Lisa Allardice

2 weeks ago | theguardian.com | Lisa Allardice

Saba Sams was in bed breastfeeding her two-month-old baby Sonny when she received an email saying that the publisher Bloomsbury wanted to offer her a book deal on the basis of some of her short stories. She was just 22 at the time. “I didn’t even think it was a book,” she says when we meet. “I was just learning how to write.”Send Nudes, her first collection, about being a young woman in a messed-up world, was published in 2022.

3 weeks ago | msn.com | Lisa Allardice

Microsoft Cares About Your PrivacyMicrosoft and our third-party vendors use cookies to store and access information such as unique IDs to deliver, maintain and improve our services and ads. If you agree, MSN and Microsoft Bing will personalise the content and ads that you see. You can select ‘I Accept’ to consent to these uses or click on ‘Manage preferences’ to review your options and exercise your right to object to Legitimate Interest where used.

3 weeks ago | theguardian.com | Lisa Allardice

“I have had relationships with humans, but I’ve also loved a lot of people in stories,” Sayaka Murata, the Japanese author of the bestseller Convenience Store Woman, confides a few minutes into our interview. “I’ve been told by my doctor not to talk about this too much, but ever since I was a child, I’ve had 30 or 40 imaginary friends who live on a different star or planet with whom I have shared love and sexual experiences.”It is 7pm in Tokyo, mid-morning in London.

2 months ago | msn.com | Lisa Allardice |William Boyd |Abir Mukherjee |Sara Collins |Ben Johns |Justine Jordan | +4 more

Microsoft Cares About Your PrivacyMicrosoft and our third-party vendors use cookies to store and access information such as unique IDs to deliver, maintain and improve our services and ads. If you agree, MSN and Microsoft Bing will personalise the content and ads that you see. You can select ‘I Accept’ to consent to these uses or click on ‘Manage preferences’ to review your options and exercise your right to object to Legitimate Interest where used.

2 months ago | theguardian.com | Lisa Allardice |William Boyd |Sara Collins |Justine Jordan |Nikesh Shukla |Jeffrey Boakye

According to new data from YouGov, 40% of British adults have not read a single book in the last year, with the median Briton having read or listened to three. In a world where there are so many other distractions and forms of entertainment to choose from, fewer and fewer people are getting stuck into books – yet lots of us would like to be reading more. So we asked authors, booksellers and critics to choose the book they think you should read this year – even if you only read one.