How can a book fair make Saudi Arabia ‘guest of honour’?
Alice Guthrie: Book World Prague 2011 has laid on a lavish welcome for Saudi Arabia, but there's scant room for the writers the Saudi government persecutes
Italy shuts out Sex and the Vatican
John Hooper: A book about priests' sex lives, their mistresses and their children has been met in Italy with a wall of embarrassed silence
Newt Gingrich, Amazon explorer
Lindesay Irvine: The Amazon profile of the former speaker Newt Gingrich reveals a liking for fictional terror, but which politicians would you like to see moonlighting as literary reviewers?
Disappearing world: 100 places under threat from climate change
A new book highlights 100 areas of the planet that could vanish because of global warming – and encourages us to visit them before they do
Karl Marx, part 6: The economics of power
Peter Thompson: Marx is often accused of reducing humans to mere expendable specks of matter within the greater economic scheme of things
Britain’s top 300 intellectuals
John Naughton's suggested list of public figures leading our cultural discourse, broken down by profession
Lines of fire: Dante’s vision of hell still has an afterlife
Jonathan Jones: The brilliant, terrifying Divine Comedy has always provoked artists to respond to its hardline moral absolutism
The Social Animal and the science of human nature
Madeleine Bunting: David Brooks's new book makes bold claims that the 'scientific revolution' will humanise our culture. I'm not so sure
India needs to know the real Gandhi
Ramesh Rao: A biography of Gandhi has been banned in Gujarat – but India should know the moral ambiguity of a man revered as a saint
Paul Allen: ‘I think Bill Gates was surprised by my book. He’ll want an intense discussion about it’
The Microsoft co-founder and multi-billionaire talks about his autobiography in which describes his bizarre working relationship with Bill Gates – and how it was he, not Gates, who had the visionary ideas
Greek court rules that adoptive son is Kazantzakis heir
Feud over the rights to the work of Zorba the Greek's author Nikos Kazantzakis intensifies despite ruling
Superman threatens to renounce US citizenship
Conservative commentators and bloggers react with disgust to the DC Comics superhero's decision
Argentina considers paying writers a pension
Authors who have published five books or invested 20 years in 'literary creation' would get £565 a month under the plan
Chile mourns for Gonzalo Rojas
Catalina May: Chile's much-loved 'coalminer's son' has died aged 93. Gonzalo Rojas won many awards, but he was more than just a poet to us