McEwan's First Love And Last Rites

Taking as its cue the fact that the film version of Atonement is almost upon us, the BBC profiles Ian McEwan: "His fiction has remained memorable for its brilliantly described episodes of horror or violence, but these usually shatter a carefully imagined surface calm. For McEwan is a peculiarly English writer, interested in reticence and propriety."

VS And DH

Powerful personal likes and dislikes. Grievances, and by what appear to many as untenable prejudices. The invention of the novelist-traveller. Is this V.S. Naipaul or D.H. Lawrence, asks Amit Chaudhuri.

The Winners In Edinburgh

The apocalyptic American novel The Road and a biography of British poet R S Thomas have won the UK's oldest literary award, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize.

The Best Of The Rest

From Critical Mass, Eric Miles Williamson's 'A Brief History of the Short Story in America': "The short story has responded to film by attempting to render in fiction that which is unfilmable."

And two profiles, brought to one's attention by The Literary Saloon. The first, of Amitav Ghosh: "We live in a world that is scripted by history, yes, but Ghosh is always asking: whose history and who is writing that history?". And the second, of ubercritic James Wood: " 'Remember, I grew up with Bellow,' Wood says. 'If you love Bellow, you love exuberance and stylistic showing off. That is exactly my complaint against someone like Rushdie. It's not style, it's all noise. He doesn't hit the drums like [Keith] Moon hits them.' "

More Fall Picks

The Observer directs you to the cream of the publishing crop, from Philip Roth (yes!) to Alice Sebold (sigh). There's also another anthology edited by Zadie Smith, another capitalist critique by Naomi Klein and a series of life-spanning interviews with Fidel Castro. Read on.