Being on the jury of the Man Booker Prize is no mean feat. With 150 books to read, Natalie Haynes barely has time to sleep. But, she says, the popularity of historical fiction means she now knows a lot more about world history

The queen of Chick Lit explains the motivation behind her latest novel

The literary festival pioneer tells Arifa Akbar why the scene needs shaking up

It's not hard to find the 'sick and twisted' inspiration for the crime author's gory novels. James Kidd reports

In the roll-call of student summer reading certain volumes stand out, including Desmond Morris's body language phenomenon The Naked Ape and Richard Bach's Jonathan Livingston Seagull. To those can be added a volume by Robert M Pirsig that snuggled its way into every hitchhiker's hand-crocheted body satchel. Unlike Bach, whose books were like being hit with a wiffle bat full of pot-pourri, Pirsig is the real deal. Born in 1928, this precocious university student was eventually expelled for studying too hard, after growing bewildered by the choice of multiple hypotheses in his chosen field, biochemistry. Overwhelmed by the limitations of science, he tackled Eastern philosophy instead, spending time in India before returning to a US college.

I know nobody in Prague, not a soul, which is one of the main reasons I decide to move there. The last person I expect to see is myself. I always thought that the Doppelgänger only existed in Edgar Allen Poe tales. But I see mine in Prague.

Culture clash: Feminist classics

The Week in Books

Where are you now and what can you see?

Somehow you don't expect a famously footloose writer who has lived rough for long stretches on an islet in the Philippines, reported on wars in Indo-China and military juntas in Brazil, and then found later-life acclaim as the historian and celebrant of daredevil British aviators, to pick you up in what he calls a "Chelsea tractor".

The Dante Alighieri-inspired novel is already Amazon's top-selling book despite not being available until tomorrow

Your weekly guide to what's really going on in the world of books

What's the most successful science fiction story series ever written? How about one that has sold over a billion copies so far, plus various spinoffs, and has influenced a generation of writers? Perry Rhodan was created in 1961 by KH Scheer and Clark Darlton, and was conceived as a 30-volume epic booklet series with a single story arc, back in the days when you could attempt such a thing.