Cormac McCarthy's dislike of publicity has made him one of the commanding absences of American letters. But the huge success of his latest novel, The Road, may change that for good

My husband died a national hero, exalted by the president. But I know them both for worthless dogs

Slog always said his dad would come back one day. And, in the spring, he got his wish

Inspector Morse is one of Britain's most successful literary television adaptations. I first watched it while grieving for my father, and will always associate it with that time

I am at Heathrow airport because there's someone I have to meet. I just don't yet know who

Transformations, miracles and slippages are at the heart of David Malouf's rich and poetic fiction. Malouf is the great chronicler of Australia's lost, Aboriginal part of itself

Ian McEwan's new novel, the story of a young couple's disastrous wedding night, is both a triumphant piece of social history and a reminder of the misery caused by an earlier age's sexual decorum

An Englishman in New York shows that chivalry is not dead, though the woman he saves has other ideas

Daniel Kehlmann's bestselling novel offers a comic view of some of Germany's great thinkers. In doing so, it mocks the very idea of German high culture

In portraying Hitler as the product of a diabolical incest, Norman Mailer has taken fictional ambition to a remote peak of implausibility

Three tales of innocence from Israel

Mixing high-flown philosophy with sickening violence, Derek Raymond's crime novels have long been neglected. Now, finally, they are being republished