What does it mean to respect someone? Is it necessary to first see them as equals? The questions of equality, respect and justice resonate loudly throughout Austin Clarke’s much acclaimed novel, The Polished Hoe, which tells the story of a woman who confesses to murdering the man who has been her lover, abuser, benefactor and controller since she was a girl.

Triumphalism is an attitude rarely found in the writing of Tim Winton. More often than not his stories are tales imbued with regret and tragedy. Frequently unremarkable, even ordinary, his characters are scarred and broken people whose misfortunes are achingly obvious. Not that Winton is dismissive of those about whom he writes. Quite the opposite, this Australian author is a master at finding consequence in the ordinary. In this regard The Turning is no different.

As with his earlier novel, Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, de Bernieres throws the detail of village life against the dramatic backdrop of a world war and its attendant catastrophes. Birds Without Wings takes us to a small village in Anatolia, now Turkey, in the turbulent years leading up to WWI and beyond.

Every couple of years an academic or pseudoacademic text is published which alleges to have discovered a new insight that will undermine the entire Christian faith. Some are attempts to reinvent Jesus while others are simply rehashing old theories and heresies. Certain to be given the Hollywood treatment, The Da Vinci Code capitalises on the marketability of reimagining Jesus by immersing its theories into a Ludlum-style novel.

There is a delicious new addition to the genre of female detectives. She is Precious Ramotswe, founder of The No 1 Ladies Detective Agency to be found in Gaborone, Botswana.

In 1943, at the age of 25, the poet/mechanic Ernest Lalor Malley was born. His unusual conception and birth brought forth one of the greatest literary hoaxes in recent history.

The future is not a happy place in the writing of Margaret Atwood. But then neither is the past or present. Populated with the cruel, the manipulative and the marginalised, her novels combine linguistic beauty with social and personal desolation.

ANDREW SHEAD says there is more to praise than criticise in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

On December 17, 1996 terrorists from the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (MRTA) took over the residence of the Japanese Ambassador in Lima, Peru during a diplomatic reception. The President, Alberto Fujimori would have been in attendance had his plane not been delayed. About eight hundred people were taken hostage. Most of the captives were released within a few days however it was not until April 22, 1997 that the final 71 hostages were released and the situation was resolved in a bloody confrontation. Novelist Ann Patchett does not name the South American country where Bel Canto is set. However the arrival of armed guerrillas at an ostentatious State dinner and the lengthy standoff cannot but recall the Peruvian incident.

A S Byatt’s passion for language and literature is borne out in all of her novels. Her best-known work, the Booker prize winner Possession, is a sort of literary detective story in which modern scholars delve into the love lives of two Victorian poets. The poets were Byatt’s invention as were the reams of 19th Century style poetry layered throughout the novel. The technique of creating new worlds of literature within a novel has become something of a trademark for Antonia Byatt. But in A Whistling Woman she eschews the practice proffering instead only a slice of her fiction within fiction. A teaser.

Philosopher Umberto Eco uses his new murder mystery to challenge the trustworthiness of history, taking a swipe at Christianity on the way

Reviews of The Dream of Scipio, Lucky Man: a memoir and The Girl in the Red Coat.

The notion of faith is the essence of Yann Martel’s Booker winning novel, Life of Pi. A tale of courage and survival, this story comes with a promise – it “will make you believe in God”. The novel begins with an author’s note. After penning a doomed story, the narrator decides to travel to India to write another. This one he determines to be worthless also – ‘emotionally dead’ is his description.

One of the six novels to be shortlisted for the 2002 Booker prize is Rohinton Mistry’s Family Matters. The Indian-born author lives in Canada, but his writing is of his birthplace.