Richard Flanagan: ‘I’m not sure that I will write again’

The Tasmanian novelist – whose latest book, Question 7, is up for both fiction and nonfiction prizes – on HG Wells, the TV adaptation of his Booker prize winner The Narrow Road to the Deep North… and his much-missed parrot, Herb

‘She gave me the chance that became my life’: Jeanette Winterson on her first editor, Philippa Brewster

The pioneering feminist editor and publisher died in October. The Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit author looks back on the close friendship they shared

‘Uniquely qualified’: Elizabeth Jane Howard’s niece to continue her Cazalet Chronicles novels

Novelist Louisa Young will write the sixth, seventh and eighth books in a move that ‘will thrill existing readers’

Garth Greenwell: ‘I didn’t read Middlemarch until my late 30s. Why didn’t someone intervene? ’

The novelist on Virginia Woolf’s luminous prose, obsessively rereading James Baldwin and why Saint Augustine is his favourite writer

The Thinning by Inga Simpson review – apocalyptic thriller offers glimpse of a better world

Two teens embark on a race against time across a ravaged Australia in this stunningly wrought dystopian novel

Suggested in the Stars by Yōko Tawada review – a linguistic odyssey

The Japanese novelist explores the relationship between language and national identity, in the second part of her Scattered All Over the Earth trilogy

Fire Exit by Morgan Talty review – secrets and lies in Maine

The virtues of truth-telling are explored in this tale of one man’s need to confront and reveal his past

Alexis Wright wins $60,000 Melbourne literature prize

The Waanyi writer, who won the Miles Franklin award and Stella prize this year for her novel Praiseworthy, has been recognised for her body of work and contribution to Australian culture

The American No by Rupert Everett review – blackly comic short stories

The actor, writer and director mines his own backlog of unmade projects to create an exhilarating collection

Killing Time by Alan Bennett review – a cut above

From afternoon sherry to sex with the handyman in the lawnmower shed, Alan Bennett takes a wry look at lockdown life in a care home

Samantha Harvey’s ‘beautiful and ambitious’ Orbital wins Booker prize

The British author’s novel about astronauts on the International Space Station was chosen unanimously as the winner, says judging chair Edmund de Waal

‘This is a book we need now’: Sara Collins on choosing this year’s Booker winner

After reading more than 150 books over seven months, the judges voted unanimously in favour of Samantha Harvey’s Orbital – which pulled them as far away as possible from our planet

The Proof of My Innocence by Jonathan Coe review – a blue murder mystery

Set during Liz Truss’s premiership, Coe’s multilayered study of how things quickly fell apart is a whodunnit with a villain hiding in plain sight

Paul Bailey obituary

Writer best known for the novel Gabriel’s Lament and a sympathetic biography of the brothel madam Cynthia Payne

Why are nursery rhymes and fairytales so dark?

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