The lynching of two black men, Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith, in Marion, Indiana on August 7, 1930 casts a long shadow. While lynchings were more common in the 1930s than we may now care to remember, an infamous photograph of the men hanging from a tree, with a crowd of high-spirited spectators...

  Milkman by Anna Burns (Faber & Faber) has been announced as the winner of the 50th Man Booker Prize. Burns, 56, who was born in Belfast and lives in East Sussex, drew on the experience of Northern Ireland during the Troubles to write Milkman. Her first acclaimed novel, No Bones, was...

We might as well be wearing togas, and the long bar of the Dalbuie might as well be the Forum. Ernie and I pace solemnly, speaking Latin. We’re not discussing the relationship between esse and existere, nor (switching ancient tongues) the fine line between homoiousian and homoousian. The question...

Writer Liam McIlvanney has won the 2018 McIlvanney Prize for the crime book of the year at the Bloody Scotland festival in Stirling. His book, The Quaker, was described by the judges as the standout winner of this year’s competition. The prize was renamed two years ago in memory of Liam’s...

Anna Burns, Milkman (Faber & Faber) Esi Edugyan, Washington Black (Serpent’s Tail) Daisy Johnson, Everything Under (Jonathan Cape) Rachel Kushner, The Mars Room (Jonathan Cape) Richard Powers, The Overstory (William Heinemann) Robin Robertson, The Long Take (Picador) Anna Burns, Esi Edugyan, Daisy...

The Scottish Review of Books chats to Duncan Swinbanks from Tackle and Books in Tobermory about Tintin, sleepy cats and Scotland's newest book festival.

Transcription – the latest offering from bestselling author Kate Atkinson – is a work of complete duality. For a novel that is concerned with spies and espionage, with hidden identities and masked lives, this is perhaps not entirely surprising. Spy novels, after all, abound with duality.

  Day Three: Sunday 19 August Why do so many readers want novels to be veiled autobiographies? If you want to see someone’s eyes shine with excitement, tell them the novel you’re reading is ‘based on the author’s life’. I do this often, even when it’s not true. Rarely does anyone...

  Day Two: Saturday 18 August   Thank heavens for the simple bicycle. Walking from place to place is simply not an option during August in Edinburgh. It’s not only the crowds, it’s the show touts, waving their leaflets in your face. The only free way to avoid them is to jump on the...

  Day One: Friday 17 August 2018 As a man of modest means, this year I have set myself the task of spending three moneyless days at the Edinburgh International Book Festival. I live on a farm twenty miles south of Edinburgh, so transport was the first hurdle to overcome. When I heard there was...