As wildfires rage across Europe and Britain swelters through its hottest summer on record, literary fiction has a vital role to play in capturing the severe consequences of climate crisisEarlier this summer, I travelled through Europe on a book tour. Everywhere I went, the heat broke records. In Italy, Germany and Spain, I sought refuge from the afternoon sun in air-conditioned hotels. In normally temperate Zurich, it averaged 37 degrees. I jumped into the Limmat for relief. On my final day in Warsaw, Poland had never been hotter – one of 14 countries to hit a historic high. In June, when I left to return to the US, Europe was scorching. At the end of July, as I write this, it is burning.Since the heatwaves began, there have been more than 10,000 excess deaths. Yet for many, myself included, the high temperatures brought nothing more than inconvenience – uncomfortable commutes, heat rash, less time outdoors. This seems to be a defining feature of today’s climate crisis; deadly for some, banal for others. Even when the world is on fire, it somehow doesn’t feel like an emergency for everyone. Continue reading...

16 Aug 2026 11:00 ✍️ RSS THE GUARDIAN

A journalist investigates the unsettling world of a charismatic shaman and the people who trusted himWhich, in your opinion, is the worst current cultural trend: social media influencers; unregulated wellness practitioners; macho manosphere posturers; psychedelic bores; cultural appropriators? The good news is that, with Octavio Rettig, the central character in Kimon de Greef’s The Ego Trip, you don’t have to choose between them. He’s all five wrapped into one objectionable package, and so much more besides.The tale begins with the Sonoran desert toad, an improbable amphibian that spends most of its life hiding underground in the baking badlands along the Mexico-Arizona border, and has done so blamelessly for millions of years. Whenever it rains, the toads emerge from their hiding places to mate, laying strings of eggs wherever water has pooled. Continue reading...

17 Aug 2026 08:00 ✍️ RSS THE GUARDIAN

The Amateur by Chris Bohjalian; Claws Out! by Bella Mackie; Plant Lady by Minyoung Kang; Children of Wolves by Lawrence Osborne; Mad Mabel by Sally HepworthThe Amateur by Chris Bohjalian (Hutchinson Heinemann, £18.99) American bestseller Bohjalian deserves to be far better known in the UK, although, as the first line of his 26th novel points out, “It is neither virtue nor might that rules the world; it’s luck”. Mira Winston’s luck began early, as she was born into a rich family, clever enough to secure a place at Yale, and a talented enough golfer to consider turning pro, but things change dramatically in 1978 when, at the age of 18, a ball she hits on a driving range smashes the temporal bone of a young caddy, killing him almost instantly. The freak accident turns out to be rather more complicated than first thought, not least because it becomes karmically conflated, in Mira’s mind, with her relationship with a married man twice her age. Told as a memoir, with Mira looking back on the derailment of her life and chronicling society’s changing perceptions of agency and privilege, this literary thriller is a masterfully executed ace.Claws Out! by Bella Mackie (Borough, £20)Mackie’s third novel centres on Diana, a manipulative grifter whose previous three husbands have died, apparently of natural causes. She’s in the process of getting her feet under the fourth mark’s prosperous Hampstead table when she encounters opposition. David Farrand’s “entitled but otherwise entirely average” daughter Catriona isn’t going to give up her father or her inheritance without a fight, and when she starts investigating Diana’s past, she discovers that her former stepchildren are convinced of foul play. Meanwhile, Diana’s own son, a feckless charmer, is also hoping to benefit from his mother’s matrimonial plans. Some readers may find the arch authorial tone grating, and the sharp-eyed will spot at least one major plot development before it occurs, but the incisive social satire, vinegary humour and expert pacing will keep you laughing as you turn the pages. Continue reading...

14 Aug 2026 11:00 ✍️ RSS THE GUARDIAN

Published for the first time this month, the Irish writer’s record of his months in pre-war Germany is a fascinating insight into his understanding of, and unease with, NazismWar was not yet on the immediate horizon when Samuel Beckett visited the German city of Hamburg in October 1936, but after watching the apoplexy that Adolf Hitler’s braying induced in ordinary Germans, the Irish playwright was certain that peace could not last. “They’ll need to fight soon (or burst),” he noted in his diary on 6 October.The six notebooks that Beckett compiled during his six-month journey across Germany between late September 1936 and April 1937, published for the first time by German publisher Suhrkamp on 20 August this year, put paid to a commonly held view of the author of Waiting for Godot as a poet of pure pessimism, interested in despair and stasis but unconcerned by real-life politics. Continue reading...

15 Aug 2026 06:00 ✍️ RSS THE GUARDIAN

Pokémon outlived the moral panic of its early days in Australia and its staying power has proved that simple joy can cross bordersThere’s a generation of Australians for whom Cheez TV was a religion. Every morning before school, I’d sit in my little white plastic chair about three feet from our big wooden television and watch 90 minutes of cartoons “curated” by the show’s teenage hosts, Jade and Ryan.Premiering in 1995, Cheez TV dominated the children’s breakfast market by 1998, stealing the crown from Channel Seven’s bogan-muppet icon Agro. A daily dose of Cheez TV was such an important ritual to me that I remember feeling active resentment towards Princess Diana’s death because the news coverage bumped Earthworm Jim. Continue reading...

16 Aug 2026 15:00 ✍️ RSS THE GUARDIAN

Creative Assembly could strike gold again with this follow-up to their fan-favourite, film-inspired game … if you’re brave enough to venture outdoorsAlien: Isolation redefined Alien games on its release in 2014, bringing the original taut, haunted house theme of the first movie to fans who had mostly been fed action-packed shooters. Cowering under desks and inside lockers wasn’t a new thing; being hunted by an intelligent and lethal xenomorph that could spring down from a duct at any moment was.“I was thinking about what we could do for a sequel while we were still finishing the first game,” reveals Creative Assembly’s Alistair Hope, creative lead on Alien: Isolation and its sequel. “But we didn’t actually start the project until around the time of the 10th anniversary. We’ve seen the response grow over time, watching [Alien: Isolation] continue to find new players, even though it’s a relatively old game. And they’re surprised there isn’t a sequel.” Continue reading...

14 Aug 2026 12:00 ✍️ RSS THE GUARDIAN

PC; Replicant D6This GoldenEye 007-styled retro shooter is an agreeable set of straightahead shooting missions that hark back to a simpler time, with simpler controlsWith 007 First Light, 2026 has already given us the best James Bond game in more than three decades, since the release of Rare’s N64 classic GoldenEye 007. But what about those players whose loyalties lie not with the super-spy himself but the particulars of that 90s interpretation of his adventures?Enter Agent 64: Spies Never Die. Made almost entirely by a single developer (who goes by the very cloak-and-dagger alias Replicant D6), its production values couldn’t be much further from the blockbuster First Light. There’s no voice acting, with all dialogue instead delivered via subtitles, while each location on your globe-trotting adventure is depicted by a repeating texture wallpapered over scenery so blocky you can count the individual polygons. Continue reading...

13 Aug 2026 13:00 ✍️ RSS THE GUARDIAN