The Second Sexism is just victim-envy | Suzanne Moore
It is perfectly possible to understand that many men are suffering at the moment without blaming it on feminismAre men the new women? Are they having a harder time than silly moaning ladies? Has feminism gone too far? Has political correctness been put...
I’d rather be a Catholic than be ‘respectable’ | Catherine Pepinster
Hilary Mantel says the Catholic church is no longer a place for 'respectable people'. But respectability is a problematic notion One of the heartaches of being a Roman Catholic in recent years has been the clerical abuse scandal. No pain that any of us...
Carlos Fuentes dies aged 83
Mexico's most celebrated novelist has died in hospital in Mexico City, reportedly from a sudden illnessCarlos Fuentes, Mexico's most celebrated novelist and a leading figure in Latin America's 20th century literary boom of the 1960s and 70s, has died i...
Apple and publishers fail to halt ebook lawsuit
Lawsuit accuses Apple and publishers of colluding to break up Amazon.com's low-cost dominanceApple and five major book publishers have failed to persuade a US judge to throw out a lawsuit by consumers accusing them of conspiring to raise electronic boo...
Letters: Algeria’s aborted spring and Taliban truths
Algeria is neglected or traduced in our media. So it was welcome to see such a generous coverage of the elections in your paper. However, your article (Poverty and fraud, so why no Arab spring?, 10 May) ignores Algeria's aborted spring in 1988. There w...
Letters: Norwich accolade
On Thursday last week, Norwich was made a Unesco City of Literature, the only English city with this accolade and only the second city in the UK after Edinburgh. The award recognises both the historic depth of writing in Norwich and the city's contempo...
Crime writer Petros Markaris channels Greek rage into fiction
Murders at heart of new book resonate strongly with a mass readership furious at Greece's tax-dodging eliteA serial killer is stalking the wealthy suburbs of Athens with an idiosyncratic choice of victims. They are all rich Greeks who have failed to pa...
Taliban poetry: the gentle, flowery side of the story?
A new collection of verse from the Afghan frontlines has caused much controversy, but it also provides a valuable glimpse of an otherwise unseen cultureIn the 1980s, an artist friend of mine made a poster for Gulbuddin Hekmatyar's Hizb-e-Islami, a mili...
Time to Start Thinking by Edward Luce
A compelling study shows why American politicians are in denial about their nation's declineAccording to the US industrialist and world-class bigot Henry Ford, "History is bunk". Edward Luce, who cites Ford's assertion, tells the reader that Oliver Wen...
What is left unsaid is often more powerful and poetic | Biljana Scott
Implicit communication is vital to diplomacy – as we can keep our options open while not causing offenceWhy use implicit communication? Wouldn't life be so much simpler if people just said what they meant? Perhaps, but it would also be much poorer, f...
In defence of self-help books | Alain de Botton