The Great War by Joe Sacco – review

Joe Sacco's meticulous depiction of the first day's fighting in the Battle of the Somme is all the more powerful for being wordless, says Rachel Cooke

The Mad Toy by Roberto Arlt – review

Roberto Arlt's 1926 tale follows the fortunes of a young crook struggling to find salvation in Buenos Aires. By Anthony Cummins

The thousands of words we don’t know

Gary Soto: We can let them go, like passersby, and we're none the worse because of it. But if we're active, learning never ends

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