A successful return for Libyan writer Hisham Matar

Plus: Malcolm makes a fresh entry in Philip Pullman’s follow-up novel The Book of Dust and Murder Tales by British writer Ruth Rendell to be a suspense till October.

Ruth Rendall. Oli Scarf / Getty Images

Libyan author Hisham Matar's stunning memoir, The Return, won its latest award last week – the £20,000 (Dh94,343) Rathbones Folio Prize. Ahdaf Soueif, the chair of judges, marvelled at the Pulitzer Prize-winning book's "attention to structure and style… it could have been a novel if we had not known that it was a real story". Indeed, it beat several novels to the Folio Prize, including China Miéville's The Census Taker and Francis Spufford's Golden Hill.

Malcolm makes a fresh entry in Philip Pullman’s follow-up novel The Book of Dust

The build-up to Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials follow-up, The Book of Dust, continued apace this weekend with a first published extract: a title – La Belle Sauvage – and details of its protagonist, a 11-year-old boy called Malcolm Polstead. Eagle-eyed readers would have come across Malcolm in the original series very briefly, but Pullman calls the new book, which will be out on October 19, an "equel" more than a sequel or prequel.

Murder tales by British writer Ruth Rendell to be a suspense till october

The late peerless crime writer Ruth Rendell will have nine rediscovered short stories published posthumously later this year. Seven have never been published in book form, and her publisher Profile calls them "elegant and disquieting, every bit the equal to her already published works". A Spot of Bother: New Tales of Murder will be out this October.