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The best recent science fiction, fantasy and horror – review roundup

All That We See Or Seem by Ken Liu; When There Are Wolves Again by EJ Swift; The White Octopus Hotel by Alexandra Bell; Darker Days by Thomas Olde Heuvelt; Remain by Nicholas Sparks with M Night Shyamalan

All That We See Or Seem by Ken Liu (Head of Zeus, £20)
In this thriller from award-winning author Liu, Julia Z wants to leave behind the notoriety she gained as a teenage hacker. But she’s drawn into danger when she agrees to help a man whose wife, an artist skilled in the new art of “vivid dreaming” – using AI and virtual reality to allow her live audience into her stories – has disappeared. He has seen a video from someone claiming to have kidnapped her and hopes Julia can tell him who sent it. The near-future setting is convincing, and the story is rich in interesting ideas about potential developments in the use of AI and social media. Julia is a strong, complex character, and there’s a suggestion there could be a series of novels about her. Action-packed as well as thought-provoking, this is one of the best science-fiction books of the year.

When There Are Wolves Again by EJ Swift (Arcadia, £20)
Like Swift’s previous novel, The Coral Bones, this book is powered by a passionate love of nature and deep concern for the planet’s future. Beginning with the character-forming effects of major events during the childhoods of the two main characters – Covid lockdowns for Lucy, the Chornobyl disaster for Hester – the novel tracks their separate journeys in climate activism and documentary film-making as both make their own contribution towards a better world, until 2070, when they meet at last. Evocative and beautifully written, this character-driven novel also inspires as an argument for rewilding in Britain.

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Natalie Haynes: ‘I’ll never read anything by a Brontë again’

The author and comedian on the immortal lines of Snoopy, discovering the heart of Homer’s Iliad and her culinary comfort read

My earliest reading memory
Harvey’s Hideout by Russell Hoban, illustrated by Lillian Hoban. Harvey is a muskrat with a grievance against his awful sibling. His sister Mildred feels just the same way. I read this at four or five curled up on a yellow beanbag next to the radiator, in Bournville, where I grew up. I honestly don’t think there is a better reading spot anywhere in the world.

My favourite book growing up
Peanuts. I loved Snoopy long before I became an author. But he is an inspiration to all writers, sending a novel to his publishers with an immortal covering letter: “Gentlemen, enclosed is the manuscript of my new novel. I know you are going to like it. In the meantime, please send me some money so I can live it up.”

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Raise Your Soul by Yanis Varoufakis review – an intimate history of Greece

The colourful former minister uses the lives of five female relatives to tell the story of postwar Greek politics

Yanis Varoufakis entered public consciousness as the academic in a leather jacket who briefly became Greece’s finance minister in 2015. For having the temerity to lecture his creditors on the folly of austerity, he was treated as the villain of the piece. Yet for all his swagger, he has always been a surprisingly sober thinker: Keynesian at heart, internationalist in instinct, he has built a reputation as a critic of dollar hegemony and Fortress Europe, a defender of both the precariat and refugees. You wonder if he’s experienced some schadenfreude in watching Germany’s economic miracle go bad of late – an implosion largely brought about by administering to itself the austerian medicine it once prescribed to the Greeks.

His latest book, the 10th since 2010, departs from his usual sober fare. This time, he offers a collective portrait of five unyielding women in his life who, in their different ways, thumbed their noses at patriarchy and autocracy. Written after thugs beat him up in 2023 in what he described as a “brazen fascist attack”, this is a therapeutic enterprise that doubles as a counter-history of postwar Greece.

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László Krasznahorkai wins the Nobel prize in literature 2025

The Hungarian novelist whose books ‘reaffirm the power of art’ was announced as winner at a ceremony in Stockholm
• Nobel prize in literature 2025 live: László Krasznahorkai wins ‘for his compelling and visionary oeuvre’

The Nobel prize in literature for 2025 has been awarded to Hungarian author László Krasznahorkai, the Swedish Academy has announced.

The Academy cited the 71-year-old’s “compelling and visionary oeuvre that, in the midst of apocalyptic terror, reaffirms the power of art”.

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Nobel prize in literature 2025 is announced – live

Follow along as the next winner of the world’s most prestigious literature prize is announced in Stockholm

Every October, the announcement of the Nobel prize in literature sends ripples through the literary world — but how does the Swedish Academy actually choose a winner?

