After last week's excursion into the politics of literature, we take a break to catch up with two of the New Yorker's 20 best writers under 40.
Téa Obreht's Orange-shortlisted novel The Tiger's Wife is a wild fable of war, ghosts and escaped zoo animals, set in former Yugoslavia. David Bezmozgis's characters are Latvians stuck in migration limbo as they wait to hear which country they are to be repatriated to. They discuss history, fable, Jewish comedy and the resurgence of the picaresque novel.
Then we dip into two of the stories that have been hot on our website during the last week. We invite the Guardian's readers' editor, Chris Elliott, into the studio to pick grammatical bones with Martin and Kingsley Amis, and ask award-winning SF writer Gwyneth Jones where all the female science fiction writers have gone.
Reading list
The Tiger's Wife by Téa Obreht (Weidenfeld)
The Free World by David Bezmozgis (Viking)
The King's English by Kingsley Amis (Penguin Modern Classics)
Bold as Love and Life, both by Gwyneth Jones (Gollancz)
