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Ignore the outside world and immerse yourself in these life-changing novels

In his fictionalised biography of Thomas Mann, Tóibín has created a captivating ‘work of art’

What works of literature should inform your twenties? There is no answer, of course, but we have some opinions.

On 4 June the novelist Jeanette Winterson burned a dozen or so of her own books and shared a picture of the pyre. Explaining her actions on Twitter, Winterson said that she “absolutely hated the cosy little domestic blurbs on my new covers. Turned me into wimmins fiction of the worst kind! Nothing playful or strange or the ahead of time stuff that’s in there. So I set them on

  In Saturday’s books pages, Keith Ridgway talks to John Self about A Shock, his first book in a long time; Anne MacManus talks to Una Mullally about her debut novel, Mother Mother; and David O’Doherty talks to Patrick Freyne about his new children’s book. Reviews are Una Mullally on Rememberings by Sinéad O’Connor; Niamh Donnelly on Trouble by Philip Ó Ceallaigh; Catherine Taylor on the best new fiction in translation; Kevin Gildea on The Stranger Times by CK McDonnell; Claire Connolly on The Routledge International Handbook of Irish Studies, edited by Renée Fox...