‘It’s notoriously hard to write about sex’: David Szalay on Flesh, his astounding Booker prize-winner

The novel’s protagonist is violent, libidinous and so inarticulate he says ‘OK’ some 500 times. So how did the author turn his story into a tragic masterpiece?

Vaim by Jon Fosse review – the Nobel laureate performs a strange miracle

In the Norwegian master’s latest example of ‘mystical realism’, one man makes a dreamlike, hypnotic voyage through life

David Szalay wins 2025 Booker prize for ‘dark’ Flesh

The judges ‘had never read anything quite like it’, says panel chair Roddy Doyle, announcing the Hungarian-British author’s novel as the winner of the £50,000 award

The risky strategy of Booker winner Flesh pays off

The protagonist’s inner life is hidden from the reader in this highly original novel

Andrew Miller is bookies’ favourite to win 2025 Booker prize

The Land in Winter has shortest odds of victory, ahead of Kiran Desai’s The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny

Love The Traitors and Only Murders in the Building? Visit The Mousetrap, says bold new director of West End perennial

Ola Ince, who has refreshed Agatha Christie’s record-breaking mystery, suggests ‘we all fancy ourselves as detectives’

Readers reply: Who is the most evil villain in fiction?

The long-running series in which readers answer other readers’ questions on subjects ranging from trivial flights of fancy to profound scientific and philosophical concepts

‘I had a year to write it from scratch’: the 2025 Booker finalists on the stories behind their novels

A newspaper report about a missing girl, the memory of a midwinter emergency … Susan Choi, Andrew Miller, David Szalay and others on what inspired their shortlisted books

In Love With Love by Ella Risbridger review – a sexy celebration of romantic fiction

From Pride and Prejudice to Fifty Shades, a writer’s paean to the literature of desire

The Transformations by Andrew Pippos review – a tender study of an ordinary man doing his best

Pippos brings a quieter drama to his second novel, about a subeditor who has a midlife shakeup in the dying world of print journalism

Beasts of the Sea by Iida Turpeinen review – a hypnotic tale of the sea cow’s extinction

This hit debut from Finland is intensely readable, but could have delved more deeply into the links between human progress and environmental destruction

CD Rose awarded the 2025 Goldsmiths prize

The author has won the experimental literary fiction prize for his ‘dizzying, encyclopaedic’ fifth book, We Live Here Now

Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone by JK Rowling audiobook review – an all-star outing

Cush Jumbo, Hugh Laurie and Matthew Macfadyen bring extra twinkle to Rowling’s magical tale

Other People’s Fun by Harriet Lane review – darkly comic tale of envy and revenge in the Insta age

The worlds of the haves and the have-nots clash, in a toxic friendship between two women brought together by a school reunion

Alan Hollinghurst wins David Cohen lifetime award for ‘pioneering’ novels

Author says he is ‘overcome with emotion’ after winning £40,000 honour for books including The Line of Beauty and The Swimming-Pool Library