Not the Booker prize 2013: Magda by Meike Ziervogel

The final book on the shortlist turns out to be the best – a short, shocking account of the wife of Joseph Goebbels, who killed their six children

Why I hate Bridget Jones

Suzanne Moore: Help, Bridget's back. She's a widow but she's as vapid, consumerist and self-obsessed as ever. I don't buy this anti-feminist fiction

Simon Schama: a man always making history

Profile: His series, The Story of the Jews, which finishes tonight, has been an astonishing achievement, a TV landmark. Idiosyncratic, accessible, but always authoritative – just like the man himself.

Mumbai’s sex slaves: ‘I have had bad dreams about the life these girls lead’

Hazel Thompson, a photographer from Surrey, explains why she spent 11 years documenting the city's red light district

Mao’s Little Red Book to get revamp

New version of Quotations from Chairman Mao, the world's second most published book, to hit Chinese shelves in November

Why snubbing books by women is not the same as snubbing motorbikes

Emer O’Toole: When I learned that Canadian lecturer David Gilmour has no interest in teaching female writers, I tried tackling the issue on my online dating profile

Ex-Pope Benedict says The Selfish Gene is science fiction. He’s half right

Andrew Brown: It is the dazzling metaphor Richard Dawkins's The Selfish Gene, a fine piece of pop science writing, that can trap and delude the unwary

Kofi Awoonor obituary

Leading Ghanaian poet, novelist and political activist whose work was firmly rooted in the traditions of the Ewe people

Ghanaian poet Kofi Awoonor among Westgate mall victims

Former diplomat is killed at shopping centre after travelling to Nairobi for literary festival

The Story of the Jews: Finding the Words, 1000BCE-1492CE by Simon Schama – review

Simon Schama's panoramic history of Judaism pulls you in with an engaging mix of fact and anecdote, writes Ian Thomson

Sophie Fiennes: ‘Film-goers are bored with being talked down to’

Documentary-maker Sophie Fiennes's latest philosophical quest – with Slavoj Zizek – presents another thrilling challenge for cinema-goers, writes Elizabeth Day

Stephen King slams Twilight franchise as ‘tweenage porn’

Bestselling horror novelist dismisses Stephenie Meyer series and 50 Shades phenomenon, but praises JK Rowling

The west is in thrall to Kantian ideals of personal freedom. And suffers for it

Giles Fraser: Loose canon: For successful people these days, loyalties are just temporary conveniences. Thus, notions of community get lost – as do we