Why France is shunning the ebook
When it comes to reading books, the French are determinedly bucking the digital trend and sticking to paperbacks
Alice Walker’s The Color Purple should be read in Israel
Maya Sela: By not allowing a new Hebrew edition, Alice Walker is preventing those who could learn from her powerful novel from reading it
Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death and Hope in a Mumbai Slum by Katherine Boo – review
The squalid margins of Mumbai are brilliantly pinned to the page, writes William Dalrymple
Gitta Sereny led us through our own darkness
Giles Fraser: This extraordinary writer wanted to show that evil is done by people like us. No wonder some got angry at her work
John Donne, priest and poet, part 5: a flirtatious love of God
Roz Kaveney: How to believe: For Donne, God knows us best of all. This closeness, expressed with wry humour, can be hard for a non-believer to comprehend
Richard Ford: ‘America beats on you so hard the whole time’
Revered American novelist Richard Ford talks to Tim Adams about his novel Canada, the joys of growing old and the dangers of criticising the United States
Burying the Typewriter: Childhood Under the Eye of the Secret Police by Carmen Bugan – review
Carmen Bugan's account of growing up in Ceausescu's Romania is warm and humane, writes Linda Grant
The Second World War by Antony Beevor – review
Antony Beevor is authoritative and lucid in much of this mammoth history, but the size of the task sometimes proves too great, writes Ben Shephard
Bloomsday: a rare chance to feel good about being Irish
Darragh McManus: I used to be cynical about the annual celebration of Ulysses, but God knows we need something to be positive about these days
As rich Greeks keep their heads down, hospital staff heroically battle the odds
Though the Greek healthcare system is crumbling, novelist Paul Johnston found his treatment in Athens to be wonderful
Manhunt: From 9/11 to Abbottabad by Peter Bergen – review
A detailed survey of Osama bin Laden's demise from the Washington-based journalist who once interviewed him for CNN, writes Julian Borger
In praise of … Ray Dolin
Editorial: The 39-year-old author of The Kindness of America had a nasty dose of reality when he was shot by a stranger last Saturday
John Donne, priest and poet, part 4: two kinds of judgment
Roz Kaveney: How to believe: Donne reconciles the split in belief of a Last Judgment and the concept from Egypt of the dead standing before their judge
Katherine Boo: Slum dweller
Susanna Rustin: Katherine Boo won a Pulitzer for writing about the poor and the vulnerable. She spent three years in a Mumbai slum for her new book, Behind the Beautiful Forevers. Why bother, if she thinks that all she can make is 'small differences'?
Q&A: putting a face on unemployment in the Great Recession
Author DW Gibson travelled across the country to get the stories of Americans who lost their jobs – and much more