• December 12 2025
  ReviewBooks

  The best books of the week

  How to get kids reading in an age of screen distractions; Andrew O’Hagan’s searching essays on friendship; the life of the late Mike Lynch; Stewart O’Nan’s tender novel of ageing; part 3 of Yoko Tawada’s dystopian trilogy; Jean-Philippe Toussaint’s ambitious novel of futurology; a tour of Britain’s nuclear power stations; Tej Parikh’s pick of economics titles — plus Nilanjana Roy on fiction for Christmas

  
• December 12 2025
  The best books of the week

  Screen grab: can books win the battle for children’s attention?

  Prizes, publishers and government programmes have joined the battle to reverse the decline in young peoples’ love of reading

  
• December 11 2025
  The best books of the week

  The Emotions by Jean-Philippe Toussaint — the folly of futurology

  The Belgian’s latest novel, set against a backdrop of recent events in Europe, ponders philosophical questions such as, Do we really want to know what is in store for us?

  
• December 11 2025
  The best books of the week

  Evensong by Stewart O’Nan — a bittersweet portrait of ageing in America

  The author beautifully evokes the everyday pleasures and niggling troubles of four friends in their later years

  
• December 10 2025
  Reading the WorldNilanjana Roy

  For ideal winter fiction, embrace the dark side of the season

  A great Christmas novel must either cut through the sugariness of an over-commercialised period, or transport you into the heart of winter itself

  
• December 9 2025
  The best books of the week

  Archipelago of the Sun by Yoko Tawada — intellectually provocative and utterly charming

  The final instalment of the dystopian trilogy ‘Scattered All Over the Earth’ probes some of the world’s most urgent questions

  
• December 4 2025
  Review

  Palaver by Bryan Washington — a beautiful, hopeful story of pain and redemption

  The author elegantly explores the interplay of past and the present as a mother and son reunite in Tokyo after a decade of estrangement

  
• December 3 2025
  Review

  The Pelican Child — stories to reignite the sense of wonder

  In beguiling short stories with an undercurrent of ecological doom, Joy Williams finds the sweet spot between madness and genius

  
• December 2 2025
  ReviewNon-Fiction

  One Aladdin Two Lamps — Jeanette Winterson pens new book with customary flavour and force

  Taking ‘One Thousand and One Nights’ as her springboard, the author mixes tales of merchants, treasure and genies with impassioned essays on literary and social issues

  
• December 1 2025
  Review

  A dream-like voyage through communist Romania — Blinding: The Left Wing

  Mircea Cărtărescu’s disorientating tangle of memory and fantasy is set in the grim Bucharest of the mid 20th century

  
• November 28 2025
  Review

  The bruises that bleed through generations — Bad Bad Girl by Gish Jen

  In this fictionalised account of her unloving and violent mother’s life, the author’s compassion is as voluminous as her hurt

  
• November 27 2025
  Review

  ‘Where there are women, there are witches’ — The Wax Child by Olga Ravn

  Alive with historical detail, this novel about a witch-hunt in 17th-century Denmark creates a subversive tapestry stitched together with poetry, beauty and violence

  
• November 26 2025
  Review

  A Fictional Inquiry — in the footsteps of a man of letters

  Daniele Del Giudice’s first novel, finally available in English, creates a magical tension between an active life and the contemplative act of writing

  
• November 26 2025
  Who says management consultants can’t be literary heroes?

  Dickens and Gaskell engaged with the everyday realities of 19th-century industrial capitalism, yet the dramas of today’s entrepreneurial workplaces rarely make it on to the page

  
• November 24 2025
  ReviewNon-Fiction

  A Life in Letters by John Updike — a personality revealed vividly

  This collection of the late writer’s correspondence is pure gold, shining with insights about literature and life

  
• November 24 2025
  ReviewScience fiction books

  Asteroids, explorations of the subconscious and maritime mythology — the latest science fiction

  From a tale set in an alternate 1920s Russia, to a nice riff on Conan Doyle’s ‘The Lost World’, plus new novels on lost relatives and unexplained deaths

  
• November 21 2025
  The best books of the year 2025

  Books published in 2025 by FT journalists and editors

  From political history to football fever, books by FT journalists and editors

  
• November 21 2025
  The best books of the year 2025

  The best books for young people to read this year

  James Lovegrove and Suzi Feay select their must-read titles

  
• November 20 2025
  The best books of the year 2025

  The best fiction in translation to read this year

  Ángel Gurría-Quintana selects his must-read titles

  
• November 20 2025
  The best books of the year 2025

  The best science fiction to read for 2025

  James Lovegrove selects his must-read titles

  
• November 20 2025
  The best books of the year 2025

  The best fiction to read this year

  Maria Crawford selects her must-read titles

  
• November 17 2025
  The best books of the year 2025

  The best crime and thrillers to read this year

  Barry Forshaw and Adam LeBor select their must-read titles

  
• November 14 2025
  Review

  Pulse — visceral tales from a bleak rural existence

  Nature provides an allegorical hook for a collection of stark yet powerful stories by Cynan Jones

  
• November 14 2025
  InterviewBook awards

  Booker winner David Szalay: ‘What can the novel do better than film or TV?’

  The author of the prizewinning ‘Flesh’ on his ‘white space’ narrative, his outsider perspective — and the importance of taking risks

  
• November 13 2025
  Review

  On the Calculation of Volume, Book III by Solvej Balle — a masterful meditation on time

  In the third instalment of the Danish author’s seven-novel work, her protagonist is still living the same day on repeat — but she is no longer alone