”There is a still moment near the end of Gillian Slovo’s 1997 family memoir when, in the cold of 5am, just after her father has died, Nelson Mandela says exactly the right thing.” What has a novel set in 1930s Leningrad to do with the anti-apartheid struggle? Plenty, if your parents were leading communists. By Aida Edemariam.

Yann Martel’s first two books sank without trace. But this year he won the Booker Prize. Aida Edemariam meets him.