Reader, I followed them: TikTok expands its content to tap into the BookTok phenomenon

New retailer partnerships, live events and book clubs are all planned to capitalise on the platform’s vibrant community of literature loversSocial media app TikTok is making increased efforts to tap into the power of its books content, with new retailer partnerships, live events and clubs.“BookTok”, as users have dubbed TikTok content about books, consists...

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Salman Rushdie’s grave fears for Indian democracy published in PEN anthology

Rushdie’s words, written before last week’s attack in New York, are aired in a new anthology alongside other leading authors• Scroll down to read extracts from PEN’s India at 75 from Salman Rushdie, Jhumpa Lahiri and Geetanjali ShreeSalman Rushdie signed a letter expressing “grave concerns about the rapidly worsening situation for human rights in...

10h

The big idea: why modern medicine can’t work without stories

Few of us see the same GP twice, but the doctor-patient relationship saves livesMost of us over the age of 30 can remember the family doctor we had when we were kids. They met us as babies and watched us grow up. They knew our stories, those of our siblings, our parents and often our grandparents, too. These stories were fundamental to the bond of trust...

12h

The Horse Whisperer author Nicholas Evans dies at 72

Novel by writer, who lived in Devon until fatal heart attack, was made into a film starring Robert RedfordNicholas Evans, the bestselling author of The Horse Whisperer, has died at the age of 72. In a statement, United Agents said the “much-loved” writer had died following a heart attack on Tuesday. “He lived a full and happy life, in his home on the...

13h

Salman Rushdie ‘road to recovery has begun’ but ‘will be long,’ agent says

Author is off ventilator and able to talk after suffering stab wounds to his neck, stomach, eye, chest and thigh in New York attack Rushdie had started to believe his ‘life was normal again’Stabbing suspect pleads not guilty to attempted murderSalman Rushdie’s “road to recovery has begun” but “will be long” after his stabbing in western New York late...

14h

All Our Yesterdays; The Glass Pearls review – masterly wartime storytelling from Ginzburg and Pressburger

Reissues of novels by Natalia Ginzburg and Emeric Pressburger show off their skills at characterisation and narrative driveThe great memoirist and story writer Tobias Wolff once complained about the “essentially anonymous” gestures used in fiction and drama to delineate characters: “the mixing of drinks, the crossing of rooms, the lighting of cigarettes”....

14h

Poem of the week: Sonnet on Reading Burns’ To a Mountain Daisy by Helen Maria Williams

A fierce defence of his battles with ‘adverse fortune’ suggests Robert Burns was invigorated by the confrontation Continue reading...

15h

Up from the Depths by Aaron Sachs review – riveting journey into the worlds of Melville and Mumford

A stylish double biography paints a picture of the modern age through the eyes of two uniquely perceptive American writersBy 1930, Lewis Mumford had given up. The radical philosopher-critic found his faith in historical progress – and human potential itself – crushed between the great war and the Great Depression. Salvation came from an unexpected source:...

18h

Acting Class by Nick Drnaso review – ah, look at all the lonely people

The Booker longlisted author of Sabrina brings us a discomfiting picture of charlatanism in actionIn 2018, Nick Drnaso’s Sabrina was longlisted for the Booker prize, the first graphic novel in its history to be so. And no wonder. Drnaso’s story, about a missing woman and the effect her disappearance has on those close to her, deals with subjects many...

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Without Warning and Only Sometimes: Scenes from an Unpredictable Childhood by Kit de Waal – review

The My Name Is Leon author’s evocative memoir of growing up in 1960s Moseley, one of five children to an Irish mother and Caribbean father, perfectly captures the dreams and reality of migration to postwar BirminghamWhen Mandy O’Loughlin was little, she fell hard off a table at her home at 70 Springfield Road, Birmingham while singing along to (I Can’t...

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