France’s ‘king of manuscripts’ held over suspected pyramid scheme fraud
Prized collection assembled by Gérard Lhéritier, who ‘turned paper into gold’, includes De Sade’s manuscript of 120 Days of Sodom and Louis XVI’s final testament
Dan Stevens to monster Emma Watson in live-action Beauty and the Beast
Disney’s live action remake of the classic fairytale will star the Downton Abbey aristo as the spellbound prince opposite the Harry Potter star as Belle
Has sentimental remembrance met its Waterloo?
This year marks the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo. Artists of the time – such as Turner and Byron – showed the full horror of its slaughter. Let’s not resort to fake empathy or cheap mawkishness now
The reporter who put faces to LA’s murder statistics
Jill Leovy, crime correspondent of the LA Times, fought to put faces to the city’s homicide statistics to challenge assumptions about ‘gang-related’ violence
Karl Ove Knausgaard: ‘Writing is a way of getting rid of shame’
Norwegian writer Karl Ove Knausgaard’s bestselling, deeply exposing six-part memoir has been a literary sensation the world over – and upset not a few of his relatives
Ahmet Hamdi Tanpinar and the waiting room of history
Tanpinar’s The Time Regulation Institute is a brilliant comic novel from 1962 about life in a Turkey forced to adopt western ways. Pankaj Mishra signals the dangers of a one-size-fits-all notion of modernity
If I were king for a day, George Orwell would be my language consultant
No more ‘actually’ or ‘almost unique’. Yes, English is a glorious, evolving thing – but my war on verbiage must be waged
Isis destroys thousands of books and manuscripts in Mosul libraries
Shocked staff fear further damage and ‘cultural cleansing’ under the militants’ rule
The Girl from Human Street review – the odyssey of loss that haunted Roger Cohen’s mother
Roger Cohen’s memoir of his mother’s depression gives Ed Vulliamy fresh insight into his friend’s Jewish roots
Leaving Before the Rains Come by Alexandra Fuller review – out of Africa with fond memories
Alexandra Fuller’s third memoir, about emigrating to America and the breakdown of her marriage, is wistful and wise
Sri Lankan minister calls on poets to help unite a divided nation
Writers, actors and dancers asked to help heal the wounds of civil war as new government pushes for reconciliation
Bryan Stevenson: If it’s not right to rape a rapist, how can it be OK to kill a killer?
On a visit to Australia, the acclaimed US lawyer says ‘there is no natural way to systematically engage in killing another human being’ – which is why state executions dehumanise all involved
At the Karachi literature festival, books really are a matter of life and death
In one of the world’s most dangerous cities, more than 100,000 people came together in a multilingual celebration of the written word
Germans fascinated by life on either side of the Berlin Wall
Books and a hotly awaited TV series, Deutschland 83, tap into the fascination with a divided country, writes Sarah Hughes
The Italians by John Hooper review – a country of contradictions
An eye-opening tour of modern Italy, with all its furbizia, fantasia and sprezzatura, where even the truth is negotiable and there’s a skill to learning what’s really going on.