The Narrow Road to the Deep North review – Richard Flanagan’s powerful second world war novel
Flanagan's story of Australian PoWs forced by the Japanese to work on the Burma Railway is complex and masterful, writes Alex Preston
Sayed Kashua: why I have to leave Israel
Arab-Israeli writer Sayed Kashua moved to Jerusalem as a child and has devoted his life to telling Israelis the Palestinian story. Last week he decided to emigrate
Shark attack: Gavin Maxwell’s Harpoon at a Venture
Best known for his conservation classic Ring of Bright Water, Maxwell wrote an earlier account of shark-hunting in the Hebrides which is brutal and fascinating. By Robert Macfarlane
Mark Romanek set to direct The Shining prequel Overlook Hotel
Warner Bros going ahead with "origins story" of hotel that was setting for the Jack Nicholson horror classic
Hans-Ulrich Wehler obituary
Historian who revolutionised the study of German society and became one of the country's leading public intellectuals
A female Thor is good – a feminine male superhero would be better
Paris Lees: Marvel comics have made the God of Thunder a woman. But she will be strong and fundamentally masculine like before
A volume of Das Kapital becomes a $40,000 commodity fetish: what would Karl Marx have said?
The sale by Abebooks turns the monumental critique of capitalism into rich profit for one giant private owner, writes Lindesay Irvine
Welcome to Paju Book City, the South Korean town inspired by Hay-on-Wye
An urbanist's tour of South Korea, day 3: Colin Marshall travels to Paju's publishing hub and finds the skyscraper-intensive ‘smart city’ of Songdo more humane than he expected
Spain is better together with Catalonia, say Spanish celebrities
A group of prominent Spaniards say it would be the right of all Spanish citizens to vote in a Catalan independence referendum
The best books on Haiti: start your reading here
Pushpinder Khaneka: From the story of a torturer, and a novel banned by Papa Doc Duvalier to a warts and all love letter to the country
American Psycho musical to debut off Broadway next year
Second Stage Theater to bring adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis's 1991 novel to New York stage
Unspeakable Things review – Laurie Penny’s dissection of modern feminism
Blogger and New Statesman contributing editor Laurie Penny's new broadside isn't another sparky handbook but a call to arms, writes Liz Hoggard
Singapore libraries to destroy copies of gay penguin book
Row erupts as information minister backs decision to pulp all copies of book about male penguin couple following complaints
Bertolt Brecht’s poems to ‘one of his great loves’ come to fervent life
Passionate love poems exchanged with the actor Margarete Steffin, who became one of Brecht's greatest collaborators, are to be read in translation for the first time, writes Sasha Dugdale
Age of Ambition; The New Emperors reviews – two studies of modern China
Evan Osnos examines a changing China through gentle reportage, and Kerry Brown provides illuminating forensic analysis of its vicious power struggles, writes Isabel Hilton