Literary Nonfiction

Author, journalist and Five Books deputy editor Cal Flyn looks back on her favourite books read this year.

What do we talk about when we talk about nature? Almost everything, says the academic and bestselling author of Being a Beast, Charles Foster. Here he selects five of the best works of nature writing in 2019; books that seek to connect us more deeply with the non-human world.

What makes a great essayist? Who had it, who didn’t? And whose work left the biggest mark on the New Yorker? Longtime writer for the magazine, Adam Gopnik, picks out five masters of the craft

The author of But Beautiful and Zona tells us about different ways of writing history, and gives us five examples where innovative or experimental approaches have paid off.

It's hard to choose the very best nonfiction books of 2017, but the Baillie Gifford Prize aims to do just that. The chair of this year's judging panel, Peter Bazalgette, talks us through the six fabulous books that made the shortlist.

The inner life is a mystery but the best biographies expose the hidden kernel of a person, says literary biographer and academic, Lyndall Gordon. She picks five books that push the boundaries of the genre.

Writing in the first person doesn’t have to be inward-looking or egotistical, says the author of The Snow Geese. He tells us about his favourite autobiographical works that use the first person to look out into the world

Historian and Sinologist Jeffrey Wasserstrom, Chancellor's Professor, History at UC Irvine, says that to get a real sense of China you need to focus on individuals and their stories. Here he chooses five books that draw on the country's long tradition of biographical writing.

The essay format allows the author to develop ideas but add a personal touch, says the popular philosopher Alain de Botton. Here, he chooses his favourite essay collections

Russian literature specialist Michael Nicholson, Emeritus Fellow at University College, Oxford, talks us through the best books to learn more about the great Soviet dissident and winner of the 1970 Nobel Prize in Literature, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.