Gilead

Andrew Brown: The belief book club: Marilynne Robinson's retelling of the parable of the prodigal son is played out somewhere very close to paradise

Literary critics scan the brain to find out why we love to read

'Neuro lit crit' is the study of how great writing affects the hard wiring inside our heads. But can we decode the artistic impulse?

The World That Never Was by Alex Butterworth

Europe's early anarchists may have been ineffectual, but their spiritual descendants are still at work today, says Peter Preston

‘You are free to write, others have not been so lucky’

For 50 years PEN's Writers in Prison Committee has been campaigning on behalf of writers who have been imprisoned for speaking their minds

Nabeel Yasin’s diary of the Iraq election

When the exiled poet returned to his home country, he formed a new political party. With the election campaign still mired in controversy, this is his account of the election campaign

First edition of St Augustine’s complete works to be auctioned

Annotated 10-volume edition offering new insights into Henry VIII's break with Roman Catholic church to go on sale

What next, Txtspk Scrabble?

Ariane Sherine: If chess loses its pawns and Monopoly turns into Housing Association, I know just who to blame

Egyptian security forces arrest publisher

Publication of book praising Nobel Peace prize winner leads to incarceration

David Baddiel: Now you see him, now you don’t

Profile: David Baddiel. Now you see him, now you don't

The Dead Republic by Roddy Doyle

Roddy Doyle's fictional take on recent Irish history offers some vivid writing, writes Tim Adams

The dark heart of modern fairytales

Bidisha: A slew of recent literary fiction with young adult protagonists is at last restoring fairytales' socially subversive origins

Radio catchup: Orbital, new-wave women, female voters and Lord Byron

Orbital spun the decks, punk girls reminisced, MPs wooed women voters and Byron was less bothered about their vote

In praise of … Tony Judt

Editorial: Lecturing from a wheelchair, breathing through a tube, he has not done 'the natural thing' of taking to whisky and old movies; he remains a historian who intervenes in politics, author of a doorstopper history of Europe that is a hymn to social democracy