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Also: Amazon has removed the "Buy" buttons from a number of Hachette titles; Hassan Blasim's short story collection The Iraqi Christ has won the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize....

Philosopher Stephen Cave delves into the simple question: Why are human beings afraid to die?...

Part autobiography, part standup, the mainstay of British broadcasting created a show of remarkable warmth Sandi Toksvig has been in Australia three days, she tells us at the top of her solo performance at the Sydney writers festival, and she is now profoundly in love with Sydney. So, she concludes, she has to be sure to give a strong performance tonight so shell be invited back. Toksvig has been...

Two sessions at Sydney writers' festival, one an interview with the former foreign minister, the other on how writers engage with politics, threw up some telling contrasts I file in with at least a hundred others to the session on Bob Carrs Diary of a Foreign Minister, our slow shuffling into the crowded theatre bringing to mind the sorts of airline arrangements Carr notoriously complains of in the...

A freewheeling discussion with the author takes in asylum seekers, art and that Julia Gillard didn't turn out to be 'the second coming of a female Christ' Watching Thomas Keneally in discussion with his biographer, Peter Pierce, you wonder if this is what their hours of interviews in preparation for Pierce's Australian Melodramas: The Fiction of Thomas Keneally were like, or is this just a particular...

Argentinian philosopher whose ideas influenced politicians from Latin America's new left Ernesto Laclau, who has died aged 78, was a renowned Argentinian political philosopher whose ideas about "radical democracy" and populism influenced politicians from Latin America's new left as well as activists around the world. His highly original essays and books drew on the work of Antonio Gramsci...

The final stories of a charming and much-missed war photographer who watched the world for us It happens, doesn't it, when someone is killed. Whether that person was a war reporter or journalist or somehow a public figure, the reaction is the same: their work was astonishing. He or she was an incredible person with hundreds of friends. There is a hagiographic pattern to the public mourning that doesn't...

The evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins sets the scene in this extract from Kevin Malone's opera Mysterious 44, based on Mark Twain's unfinished novel, The Mysterious Stranger Continue reading... ...

Professional jealousy almost got the better of Toby Litt, who was astounded by writing that manages to turn a laidback musician into a first-class narrator Occasionally, you read a sentence that you know couldn't be bettered: it definitively captures a moment and a mood, say, or immortalises an opinion you didn't quite know you had. Written in the now well-established subgenre of...

Greenwald's often gripping account of his central involvement in the Snowden revelations also raises big political questions At the outset of Glenn Greenwald's communications with the "anonymous leaker" later identified as 29-year-old former NSA employee Edward Snowden, Greenwald a journalist, blogger and former lawyer and the film-maker Laura Poitras, with whom he is collaborating, are told...

Eighty years ago today, Bonnie and Clyde were killed in an ambush in Louisiana but even in life they were surrounded by myth and legend. Can you separate fact from fiction? Test your outlaw knowhow with our gangster fiction quiz Continue reading... ...

Philip Roth is far from alone in taking a very long time to stop writing having announced that he is retiring When novelists say they are retiring, experience suggests it's best to nod politely and not believe them. Philip Roth is no exception, although in his case the farewell process from revealing that he was stopping writing 18 months ago, to this week's "last" interview, with Alan Yentob...

PG Wodehouse's 1920s correspondence shows how he poured a torrent of details from his fast-paced life into his plots, including that of this month's Reading Group selection, Leave It to Psmith Chewing a meditative biro and rereading Leave It to Psmith, I was struck by the novel's pace. Characters jump on trains, flowerpots fly through windows, and proposals come by the hour. If you look at Wodehouse's...

The internet, the mobile phone and now the self-driving car technology is revolutionising people's lives in ways that make politics seem obsolete. So should we put the techies in charge? The most significant revolution of the 21st century so far is not political. It is the information technology revolution. Its transformative effects are everywhere. In many places, rapid technological change stands...

Monica Byrne's post-apocalyptic novel follows two women on dangerous journeys around India and Africa; reviewer Jason Heller says the vivid, haunting prose staggers under the weight of too many ideas....

The Vacationers is a cinematic family drama set on the picturesque island of Mallorca. While the narrative arc verges on predictable, the book's screwball charms make for a pleasant diversion....

Also: Philip Roth schedules another interview; Neil Patrick Harris' autobiography....

The author died on Monday. As he pointed out 45 years ago in his cult favorite The Spook Who Sat By the Door , the most fervent revolutionaries have often been the people you'd least suspect....

The Essential Ellen Willis focuses on the writer's explicitly feminist culture criticism. It was edited by Willis' daughter, who published an earlier collection of her mother's essays in 2011....

Michael Cunningham's newest novel is named after a fairy tale. But this is no Disney fantasy. Instead The Snow Queen is a story of death, drugs and aging (not always gracefully)....