Sure the world is on fire, but we can still bond over books

Deborah Frances-White, Yann Martel and Min Jin Lee talked myths and the miracle of fiction at Manchester Literary Festival

The Sunday poem: Undersong III by Sarah Howe | The Observer

Radio 4’s The Playground Murder review – Audrey Gillan’s true crime masterclass

Plus, Serial’s Sarah Koenig wants to know what’s the deal with New Yorkers, and Falling Tree podcast is an autumn delight

The grid: Yohji Yamamoto and the art of fashion illustration

A cache of lost sketches by the avant garde Japanese designer reveal the secrets of his sartorial process

The reinvention of horror fiction | The Observer

The genre is surging in popularity thanks to women and outsider voices upending its conventions and tackling the terrors of the present

Tellus review – Dickson Mbi’s shapes of water

The London choreographer explores his Cameroonian roots through the figure of the goddess Mami Water in a beautiful but blurred work

A hazy history of the modern Middle East | The Observer

Simon Sebag Montefiore sacrifices too much nuance in his ambitious but orthodox chronicle

The gloves are off: the rise of bareknuckle boxing

It’s selling out arenas as the UK’s fastest-growing combat sport. Heavyweight champion Mick Terrill explains what makes someone want to step in the ring without gloves

What to read to understand sculpture | The Observer

Three books that explore the origins and inspirations of the art form, both human-made and in the world around us

Wendy Ide’s pick of other films: Wildwood, Clayface, Poss...

A stop-motion fantasy epic from the creators of Coraline is an extraordinary achievement. Plus, can watch-through-your-fingers body horror Clayface revive the ailing comic book genre?

Poetry books of the month: bullets and blooms | The Observer

Ian McMillan’s winningly absurdist Red River Valley goes to war with Wordsworth’s daffodils, while Jason B Crawford tackles violence and injustice in his urgent second collection YEET!

Those rumours of the death of programmers? Greatly exagge...

AI agents may be solving the tricky puzzles software engineers used to love, but human understanding of coding is still essential

Jon Fosse welcomes you to the Vaim Hotel | The Observer

The second instalment in the Norwegian author’s Vaim trilogy is a Kafkaesque farce about a hotel guest perplexed by his very presence in a strange fishing village

Robert Ryman: The Real Thing – an exhilarating monument to the man who mastered white

The Barbican’s exhilarating retrospective explodes the myth that the American artist painted only plain canvases – and reveals the many multitudes contained in whiteness

Nobody Wants This review – over the hot rabbi? Fall in love with the hot sister instead

Justine Lupe excels in season three of the LA-set sitcom, which is as watchable as ever despite its sugary excesses. Plus, HBO Max’s The Audacity

The big picture: making a scene in Abuja | The Observer

Photographer Paul Abbah has his subject ‘exaggerate everything’ in the harmattan dust of Nigeria’s capital

We may have passed peak manosphere. But what’s next for men?

The decline of the hyper-masculine and misogynistic movement led by Andrew Tate frees the male character to reinvent itself

From father to son: what our dads taught us | The Observer

Eight writers share the life lessons they learned from the men who raised them

Rent – Gaten Matarazzo leads a sparky revival for a new G...

Boasting infectious performances from a superb cast, Jonathan Larson’s cult classic still more than pays its way

Fatherland review – Sandra Hüller reckons with Germany’s ghosts in Thomas Mann biopic

Paweł Pawlikowski’s elegant, austere portrait of the exiled author’s return to Germany is anchored by a quietly commanding turn by the actor playing his daughter