It begins months earlier, when the Nobel committee, made up of a small group of writers, sends out nomination forms to a select network of individuals and organisations. Those invited to nominate include:

Members of the 18-person Swedish Academy, as well as similar literary academies around the world

Professors of literature and linguistics at universities and colleges

Previous Nobel laureates in literature

Presidents of national authors’ societies representing their countries’ literary production

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The Poems of Seamus Heaney review – collected works reveal his colossal achievement

The complete works, including previously unpublished poems and expert notes, are brought together in one volume for the first time

Baudelaire introduced ordinary objects into poetry – likening the sky to a pan lid – and by doing so revolutionised poetic language. Likewise, Seamus Heaney introduced Northern Irish vernacular into the English lyric, peppering his lines with words like glarry, the Ulster word for muddy; kesh, from Irish ceis, a wickerwork causeway; and dailigone, “daylight gone” or dusk, from Ulster-Scots. It is this that gives his writing a mulchy richness and cultural resonance that remain unique in contemporary poetry. One of the key poems in North (1975) is a version of Baudelaire’s The Digging Skeleton, to which Heaney brings an Irish flavour – the skeletons dig the earth “like navvies”. It’s especially rich as digging for Heaney is also a metaphor for writing, while the archaeological metaphor resonates with the darkly symbolic bog poems.

Bringing all Heaney’s poems together in one volume, this collection lets us see for the first time all the archaeological layers that make up his oeuvre, from the talismanic Death of a Naturalist (1966) to the visionary long poem Station Island (1984), on to the parables of The Haw Lantern (1987) and the intimacies of The Human Chain (2010), the last volume published during the poet’s lifetime. A key poem in that collection, Chanson d’Aventure, describes his journey to hospital in an ambulance following a stroke: “Strapped on, wheeled out, forklifted, locked / In position for the drive”. The book also makes available at last Heaney’s prose poems, Stations (1975), released in a small press edition by Ulsterman Publications, which Heaney effectively kept under wraps as he felt the publication of Geoffrey Hill’s Mercian Hymns – “a work of complete authority” – had stolen his thunder in this form.

Ask me to translate what Loeb gives as
“In a retired vale…a sequestered grove”
And I’ll confound the Lethe in Moyola

By coming through Back Park down from Grove Hill
Across Long Rigs on to the riverbank –
Which way, by happy chance, will take me past

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‘Catastrophic decline’ in Black representation in children’s books

A report by charity Inclusive Books for Children found that of the 2,721 books surveyed, only 51 featured a Black main character, down by 21.5% since 2023

The number of children’s books featuring a Black main character dropped by more than a fifth between 2023 and 2024, according to a new report by a literacy charity.

The report by Inclusive Books for Children (IBC) surveyed books published last year for readers aged one to nine. Of the 2,721 books surveyed, only 51 (1.9%) featured a Black main character, down by 21.5% compared with 2023.

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Can Xue and László Krasznahorkai are joint favourites to win 2025 Nobel prize in literature

The Chinese and Hungarian writers are tied with odds of 10/1 – while Haruki Murakami, Margaret Atwood and Salman Rushdie are also in the running

Can Xue, László Krasznahorkai, Haruki Murakami, Margaret Atwood and Salman Rushdie are among the authors most likely to win this year’s Nobel prize in literature, according to the bookies.

Chinese avant garde author Can Xue, 72, and postmodern Hungarian author Krasznahorkai, 71, are tied as Ladbrokes’ favourite to win, both with odds of 10/1. Can Xue was also the favourite to win last year’s prize, which was ultimately awarded to South Korean author Han Kang.

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‘A sparkle that extends beyond fiction’: readers on what Jilly Cooper meant to them

Fans pay tribute to the author’s escapist tales, her real-life largesse and her unexpected passions

I was the manager of Books Etc in Oxford Street, where Jilly Cooper’s novel Polo was launched in 1991, with polo-dressed senior publishers posing in the window. Jilly visited our shop several times for signings and she was our favourite author visitor. She always spoke to all the staff, brought a gift for staff with her and always wrote us a note of thanks afterwards. Lovely with customers and just an absolute delight. Judith Denwood, retired bookseller, Hastings

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Ican Klíma obituary

Czech novelist and playwright whose work was banned under communism

Ivan Klíma, who has died aged 94, carried into the third decade of the 21st century his memories of four years in a Nazi concentration camp. That childhood, from 10 to 14, was spent in the “model” camp at Terezín, where Jews died from malnutrition rather than extermination.

It left an indelible stamp on the Czech writer’s mind and work as it taught him that “life can be snapped like a piece of string”. As did his four decades of struggle with the repressive communist regime that blighted Czech culture until the Velvet Revolution of 1989, led by his friend and fellow-dissident Vaclav Havel.

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