Books

The hotel that tells the story of Kabul

Lyse Doucet's finely observed portrait of the Inter-Continental hotel opens a window on to years of upheaval in Afghanistan, from civil war to the return of the Taliban

Boris Becker and Björn Borg: Serving time

For the two tennis champions, retirement brought battles with drugs, adultery and prison. But only one man makes a triumphant story of his struggle

Claire-Louise Bennett: ‘Mystery is an essential part of loving someone’

The Big Kiss, Bye-Bye novelist on the challenges of capturing romantic relationships and the appeal of the gothic

Halloween books for kids to sink their teeth into

Vampires called Buffy and Bella, a haunted house, and a game of hide-and-seek feature among a spooky seasonal feast

Bora Chung’s ghosts of the present

The South Korean author's The Midnight Timetable is a supernatural story collection fit for the modern age

Evan Dando’s chaotic, narcotic life

The Lemonheads frontman’s riveting memoir Rumours of My Demise reveals the reality of addiction and fame

How the World Cup shaped football’s gilded age

Books by Jonathan Wilson and Simon Kuper trace the tournament’s history through corruption, controversies and the fierce competition to host the lucrative game

László Krasznahorkai’s European nightmares

The Hungarian novelist’s political dystopias bear the unmistakable imprint of his country’s communist past

What to read to understand espionage

Three essential books on spies and their secret world

The making of Tennyson’s radical mind

Richard Holmes’s The Boundless Deep shakes off the poet’s fusty image to reveal a young man grappling with the doubts of his age

Blonde leading the blonde

How peroxide and American glamour created a new generation of British sex symbols

How the west was stolen

The exploits of Calamity Jane and Wild Bill became wild west myth, as Peter Cozzens’s history of Deadwood shows. But behind them lay the venal, illegal settlement of Native American land

What to read to understand Wall Street

Three books that explain the ambitions and fears that power America’s financial world

Patricia Lockwood’s diary of a madwoman

Will There Ever Be Another You, the novelist’s absurdist dispatch from Covid land, is a wild and singular pleasure

The faultlines of antisemitism

When does anti-Zionism become hatred of Jews? Mark Mazower’s even-handed answer underestimates the profound and enduring nature of prejudice

Jonathan Coe: ‘I have a fascination with the right’

The author on keeping his liberal instincts in check, his love of breaking the literary fourth wall, and not fitting comfortably into the world

Gilbert White’s world of wonder

Jenny Uglow's account of a year in the life of an 18th-century curate and his garden is a glorious celebration of curiosity and nature

In search of Tony Blair, the radical conservative

Steve Richards’s slim new biography cannot quite capture the former PM’s mixture of expedient caution and evangelical mission