The Man Without A Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin by Masha Gessen – review

James Meek applauds a courageous book that delves into the Russian prime minister's shady past

Love InshAllah, a book that goes to the heart of Muslim women

Huma Qureshi: A collection of honest real-life love stories by American Muslim women gives a rare insight into their love, faith and choices

Lent is a chance to take stock and imagine a changed world

Jane Williams: Private spiritual discipline during Lent means little without the desire to transform the world for the good of all

Pass notes No 3,128: Francis Fukuyama

End of History author Francis Fukuyama has been predicting the future again: this time by buying his own drone 'before the government makes them illegal'

Thomas Aquinas, part 4: how did the world begin?

Tina Beattie: How to believe: Aquinas's understanding of our origins combines Aristotelian and Platonic cosmologies with the biblical account of creation

Thomas Aquinas, part 3: scripture, reason and the being of God

Tina Beattie: How to believe: For Aquinas, the being of God is better understood as a verb than a noun – a dynamism that sustains all creation

Justice and the Enemy by William Shawcross – review

William Shawcross offers a good account of the problems involved in prosecuting Islamist terrorists, although his defence of torture leaves a bad taste, writes Nick Cohen

Syrian authors condemn ‘savage’ Homs bombardment

Poet Adonis and novelist Khaled Khalifa condemn actions of Assad regime

What Nietzsche’s ‘God is dead’ means to Americans

Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen: The Big Ideas: Nietzschean high-school killers have obscured the interpretation of 'God is dead' as an opening, not a closing, of minds

The political message of Nietzsche’s ‘God is dead’

Lesley Chamberlain: The Big Ideas: Nietzsche's declaration was not an atheist broadside in today's context, but an attack on the link between reason and divinity