Aravind Adiga beat out seasoned authors such as Steve Toltz and Sebastian Barry by winning the Booker Prize for his debut novel, The White Tiger.

The Guardian irreverently breaks down the different types of winner the prestigious Booker Prize has honored over the years. Categories include "A Star Is Born" (e.g., Yann Martel) and "Let's give him/her a prize before the old sod dies" (e.g., William Golding).

The British Library has acquired hundreds of unpublished letters, poems, and other scribblings by former British poet laureate Ted Hughes.

Notorious recluse and Czechoslovakian dissident Milan Kundera has denied claims that he denounced a Western spy to the Communist secret police during the country's tumultuous '50s.

With a $1.4 million book deal at stake, Dexter King, the son of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and chairman of his estate, has sued his own siblings to gain control over a collection of their mother's photographs, letters, and personal papers.

The Nobel Prize committee followed up its promised snub of American writers by awarding the 2008 prize in literature to French author JMG Le Clézio. Despite the simmering controversy, the Guardian's Maxim Jakubowski explains why Le Clézio deserves the award and the inevitable translations it will prompt.

In a century-spanning slideshow, Slate demonstrates that periods of financial disaster have repeatedly been met with children's books about even tougher times. Stop your sniveling, grab a juice box, and get some perspective.

Based on notes and discarded passages, Bram Stoker's great-grand-nephew Dacre Stoker will write a sequel to the classic vampire tale, titled Dracula: The Un-Dead.

Like the pandemic apocalypse in Oryx and Crake that coincided with the SARS scare, Margaret Atwood has composed another timely text. Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth will be realeased in early 2009.

Ex-Simpsons writer Larry Doyle has been awarded the Thurber Prize for American Humor for his novel I love You, Beth Cooper.

A memorial service for David Foster Wallace took place in New York, attended by the likes of Don DeLillo, George Saunders, Zadie Smith, and Jonathan Franzen.

Google settles out of court with authors and publishers over its book-scanning project.

Legendary oral historian Studs Terkel has passed away. Read our guide to his many works here.

Diablo Cody gives 'mad props' to Judy Blume.