Italo Calvino’s guide to translation
In a previously unpublished essay, the late Italian master hails the ‘miracle’ of transferring a text from one tongue to another
In a previously unpublished essay, the late Italian master hails the ‘miracle’ of transferring a text from one tongue to another
From beehives to yé-yé bands – for a magical moment in the 1960s, the Cambodian capital saw an unlikely explosion of rock ’n’ roll
Mario Vargas Llosa's The Call of the Tribe explains his conversion from Marxism to liberalism, via the ideas of Adam Smith and Isaiah Berlin
Whether you believe in joss sticks or bootstraps, manifesting a new sofa or money-planning, there’s something here for everyone this year
Erica Thompson’s playful debut explores the far from infallible world of data modelling – and how it affects us all
With just a soldering iron and a pair of pliers, Moog changed the history of music. Albert Glinsky's new book Switched On tells his story
This year's foreign affairs books reflect on what lessons – if any – can we learn from the world’s worst trouble spots
Anyone grieving will find companionship in the Grantchester author's account of losing his wife to Motor Neurone Disease
In The Rebel and the Kingdom, reporter Bradley Hope tracks North Korean dissident Adrian Hong – until he becomes an international fugitive
But were Tolstoy's smears unfair? Alexander Mikaberidze's new biography Kutuzov: A Life in War and Peace does justice to a complex man
How the Testament of Youth author's intense correspondence with novelist Winifred Holtby nursed her back to psychological health
Out of the Blue by Harry Cole and James Heale offers a masterful, behind-the-scenes perspective on a political farce that affected us all
In his new book Christendom, Peter Heather charts the rise of 'a small near Eastern mystery cult' into a world-straddling institution
Mark Urban's excellent authorised history recounts the wartime origins of these airborne raiders, who look down on all other regiments
Even Norfolk fishermen in 1238 quaked in fear of the Mongols' taste for rape and cannibalism, as Nicholas Morton's The Mongol Storm reveals
Woven out of recently unearthed, confessional transcripts, this book strips down a celebrated star persona with astonishing naked honesty
Vernon Bogdanor's The Strange Survival of Liberal Britain asks why this once-mighty force hasn't been able to form a government since 1915
The venture capitalist chief of the Vaccine Task Force takes us inside her four-billion-pound gamble — and you can’t help being impressed
Helen Rappaport's After the Romanovs records the grim existence of Russian émigrés in interwar Paris – as the price of jewellery plummeted
The Thelma & Louise star's book Dying of Politeness is like a real-life feel-good movie, in which the downtrodden heroine finds her power