‘Marriage feels like a hostage situation, and motherhood a curse’: Japanese author Sayaka Murata

The Convenience Store Woman author is renowned for challenging social norms in darkly weird near-future fiction. She discusses sex, feminism and her struggles to be an ‘ordinary earthling’

The Homemade God by Rachel Joyce review – portrait of a patriarch

The mysterious death of an artist causes havoc among siblings in a novel that astutely observes family dynamics

The best recent crime and thrillers – review roundup

Fair Play by Louise Hegarty; All the Other Mothers Hate Me by Sarah Harman; This Is Not a Game by Kelly Mullen; The Savage, Noble Death of Babs Dionne by Ron Currie; Death and Other Occupations by Veronika Dapunt

The Passenger Seat by Vijay Khurana review – a startling road trip as original as it is timely

Two discontented young men embark on a journey that the reader quickly knows will be violent and doomed – and yet this novel remains almost unbearably tense

Days of Light by Megan Hunter review – Bohemian rhapsody

The privileged world of Bloomsbury group is vividly evoked in this novel of a life shaped by devastating loss

Fun and Games by John Patrick McHugh review – teenage dreams

The tale of a 17-year-old Irish boy’s painful summer of romance and uncertain friendship captures the tenderness and menace of young men

Audition by Katie Kitamura review – a literary performance of true uncanniness

An actor’s story becomes a thrillingly radical deconstruction of family relationships and the social roles we play

Crime and thrillers of the month – review

A couple’s struggle to survive a serial killer, a prank that goes terribly wrong – and the hunt for an old friend who went missing in the woods

Mario Vargas Llosa obituary

Peruvian novelist, essayist and aspiring politician who was awarded the Nobel prize for literature in 2010

The big idea: will sci-fi end up destroying the world?

Skewed interpretations of classic works are feeding the dark visions of tech moguls, from Musk to Thiel

Audition by Katie Kitamura review – an evasive experiment

This tricksy novel from the author of A Separation takes its cue from Rachel Cusk’s Outline trilogy – but what starts as intrigue soon starts to feel like time-wasting

Mario Vargas Llosa, giant of Latin American literature, dies aged 89

Nobel laureate, a star of the international boom in Latin American literature, also once ran for president in Peru

Nova Scotia House by Charlie Porter review – a headlong rush through the turbulent Aids era

Porter’s urgent prose propels the reader into the gay scene of the 1980s and early 90s as his protagonist’s life is torn apart by the HIV crisis

Greater Sins by Gabrielle Griffiths review – a dark discovery upturns a Scottish village

The unearthing of a woman’s body in a peat bog during the first world war is the catalyst for a gritty tale of secrets, guilt and desire

In brief: Uncommon Ground; The Pretender; All That Glitters – reviews

Patrick Galbraith debunks the cliches of country life; Jo Harkin’s auspicious debut brings the wars of the roses to life; and Orlando Whitfield’s impressive memoir illuminates his friendship with a fraudster