“You just can’t recreate the magic of that first Die Hard. Unless you were to go to China of course and have a bunch of terrorists in mascot outfits blowing each other up”
Jörg Tittel
INTERVIEWS
Jörg Tittel and John Aggs: Taking the Mickey
The authors of Ricky Rouse Has a Gun take us on a tour of their shoot-em-up Shanghai theme park.
Martin Rowson draws up a storm
The Guardian cartoonist is brutally honest about the UK’s coalition government in words and pictures.
CONTEXTS
Mika Provata-Carlone: Elena Ferrante’s shadow lives
The translator and scholar is dazzled by the first three volumes of Ferrante’s Neapolitan novels.
FAVOURITE STORIES
Tom Barbash: Observers and dreamers
The ‘Balloon Night’ author tries to pin down ten short fictions not to be missed.
EXTRACTS
Pasi Ilmari Jääskeläinen: Crime and puzzlement
Intrigue surrounds a surprise plot twist in a Dostoevsky classic.
Boris Fishman: Recompense
A young journalist is faced with a moral dilemma when his grandfather asks an awkward favour.
A WRITER’S LIFE
Alex Preston: Twixt cup and lip
The author of Love and War picks up a pen in Florence and imagines a wild dinner with Lermontov and Bolaño.
PICTURE STORIES
Martin Rowson: The Coalition Book
A selection of pages from Rowson’s shaming catalogue of Britain’s worst government in 200 years.
TOP TENS
K.T. Medina: News from elsewhere
The author of a debut thriller about the Cambodian minefields picks her favourite books set in the developing world.
TIPS FOR WRITERS
Samantha Harvey: Let the reader in
The key to engaging fiction is to allow readers room to explore and interpret.