Despite qualms, the ending comes together beautifully

There’s a breathless energy to this novel that celebrates real-life figures in all their genius and flaws

The Lost Sportswriter: A Life Up Close with Irish Sporting Greatness by Vincent Hogan

Plus a wonderful and unflinching book from Trish Bourke and an enlightening read from Christopher Insole on questions about God

Intimate family interactions explored in portrayal of an evolving mother/daughter relationship

The writing moves with the rock-‘em-sock-‘em rhythm of his best flicks

‘The habit of reading good books needs all the talented defenders it can find’

The author etches the milieu of Irish emigrants in a mid-1980s London squat with grimy, sexy granularity

No overview or editorial explanation of the crux of masculinity is offered. This is just a book of testimony

Commitment to being out in the world with other people may reveal one of the book’s most vital messages

Margaret Kelleher seeks to introduce new readers to the work of this successful intellectual couple

New books for teen readers from Máire Zepf, Kelechi Okafor, Elizabeth Acevedo and Catherine Doyle

Stories of envelopes exchanged in pubs and Mafiosi-like politicians are familiar, but they still shock

Guardian’s chief culture writer offers Ukrainian art as something happening now, not work to be interpreted later

The Italian theoretical physicist’s most ambitious work so far is marvellous, insouciant and liberating

Plea for ‘ecological sovereignty’ should persuade many of us islanders to reconnect with our true inheritance

Account of impotent KGB double-agent lives up to its claim to be the untold story of the cold war’s most extraordinary spy

A work of emotional magnitude that interrogates pain at the source without searching for a neat encapsulation

Practised detachment allows privilege to maintain itself, unchecked, write Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor

Kevin Rafter narrates tale of an Ireland seeking public accountability, a new assertiveness in the media, and impetus towards liberalism and tolerance

Mícheál McCann reviews Milk & Moon-water by Milena Williamson; Real Estate by Mark Ward; Landscape with Question by Leeanne Quinn; and 48kg by Batool Abu Akleen

Kyla Cobbler shares her frequently ‘laugh-out-loud funny’ experience of childhood, toxic relationships, mental health struggles and inspiring journey to self-love

Kremlin has consistently promoted itself as anti-colonial leader against western ‘neo-colonialism’ on behalf of Global South

Historical novel’s Carry On up the South Bank element dilutes potential for a more satisfying read

Seamus Deane warns of the dangers of sentimentalising a precolonial past (the Gaelic Eden) or idealising a postcolonial future (when the island is one, all will be well)

An odyssey rooted in the experience of growing up in 1980s Belfast

Unlike her fiction, the Australian author’s culinary writing is sunny side up

New works by Hilary McCollum; Kathleen Stock; and Kiera Chapman, Lulah Ellender and Rebecca Warren

Also reviewed: histories of the Navan Road, Milltown, Dalkey, Mount Jerome Cemetery and industry

To find answers the author, originally from Cornwall, sets out on a 678km diagonal walk across Ireland

An unavoidable impression in this book is that Sinn Féin had a big opportunity, but blew it

The protagonist Tennyson is a beautiful literary creation, but has he been refused his own agency?

The memoir powerfully evokes O’Brien’s rage against ‘hideous’ dying

Plus new works by Pirkko Saisio, Felix Hartlaub, Karim Kattan and Angélica Gorodischer

Is this biography so much about the books because there’s little to say about the life?

The master of historical fiction reveals why Marcus Agrippa was so devoted to his friend’s grand design for ancient Rome

A blend of history, travelogue and geopolitical analysis that traces the faultlines of a 21st-century cold war

In his latest work to be set in Catalonia, Tóibín’s men pour their deepest tenderness into their animals while their human connections fail

Novel beautifully humanises dementia and the often-polarising debate about assisted dying

Author charts dire consequences of our machine age, then takes an inspired turn to literature to reawaken us to a deeper reality

The author makes excellent use of unprecedented access to the late romance novelist’s vast archives

A selection for young readers from Michelle Beech, Hollie Hughes, Laura Dockrill, Jarvis and Judge, Becky Baines and Jane Wilsher

‘A magnificent farrago of best guesses, classical locations, biblical myth and not a lot of sea’

An interesting and entertaining treatise from the author of Guns, Germs, and Steel

James is honest and generous in his shifting perspectives on an attack on eight gay men in Jamaica

The female protagonist, Dilara, feels like a bodiless mouthpiece being used to tell the story of Erdogan’s Turkey

In his follow-up to An Irish Atlantic Rainforest, Eoghan Daltun shows how policy shifts in land managment could work in practice across Ireland

The Occidental Book of the Dead reads like what you might get if Ishmael Reed and Walter Mosley had scripted Chinatown

Josh Holton delivers an impressive autofictional debut; Alex Hyde creates a portrait of two very different artists

Through the seemingly dry framework of grammar, the author takes us on an intellectually stunning and thrillingly alive journey