Aborigines have for too long been portrayed as victims
Response: Luhrmann's movie is a fresh attempt to address Australia's past, say Marcia Langton
Drama of a decadent age offers Germans a timely morality tale
Sumptuous film of Thomas Mann's saga, Buddenbrooks, proves perfect for a nation in recession
Victor Hugo’s heirs lose battle against sequels
After seven year battle court permits publication of sequels to Victor Hugo's 200-year-old classic
We must save feminist bookshops
Jessica Valenti: Like many independent outlets, In Other Words is in trouble – and needs the help of the community it nutures
A nine-year-old pick-up artist?
Mary Richert: Alec Greven's book on how to talk to girls contains some good advice, but the boy still has much to learn about women
12 months that changed the world
From the meteoric rise of Barack Obama to the financial crash, this was the year the world turned on its head. And Guardian writers (and readers) were there to record it all ...
Belafonte in row over sale of King papers
Family of Martin Luther King claims documents put up for auction had been 'wrongly acquired' by singer
This review of my Indian poetry book is full of patronising cliches
Response: An overheated 19th-century imagination misses the point of my contemporary collection, says Jeet Thayil
Call me Bush
Stephen Kinzer: Moby Dick is an eerily prophetic allegory of 21st-century America. It should be named as the nation's epic novel
Forrest J Ackerman
Obituary: The man who coined 'sci-fi' and whose magazine, Famous Monsters, was his crowning glory
Hollywood studios fight over Watchmen movie
Much-anticipated Hollywood version of best-selling graphic novel at centre of legal dispute
Sunny von Bulow dies after years in coma
After almost three decades in a coma, the wife of British society figure Claus von Bulow has died aged 76
Gay Bible angers Christians
American film producer to publish version of the Bible in which God says it is better to be gay than straight
‘I don’t know why I reveal these things’
Alison Bechdel hoped that Fun Home, her very personal graphic memoir, would heal her family's wounds. Instead it led to terrible upset, she tells Emma Brockes
Culture crunch: Struggling booksellers fall into the tourist trap
Sales at open-air stalls along Seine dive as rare and out-of-print books face competition from online dealers