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Gary Shteyngart: Crying with laughter
American novelist Gary Shteyngart tells Alexander Bisley why he likes to combine hilarity, sadness and introspection.
Book review: Idiopathy
Many contemporary male novelists, particularly comic ones, are incapable of depicting an unsympathetic female character.
Book review: & Son
Hyperbole often surrounds big novels, especially big novels from New York about New York and by New Yorkers, but in Gilbert's case it is all justified.
Stars' stylist shares secrets
If you happen to spot celebrity stylist and designer Rachel Zoe out and about, do not worry - she's not judging you.
World's most-used word celebrates 175 years, OK?
Whatever you're doing this Monday, wherever you might be, take a moment to reflect on the most popular word in the English language, OK?
ABBA: Thank you for the music
A new book charts Abba’s progress from camp 70s novelty act to enduring musical phenomenon. Anna Tyzack meets one of the famous four, Bjorn Ulvaeus.
Two scribes go to war
Could Britain have avoided World War I? Historians Max Hastings and Niall Ferguson have presented rival views on the BBC.
Legends of literature in line-up
Linda Herrick surveys the wealth of names coming to Auckland’s Writers Festival in May.
Divergent's young adult author actually under 30
Divergent, the latest young adult novel poised to become a blockbuster movie, meets all the criteria for the genre.
'Grammar police' ruin English
Imagine a world in which the advances of the science since the publication of 'On the Origin of Species' - or even since Charles Darwin was born - were ignored.
Booker's first Kiwi comes to town
For sale: hexagonal house in quiet position near top white-baiting lagoon in the heart of the South Island's West Coast.
Kiwi author hits big time
A little-known Kiwi author is pinching herself after landing a seven-figure advance and a lucrative film deal for her new book.
There's something about Jane
Nearly 200 years after her death, Jane Austen has become one of the most widely read authors in history. Kerrie Waterworth finds out why she continues to appeal, generation after generation.
Book review: The Lie
It is not easy to decide which lie Helen Dunmore was talking about when she titled her new book.
The dark beneath the light
British-based writer Tom Rob Smith tells Stephen Jewell how real life drama inspired his new novel in a way that disturbed him far more than he expected.
Luminaries setting gets Catton visit
Award-winning author Eleanor Catton spent yesterday in Hokitika, the setting of her critically acclaimed novel The Luminaries.
12 Questions: Peter Williams
Peter Williams, QC, turns 80 this year and is finishing a new book of stories from his long legal career.
Karl Ove Knausgaard: A writer's life
It’s raw, relentless and, at an epic 3500 pages, a best-selling literary phenomenon. But the brutal honesty of Karl Ove Knausgaard’s My Struggle has shocked many — and alienated half of his family, writes Hermione Hoby.
Book review: The Last Word
Consider being commissioned and hard-pressed to write the biography of an old, famous, living author.
Ben Atkins: One night out sleuthing
Fledgling Auckland writer Ben Atkins talks to Craig Sisterson about the crime novel he has been working on since he was 15.
Lazy Days: Painting the kiwi lifestyle
Images reproduced with permission from Lazy Days: Painting the kiwi lifestyle by Graham Young, published by New Holland, $29.99.
Book review: Terms & Conditions
Extensive footnotes make this hard to follow, as Nicky Pellegrino discovers.
Book review: A Beautiful Truth
Walt and Judy, of 1970s small-town Vermont, can't conceive a child. For all their mutual tenderness, life has become just "a collection of gestures and habits". So they adopt.
Did dead novelist solve PM's cold case?
A Swedish newspaper has intensified a decades-old allegation by dead crime novelist Stieg Larsson about who was behind the 1986 murder of the country's Prime Minister.
Toying with times past
Miranda Carter read history while at Oxford and came to writing after a career in journalism.