Christos Tsiolkas on retreating from the outrage cycle: ‘I’ve felt as if I was disappointing people’

Lockdown forced the Australian author to contemplate both his interior life and the big picture. The result is 7½, a work of autofiction that ‘just poured out’

The best recent science fiction, fantasy and horror

Cosmogramma by Courttia Newland; The Love Makers by Aifric Campbell; The Second Shooter by Nick Mamatas; Dead Relatives by Lucie McKnight Hardy; and Under the Whispering Door by TJ Klune

Jason Reynolds: “Reading rap lyrics made me realise that poetry could be for me”

The American YA author on discovering Stephen King, growing into Toni Morrison – and the perfect novel

Sour Grapes by Dan Rhodes review – a vengeful satire on the publishing world

The comic novelist takes aim at the industry’s elitism, but his story of a farcical literary festival is dated – and overly focused on Will Self

The Last Woman in the World by Inga Simpson review – apocalyptic thriller preys on Australians’ worst nightmares

Simpson’s page-turner, about a recluse living in the aftermath of bushfires and pandemic, makes us see the world anew as it meditates on the importance of companionship

Skylark by Alice O’Keeffe review – inside the spy cops scandal

An undercover police officer romances a climate activist in a lovingly evoked examination of the 90s protest scene

Pity the Beast by Robin McLean review – a work of crazy brilliance

This gloriously gothic debut, set around an act of violence in the American west, demonstrates aesthetic fearlessness and real intellectual heft

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’

From Paradise Lost to the Lord of the Rings: top 10 epics in fiction

From classic tales such as Paradise Lost to ‘counter-epics’ by Anne Carson and Tim O’Brien, these stories lend real grandeur to their subjects

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

Sally Hepworth on Amy Poehler, Liane Moriarty and her six-times-a-day writing regime

The Melbourne writer discusses her failures and her craft – and why she shuns the housewife-author stereotype

The Waiting by Keum Suk Gendry-Kim review – heartbreaking Korean war tale

The author of Grass works another miracle with this semi-autobiographical tale of a family separated by conflict

Where You Come From by Saša Stanišić review – memory in the wake of war

Past and present are in a constant state of flux in the Bosnian-German writer’s third novel – part autofiction, part Choose Your Own Adventure

The Every by Dave Eggers review – scathing big-tech satire sequel

The writer’s follow-up to The Circle is longer and baggier, but still fuelled by rage at the power of Silicon Valley and its numbing effect on the human race