Portraying the breakdown of the couple’s marriage through the eyes of the people around them, this deeply researched and utterly convincing debut is an astonishing achievement
Butter, her novel about a female serial killer, was a global hit. As Asako Yuzuki’s second book is published in English, she talksabout criticism at home – and why she’ll be writing darker stories in the future
Encounters with great art can be absorbing, unsettling and even painful. How has this been tamed into ‘reading for pleasure’, asks Charlotte Higgins, the Guardian’s chief culture writer
The Egyptian queen has fascinated me from childhood, but following the archives led only to ancient gossip and Roman propaganda. Fiction was the way to liberate her from misogynist myth