The hill I will die on: People who ski have more money than sense | Emma Loffhagen

7 mars 2026 à 11:00

Extortionate costs, queueing in the cold and potentially life-altering injuries? No thanks. And don’t get me started on the EDM après-ski hell

There comes a time in every middle-class or upwardly mobile person’s life when they will hear the following six words: “Would you like to come skiing?” My answer: absolutely not.

Skiing, I have come to believe, is the emperor’s new clothes of leisure pursuits: a collectively sustained fantasy. People insist it’s magical in the same way they insist that cold-water swimming is “transformative” or small plates are “better for sharing”. At some point we forgot to ask whether any of this is actually true.

Emma Loffhagen is a freelance commissioning editor and writer covering culture and lifestyle

Malorie Blackman on Noughts & Crosses at 25: ‘It’s even more relevant today’

The Guardian

Par : Emma Loffhagen

7 mars 2026 à 10:00

Her YA classic was inspired by racism in 1990s Britain. A quarter of a century later, she talks about success, death threats and getting shoutouts from Tinie Tempah and Stormzy

‘I’m useless at this bit,” Malorie Blackman laughs, shifting awkwardly in a plum-coloured jacket and smart black trousers. It is a gloomy February evening in the back room of a theatre in west London, and she is having her photograph taken, the rain pummelling the brick outside.

Blackman is, by any reasonable metric, one of the most significant writers Britain has produced in the past quarter of a century – the closest thing my generation, who were raised on her books, has to a literary rockstar. And yet, she seems faintly baffled by the notion that the spotlight should rest on her for long. “I hate being in front of the camera!”

Amazon pulls sponsorship from Paris book festival after booksellers’ association boycott

The Guardian

Par : Emma Loffhagen

6 mars 2026 à 18:56

Syndicat de la Librairie Française accused online retailer of trying to ‘flood the market with fake AI-generated books’

Amazon has withdrawn from the Paris book festival after a boycott by France’s booksellers’ association prompted a row over the company’s sponsorship of the event.

The festival, due to take place from 17 to 19 April, will now go ahead without the backing of the US retail company, after a mutual decision by organisers and Amazon to end their partnership.

António Lobo Antunes, Portuguese novelist who chronicled dictatorship and war, dies aged 83

The Guardian

Par : Emma Loffhagen

6 mars 2026 à 16:16

Author of more than 30 novels, including Fado Alexandrino and The Inquisitors’ Manual, was widely seen as one of the most important voices in modern Portuguese literature

António Lobo Antunes’s exhilarating novels forced Portugal to confront its darkest moments

António Lobo Antunes, the Portuguese novelist whose dark, polyphonic fiction confronted the traumas of dictatorship, war and Portuguese society, has died aged 83.

Widely regarded as one of the most important Portuguese writers of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, he produced more than 30 novels that reshaped Portuguese writing and made him a perennial contender for the Nobel prize for literature. He received numerous honours, including the Camões prize, the most prestigious award in the Portuguese language, and several major European literary prizes. His death was confirmed by the publisher Dom Quixote.

Susan Choi and Katie Kitamura among authors longlisted for Women’s prize for fiction

The Guardian

Par : Emma Loffhagen

4 mars 2026 à 15:00

Sixteen novels are in contention for the £30,000 award, now in its 31st year, with settings ranging from climate-ravaged islands to a near-future Kolkata

Katie Kitamura, Susan Choi, Kit de Waal and Lily King are among the authors longlisted for this year’s Women’s prize for fiction.

Awarded annually and now in its 31st year, the prize comes with £30,000, and is one of the most prominent accolades for women’s writing in the English language. The 16-strong list features a selection of novels that range in setting from climate-ravaged islands to a near-future Kolkata, and from 1970s Birmingham to East Berlin on the brink of reunification.

To browse all books in the Women’s prize for fiction 2026 longlist, visit guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.

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