The novelist on writing a semi-fictionalised work of the type he used to be deeply sceptical of, his prog-rock band The Peer Group, and being big in France

Is this biography so much about the books because there’s little to say about the life?

Author Sheila Armstrong talks about Seamus Heaney, Heinrich Himmler and why ‘more people should quit writing’

This book is at heart an account of the records of the female patients in Cork District Lunatic Asylum at the turn of the 20th century

French-Moroccan writer on success, dual identity and nuance in a black-and-white age

The Boyhood author talks about his Belfast dad’s faith in language, love songs being the greatest art, and how writing makes you question your sanity

Two of the British writer’s best works, The Bottle Factory Outing and An Awfully Big Adventure, are republished this month

Author says he doesn’t consider himself a proper novelist

Novelist Julian Barnes’s retirement highlights how rare it is for a writer to choose to fall silent

Our chance to see another side of writers, perhaps one that won’t be flattering

The author on being publically nonbinary; their new book, The Silver Book; and how Pier Paolo Pasolini foresaw that the far right would rise again

The writer on his futuristic novel What We Can Know, climate change and the alarming lack of self-scepticism in Trump and Putin

Debut novel is about a twentysomething woman returning to her small-town home after years in London

The Booker-winning novelist on her difficult relationship with her mother, how the Beatles ‘gave her oxygen’, and how ‘everything that Trump is doing now already happened in India in 2014′

The publisher celebrates its 90th anniversary this month