Since exposing the Neapolitan mafia by publishing Gomorrah at age 27, Roberto Saviano has lived for nearly a decade under armed guard, shuttling between anonymous hotels and army barracks.

An interview with the novelist, who died on Saturday.

Michel Houellebecq on his controversial new novel, Submission, which imagines France electing its first Muslim president.

The best-selling young novelist lay dead in a trash-strewn cottage on Ireland’s rugged coast for over a week before she was discovered.

How the author writes best-selling non-fiction books without the ability to leave her house.

On spectacular saintliness, holy anorexia, and female hysteria.

On Cheryl Strayed and why Wild became a hit.

The short-lived literary career of Breece DʼJ Pancake and his roadmap to a world of oppressive poverty.

The story of 11-year-old Sally Horner’s abduction changed the course of 20th-century literature. She just never got to tell it herself.

A history of the war between Amazon and the book industry.

The author on why he belives in God (“It makes things better”), the perils of writing high (“Annie Wilkes is cocaine, she was my number-one fan”) and what he thinks of other writers (“Hemingway sucks, basically”).

An author confronts her troll.

Reconsidering Virginia Woolf’s novel, Orlando.

Understanding genius.

On Daphne du Maurier and her novel, Rebecca.

On the intrigue surrounding Dr. Zhivago’s publication.

A profile of the novelist, who is surprised to be alive.

The history of a color.

On Norman Maclean’s Young Men and Fire and its lingering effects on our collective imagination and environment.

An essay on motivation.

“My mother kept scrapbooks of everything any of her children did all their lives, and among my scrapbooks are newspapers that I wrote on the typewriter at the age of six, The Hersey Family News, with ads offering my older brothers for various kinds of hard labor at very low wages.”

A profile of author William T. Vollmann.

Untangling the legend of “Knausgaard-free days.”

“I come to America, I go to England, I go to France…nobody’s at risk. They’re afraid of getting cancer, losing a lover, losing their jobs, being insecure. … It’s only in my own country that I find people who voluntarily choose to put everything at risk—in their personal life.”

“If I’m writing a thing based on something that happened, it often starts to become fun for me when I see there’s an opportunity to make myself look even more of a jerk than I am in real life.”