Jay McInerney: ‘I was fortunate to get a lot of mileage out of my vices’
He might have quit drugs but the celebrated American author hasn't given up on hedonism – breakfast is always improved with a bottle of the world's best wineLunch with Jay McInerney, it has to be said, is a more than usually enticing prospect. Althou...
The 10 best historical novels
Why is this list so western and Eurocentric? ... It is 2012, not 1952William Skidelsky
Nick Harkaway: ‘The book industry has got to get online publishing right’
The sci-fi novelist turns non-fiction author to investigate technology and the future of readingThe author of two well-received science fiction novels, The Gone-Away World (2008) and Angelmaker (2012), Nick Harkaway (born 1972) is also an experienced t...
Debut author: Jules Evans
A quest to discover how ancient Greek philosophy can be applied to today's emotional problems makes for a punchy readWhile suffering from depression in his 20s, Jules Evans did a course of cognitive behavioural therapy and he was struck by how closely ...
Granta 119: Britain – review
Granta's latest collection takes a walk on the wilder side of contemporary British lifeGranta's editors have, for the magazine's 119th edition, selected "Britain" as a theme. The Paul Smith-designed cover shows a chipped and cracked tea cup, its broken...
AN Wilson: ‘Everyone writes in Tolstoy’s shadow’
The prolific author on the mystique of Tolstoy, his spat with Richard Evans and the limitations of the KindleAN Wilson – biographer, historian, novelist, columnist, provocateur – is the author of more than 40 books, including, most recently, Hitler...
Debut author: Francesca Segal
Francesca Segal's novel relocates Edith Wharton's The Age of Innocence to modern-day HampsteadRather in the manner of Zadie Smith in On Beauty, Francesca Segal has, for her debut, The Innocents (Chatto), sought inspiration from a classic early-20th-cen...
EL James: ‘I didn’t buy a sports car or have an affair: I wrote instead’
The author of the bestselling Fifty Shades trilogy on her runaway success, writing 'mommy porn' and shocking her teenage sonsEL James's Fifty Shades trilogy has been this year's publishing phenomenon, taking the US by storm thanks to spectacular ebook ...
Elif Shafak
The bestselling Turkish writer on her wildly mixed readership, escaping pigeonholes, and why she writes all her novels twiceBorn in 1971, Elif Shafak is the author of eight novels and is Turkey's most widely read woman writer. Her work has been transla...
Spring by David Szalay – review
David Szalay's quietly original third novel is a funny and sophisticated anti-romcomJames and Katherine are thirtysomething Londoners, both on downwardly mobile trajectories. He's a former dotcom millionaire who now lives in a cramped ex-local authorit...
Noah Hawley: ‘I had that middle of the night fear’
The Good Father, the American writer's first UK novel, taps into a universal concern of parentsNoah Hawley's The Good Father (Hodder & Stoughton) – his fourth novel, but first to be published in the UK – tells the story of a respected doctor who le...
‘The day I stopped being laureate, the poems came back’
Andrew Motion on his sequel to Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island and life after being poet laureateYour new novel, Silver, is a sequel to Treasure Island, describing a return expedition 40 years on by the son of the original narrator, Jim Hawkin...
