Art review: Saints alive
Not mockery but twisted devotion. Aaron Rosen enjoys Michael Landy's crack-pot saints at the National Gallery
Culture
Life on fire: images from the Jharia coalfields
The people of Jharia struggle to live on top of a toxic open cast mine that is permanently ablaze. Words & Images Isabell Zipfel
Book review: Goldblatt’s Descent by Michael Honig
Inhumane doctors in a conformist system. Theodore Dalrymple reviews a satire of the NHS.
Man of Zeal: Studio urges churches to use new Superman film as preaching resource
Warner Bros set up special website with tips on how Man of Steel can help spread the good news
Iain M Banks’ Universe
The Scottish novelist was one of our greatest writers of science fiction, says Francis Spufford
Faster for the master
More than 30 years after it started, is Christian metal still a thriving underground scene or a decaying corpse? Keith Kahn-Harris goes looking for signs of life amongst the devout…
Wagner for atheists
The operatic canon, and Wagner in particular, is saturated with religious imagery that can be incomprehensible and off-putting to a modern audience. But that doesn't mean secularists should shun them,…
Emotional labour pains
Laurie Taylor feels the un-spontaneous love
Book review: Lenin’s Kisses by Yan Lianke
Sam Geall enjoys a strange and darkly funny debut about life in the new China
Book review: Control Order House by Edmund Clark
Edmund Clark's eerily mundane collection of photographs and documents reveals the sinister reality of suspected terrorists confined without trial in suburbia