A look ahead to next week’s Man Booker shortlist

The Man Booker Prize shortlist is announced next week and today we interview Anna Burns, perhaps the least well-known of the three Irish authors on the longlist, despite her debut, No Bones, being shortlisted for the Orange Prize back in 2002. Burns really engages with her interviewer, fellow Northern author Eoin McNamee, who astutely explores her creative process in writing Mikman. Catch up with Sally Rooney's revealing interview with Catherine Conroy here.

Looking ahead to Saturday’s pages, Aifric Campbell, investment banker turned bestselling author, marks the 10th anniversary of the Lehmans collapse with a sharp piece of fiction skewering some low points of high finance. Frank Wynne, Ireland’s leading literary translator and editor of the anthology Found in Translation, celebrates his art. And there is a new poem by the late Matthew Sweeney.

Our reviews include Houman Barekat on The Lies That Bind by Kwame Anthony Appiah; Linda Hogan on Living with the Gods by Neil MacGregor; Donald Clarke on The Sky is Falling: How Vampires, Zombies, Androids and Superheroes Made America Great for Extremism by Peter Biskind; NJ McGarrigle on Small Victories: The True Story of Faith No More by Adrian Harte; June Caldwell on Lake Success by Gary Shtynegart; Michael Cronin on Olga Tokarczuk’s Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead; Jonathan McAloon on In the City of Love’s Sleep by Lavinia Greenlaw; Claire Connolly on The Letters of Oliver Goldsmith; Sarah Gilmartin on The Dark Dark by Samantha Hunt; Paul Clements on the best new local history titles; and Julie Parsons on A Diary of Love by Maude Hutchins.