NoViolet Bulawayo tells of heartbreak of homecoming in Mugabe’s Zimbabwe

First Zimbabwean longlisted for Man Booker prize 'hardly recognised desperate country' she found after 13 years in US

In praise of … Ireland’s literary life

Editorial: Seamus Heaney's death has been a national event, a tribute to the poet and to the way literature continues to infuse Irish life

Crazy Rich Asians presents a whole new wave of stereotypes

Patricia Park: One of the hottest summer reads presents the worst of Asian culture, but it's also refreshing to read about more than kung fu

What would you like your final words to be?

Open thread: Seamus Heaney left us with 'Don't be afraid'. Tell us your ideal last words – or the best that you have heard

The Lake District is a wildlife desert. Blame Wordsworth

George Monbiot: I revere Wordsworth the poet, but not his view of farming as a benign force. The Lakes fells don't need world heritage status – just fewer sheep

Was my Jewish great-uncle a Nazi hunter?

Thomas Harding: Could a German Jew really have been a war crimes investigator for the British, responsible for tracking down the commandant of Auschwitz?

Seamus Heaney’s death ‘leaves breach in language itself’

Tributes flow in from fellow writers after poet who won Nobel prize for literature dies in Dublin aged 74

Doonreagan: Ted Hughes and Assia Wevill’s escape to Ireland

He started work on his greatest verse cycle; she painted, wrote and danced. Laura Barnett reports on a new play trying to uncover the truth about the relationship between the poet and his married lover

Seamus Heaney’s human touch

Tom Chivers: We have lost a writer who masterfully synthesised traditions – and was also a great ambassador for poetry as a craft of listening

If we’re all Martians now, who are the aliens?

Philip Hoare: The suggestion that Earth was invaded by microbes from Mars challenges human conceptions about life, the universe and everything

Gordon Lish: famous for all the wrong reasons

David Winters: This great man of American letters should be judged by his body of work and the success of his students, not by his editing of Raymond Carver

Gloria Steinem and Catharine MacKinnon on Lovelace

Why did two of radical feminism's biggest names decide to advise the makers of the new movie about the late porn star Linda Lovelace?

Noble Endeavours by Miranda Seymour – review

Unfazed optimism is the keynote of this celebration of Anglo-German relations, writes Richard Davenport-Hines

Robert Skidelsky: ‘Why don’t more people aspire to living a good life?’

The economic historian talks to Tim Adams about his utopian ideal, our pursuit of money and the problem with happiness

Paris hotels attempt to lure customers by playing up literary links

Exploiting cultural connections has become a profitable marketing ploy for hoteliers in the French capital