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• Our writers at the Stoke Newington Literary Festival

• Trauma, vegetarianism, and poetry: the best new novels

  Lee Rourke on fiction by Catherine Lacey, Han Kang, and Ben Lerner.

• Taking off the mask: Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan novels

  In these compelling books, the Italian writer - whose real identity is hidden - combines the novel with feminist polemic.

• War photography in the age of social media

  Photojournalist Paul Lowe talks to the New Humanist about his work and images of conflict

• Five long reads for the Easter weekend

• The wrong kind of dissident

  Russia’s conflicted recent history is writ large in the life of Eduard Limonov

• In western democracies, is reading a political act?

  Azar Nafisi, author of Reading Lolita in Tehran, discusses her new book, on the importance of fiction to democracy.

• How to let go: The Leftovers, Broadchurch, and The Missing

  The last year has seen a proliferation of TV shows exploring the different facets of loss, from the intimate to the metaphysical.

• Selma is a great film, but where are the British stories about race and racism?

  Our histories are similar, but they are not the same.

• What does Utopia tell us about our attitudes to disaster?

  Channel 4’s conspiracy-thriller Utopia weaves a horror story from recent history. What does it tell us?