Acclaimed for her accounts of the darkness and desire found in everyday life, ‘the Canadian Chekhov' has died, having suffered from dementia for more than a decade
For once, the rumours have proved true. Annie Ernaux, the 82-year-old French writer, who for the last couple of years has been touted as a favourite, has been announced as the winner of the 2022 Nobel prize for literature - only the 17th woman out 119 laureates in the award's history.
It was several hours after the Nobel prize for literature announcement before anyone was able to get hold of winner Annie Ernaux. The long-tipped, 82-year-old French writer was deep in work, avoiding her ringing phone to concentrate. When a Swedish journalist finally got in contact, she asked: "Are you sure?"
This year's key prizes have gone to writers from Africa and the diaspora. Damon Galgut, Mohamed Mbougar Sarr, Abdulrazak Gurnah and others explain what winning means to them
"I'm a very sociable person. The fact that I dislike interviews doesn't mean I'm a recluse," the poet Louise Glück said early on in our interview. Read more
Do you find it as obvious as I do that Don DeLillo richly deserves to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature? And right away, as in this year? Read more
About eight years ago, the Canadian novelist Susan Swan looked into the research about how female writers compared with male ones when it came to literary prizes and coverage. She was shocked by what she found.
"I thought it was going to be a happy progress report," she said in an interview. "Instead it was a bad news day." Read more
Twenty years before Peter Handke would become a Nobel laureate, he won another title. In 1999, Salman Rushdie named him the runner-up for "International moron of the year" in the Guardian, for his "series of impassioned apologias for the genocidal regime of Slobodan Milošević". (The winner was actor Charlton Heston, for being a gun lobbyist.) Read more
Rape, infighting, secrets, financial malpractice; the scandal surrounding the Nobel Prize in Literature began in November 2017 when Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter published allegations by eighteen women that they had been sexually assaulted by Jean-Claude Arnault, a 71-year-old Swedish-French photographer. Read more
Kazuo Ishiguro's literary agency has revealed the "calls have been coming in thick and fast" following the author's Nobel Prize win, with more than 20 renewal deals flooding in and new deals in countries where the author has never previously been published. Read more
‘I was very aware that because the manuscript has my name on it, people would just publish it, however bad it was, and I wanted honest feedback. I wanted to know that someone believed in the book and I truly enjoyed getting unvarnished feedback through my agent. There was one editor who did not like Strike having a famous father and made that point.
'My theatre background has probably helped me be a braver writer and maybe more rigorous, too: the theatre can sustain bold and abstract ideas, but not slow or sloppy storytelling'
Theatre producer Ellie Keel's debut novel, dark academia thriller The Four was published on 11 April by HQ.
In April of this year, Timothy Garton Ash collected his reward money for winning the prestigious 2024 Lionel Gelber Prize.
Today, in Kyiv, the Oxford University professor presented what he bought with it - a new set of reconnaissance drones for immediate use in the war against Russia.
Acclaimed for her accounts of the darkness and desire found in everyday life, ‘the Canadian Chekhov' has died, having suffered from dementia for more than a decade
Shimmr AI, an artificial intelligence start-up that aims to help publishers promote more of their list, has recruited a host of high-profile advisers from across the books industry, signalling the firm's plans to "deploy globally".
As Little, Brown's SFF imprint Orbit celebrates its 50th anniversary, publisher Anna Jackson reflects on its current record-breaking run and on building the brands of the future.
'I hate the term "mystery". That's not what I write. I think the Scarpetta novels are much more character-driven than an average puzzle solver. Writing should be like a pane of glass - there's another world on the other side and your vision carries you there, but you're not aware of having passed through a barrier to get there.'