Sophie Roell, Editor

Apartheid ended more than three decades ago, but the trauma of the past continues to haunt South Africa, including in its novels. Andile Cele, author of Braids & Migraines, recommends five of her favourites, from a prize-winning literary work to a darkly humorous crime novel that shines a light on violence against women.

Horror is entertaining, but also a great way of shining a light on painful subjects people don’t want to talk about, says Mexican American horror writer V. Castro. As American horror has opened up to a much greater diversity of writers, she talks us through some of the classics—books that continue to inspire and form the bedrock of the genre.  

It was Cosimo di Medici who, 300 years ago, decided that Chianti should be a wine from a specific region. Today, Tuscany produces some of Italy’s finest wines, including some of the best Sangiovese and the pioneering ‘Super Tuscan’ wines. Gabriele Gorelli, Italy’s first Master of Wine, recommends a selection of books on the wines of Tuscany—from detailed map books for wine geeks to a witty and informative guide to Montalcino, the home of Brunello.

From the terrorists who came up with the idea of hijacking planes to get attention to a biography of the Scottish novelist Muriel Spark, the books in the running for this year’s Baillie Gifford Prize, as always, display a wonderful breadth. Robbie Millen, literary editor of the Times and chair of the 2025 judging panel, talks us through the shortlist of the UK’s most prestigious nonfiction book prize.

In the past five years, over 30 books have been published on black holes for a popular audience—testimony to our enduring fascination with these areas of spacetime from which nothing, not even light, can escape. Lynn Gamwell, author of Conjuring the Void—a beautiful book that looks at both scientific and artistic images of black holes—talks us through five of her favourites, including a PhD thesis that has not yet been published as a book.

To be shortlisted for the annual British Academy Book Prize, books have to be both rigorously researched and highly readable. Historian Rebecca Earle, chair of the 2025 judging panel, talks us through the books that made this year’s shortlist, from an environmental history that opens with Genghis Khan and the Mongol expansion to a ‘musical detective story’ that investigates the sounds made by our ancestors down the millennia.

Adventure means something different for everyone, says Nathan Gray, former fighter pilot and a judge for this year’s Wilbur Smith Prize for Adventure Writing. He talks us through the brilliant books that made the 2025 shortlist, and the journeys they took him on.

To write The Shortest History of Ancient Rome, bestselling author Ross King went back to the insightful and often entertaining accounts Roman and Greek historians gave of the city’s past. He talks us through some of his favourites, from Polybius—who wrote during the Roman Republic’s heyday—to Cassius Dio, who penned his magnum opus as the Roman Empire was in its decline.

We love books here at Five Books, and OK, we might be a bit snooty at times and insist that a book is always better than the movie based on it. And yet…there are many beloved books we wouldn’t have read if they hadn’t hit the big screen. In honour of Robert Redford (1936-2025), a list of some of the books recommended on our site that he starred in the film versions of. One of them changed my life.

The Soviet Union was the world’s first communist country and lasted around seven decades. It played a key role in defeating Nazism in Europe and became a global superpower before collapsing unexpectedly in 1991. Sheila Fitzpatrick, a leading historian of the Soviet Union, recommends books that bring to life different aspects of it, from forced labour in Glavnoye Upravleniye LAGerey (GULAG) to the heady days of the Khrushchev thaw and including the memoir of Stalin’s beloved daughter, Svetlana Alliluyeva.