The South African Nobel Prize winner speaks about being robbed at her home in Johannesburg, and why she pities the robbers.

British soldiers find solace in Wilfred Owen's poetry on war. General Sir Richard Dannatt and other soldiers read the poetry on British public radio and discuss its impact on them.

Online translation magazine Words Without Borders highlights literature from Palestine this month, including a piece on practical jokes by Nassar Ibrahim.

Love publishes her scribblings in a collection called Dirty Blonde, which includes her to-do lists (nose job), rejection letters, and musings on other celebrities.

Penguin re-releases the second batch of classics with cover illustrations by comics artists, featuring Kerouac (Jason), Pynchon (Frank Miller), and De Sade (Tomer Hanuka). Meanwhile, the other Penguin across the pond is peddling its Designer Classics series, which consists of five pricey, limited-edition books (two by Dostoevsky, oddly enough) re-imagined by contemporary designers. Sorry, the Manolo Blahnik Madame Bovary is already sold out.

Philip Roth is a difficult man to interview.

Ian Jack is stepping down as editor of Granta after 12 years.

Marianne Wiggins, a judge for this year's National Book Award, explains the backstage drama of literary prizes, and how Richard Power's The Echo Maker (reviewed in this issue) won this year's fiction award. Timothy Egan took home the nonfiction prize for The Worst Hard Time.

The London Review of Books is a treasure trove of saucy, self-deprecating personals for intellectuals. Sample: "Bald, short, fat and ugly male, 53, seeks short-sighted woman with tremendous sexual appetite."