: Move over Booker and Pulitzer prizes ... there's a new talent show coming to the West Cork literary festival. Writers, are you ready to face the judges?

Booker’s double prizewinner adds to the lustre of county Durham’s Silver Swan

First it was Mark Twain. Now Peter Carey draws inspiration from the beautiful automaton in the Bowes Museum

Pulitzers 2012: prize for fiction withheld for first time in 35 years

None of the entries for the best American novel of the last year could command a majority

Anne Enright: ‘Love is a great punishment for desire’

The Booker-winning Irish novelist talks to Elizabeth Day about infidelity, Ireland's financial crisis and combining writing with motherhood

Peter Carey: making it up as he goes along

He cheated at school, rewrites the classics and admits to being jealous of his friends' success. Peter Carey tells Emma Brockes why he likes breaking the rules

Should we celebrate scathing book reviews?

The Hatchet Job of the Year is a new literary prize for the best scathing book review. Nominee Geoff Dyer and Anna Baddeley, who set it up, discuss the role of criticism

Salman Rushdie: a literary giant still beset by bigots

Profile: The acclaimed author, who is publishing a long-awaited memoir of his decade in hiding from a murderous fatwa, finds himself threatened once more by fanatics over The Satanic Verses

What’s the definition of a great book?

As the inevitable rows on prize juries testify, it's not easy to say – but well-informed argument does provide some useful pointers

Downton Abbey’s Matthew Crawley to be Booker judge

Man Booker judges' panel to be chaired by Sir Peter Stothard

Booker club: Amsterdam by Ian McEwan

Sam Jordison: Characters without personality, comedy without mirth – how McEwan's worst novel won the Booker is a deep mystery

Why flatpack fiction will always be two dimensional

As the Booker shortlist proved, too many modern novels are assembled for a market

Booker prize announces highbrow editor to head 2012 jury

Peter Stothard, editor of the Times Literary Supplement, is to chair the judges for the 2012 award

From Booker to Bafta: do arts awards matter?

The awards season, with all its squabbles, is under way. Actor Diana Quick and Poetry Society chief Judith Palmer discuss winning, losing, and marching off in a huff

Man Booker Prize 2011: Sales for all the Booker Prize winners, including Julian Barnes

The Man Booker Prize 2011 has been won by Julian Barnes. Does winning guarantee a boost in sales? And which of the previous winners has sold most? With latest sales data for the 2011 longlist• Get the data

From the archive, 21 October 1984: Why should the Booker play safe?

Originally published in the Observer on 21 October 1984: Hermione Lee congratulates Anita Brookner on winning the prize, but laments the judges' lack of adventure

Don’t confuse ‘readability’ with dumbing down

Graham Joyce: Jeanette Winterson's criticism of the Booker prize and her narrow definition of literature is nothing more than cultural elitism

When is a novel not a novel? When it’s a novella

Julian Barnes won this year's Booker prize with a book that was just 150 pages long. What should we call it?

The Turner prize needs to learn from its fractious literary cousin

Jonathan Jones: The Turner's rule-makers could do a lot worse than adopt the more flexible approach of their Booker prize counterparts

The Booker’s narrative arc must change if its cultural dominance is to continue

Robert McCrum: Julian Barnes's victory reinforced the literary merit of the Booker prize, but its organisation remains in need of urgent reform

When is a short novel a ‘novella’?

Julian Barnes's Booker-winning The Sense of an Ending is only 150 pages long. So is it a novella?

Booker prize 2011: Stella Rimington’s broadside against critics was entertaining, for all the wrong reasons

Sam Jordison: Stella Rimington's Booker ceremony diatribe against critics made for great TV, but comparing publishers to the KGB? Really?

Booker prize 2011: Julian Barnes triumphs at last

Fourth time lucky for Julian Barnes, who wins the Man Booker prize 2011 for his novel The Sense of an Ending after missing out on three previous occasions

Booker prize 2011: Julian Barnes is a worthy winner

Some may argue that it's just another vote for the literary establishment, but in The Sense of an Ending, Julian Barnes has created a brief masterpiece

Man Booker Prize: a history of controversy, criticism and literary greats

As the 2011 Man Booker Prize is awarded, we take a look at the history of the UK's foremost literature prize• From the archive, 19 October 1984: Anita Brookner, 6-1 outsider, wins the Booker Prize