The Latest Breaking News from John Boyne

This year's Polari Prize has been cancelled due to the longlist inclusion of a book by John Boyne. The situation escalated into a mass boycott and now, the organisation behind the LGBTQ+ literary award has pledged to undertake a full review of its policies. Here's everything you need to know.

The Polari first book prize claims to promote trans rights and trans voices. But when I saw the longlist, I had to act, says Guardian writer Jason Okundaye

John Boyne’s pacy novella about an Irish footballer caught up in a sex scandal; Angus Hanton’s exploration of our ‘special relationship’ with America; and a cliche-free portrait of Spain

A woman retreats to a remote Irish island following the collapse of her life, in the first of a series named for the four elements

Irish novelist John Boyne published his novel The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas in 2006. The protagonist, eight-year-old German boy Bruno, has no idea that his father is the kommandant of a concentration camp during the second world war. Bruno and his family are sent to live with their father…

In ancient Rome, the saeculum, or “the age”, was the span of living memory, the telling of an event passed down from the oldest to the youngest. Recognising this profound idea, some have worried that the memory of the Holocaust will fade as the generation of those who survived it…

FICTION: A darkly compelling novel about a woman forced to confront the sins of her past.

The follow-up to The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas is a powerful novel about secrets and atonement after Auschwitz

This week’s bookcase includes reviews of Lessons by Ian McEwan and The Bullet That Missed by Richard Osman.