Heartbreaking historical tales, unsettling scenes and shortlisted non-fiction – what to read, watch and see this week

This curation of The Conversation UK’s arts and culture coverage was first published in our fortnightly newsletter, Something Good.

Maggie O’Farrell is responsible for some of my biggest COVID cries (impressive, considering how hotly contested that category is). Hamnet hit home with its uncanny parallels to pandemic life with shuttered playhouses, quarantines and families separated by illness. The film adaptation, released last year to great acclaim, presented me with another emotional outpouring. This time at the powerhouse performance from Jessie Buckley, whose grieving maternal howls made me flinch – but never look away.

O’Farrell’s new novel looks set to leave an equally devastating impression. Land follows mapmaker Tomás and his eldest son Liam, charting the land in the aftermath of the great famine in 1860s Ireland. It’s a family saga spanning centuries and continents, inspired by O’Farrell’s real great-great-grandfather, who worked for Ordnance Survey.

Our reviewer described the novel as “exquisite” and “haunting”. An expert in the famine, he was impressed by the way O’Farrell charted a land that was “changed utterly. A whole way of life was eroded, and Land imagines what it must have been like to walk among the ruins, to see an agrarian culture collapse, and, for those left behind, to forge a future from remnants”.

Land is in bookshops now.

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Read more: Land by Maggie O'Farrell is a haunting tale set in post-famine Ireland about history, map-making and memory

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We want to know: do you enjoy books that make you cry? Let us know in the comments. We’d also love to know what your favourite tear-jerking novel is.

Brilliant non-fiction

Writing about major pop figures comes with an inherent tension: there’s no shortage of appetite for new material, but the challenge is to avoid simply retreading what we already know. George Michael fans will be pleased to know that Sathnam Sanghera avoids this trap with his new book, Tonight the Music Seems So Loud.

Part biography, part love letter, part social commentary, it’s an attempt to correct a great cultural forgetting of Michael’s talents – so often overshadowed by the singer’s personal life. As Sanghera points out, many of his songs were single-handedly “written, produced, arranged and performed” by Michael, who demonstrated an extraordinary range and depth of artistry and innovation across his career.

Tonight the Music Seems So Loud is in bookshops now

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Read more: Tonight the Music Seems So Loud: George Michael’s music, artistry and drama

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The Women’s prize for non-fiction celebrates excellence, originality and accessibility in narrative non-fiction written by women. In only its third year, the 2026 shortlist covers a range of topics as diverse as the experts we’ve enlisted to review them, examining themes from creativity and wellbeing to conflict and family ties.

I can’t wait to get my hands on a copy of Mother Mary Comes to Me by Arundhati Roy. A “literary memorial” paying tribute to her relationship with her mother, it’s Roy’s third book. Her first, God of Small Things, is one of my favourite novels of all time.

The Women’s prize for non-fiction books are out now

One thought dominated when our reviewers came out of a press screening of the latest A24 horror flick, Backrooms last week: “How on earth is this only rated a 15!?”

Failed architect Clark (Chiwetel Ejiofor) accidentally slips out of reality and ends up trapped in an endless labyrinth of yellow-tinted rooms, humming fluorescent lights and eerie, disembodied sounds – the “Backrooms”. Inspired by the viral internet horror clips, the fear factor is derived from just how much Clark’s nightmarish portal has in common with the world of modern work.

Moviegoers will (hopefully) never find themselves trapped in a nauseatingly jaundiced and never-ending labyrinth. But they may recognise Clark’s experience of living among failed promises, diminishing aspirations, precarity, social isolation and the growing fear of becoming obsolete.

Backrooms is in cinemas now.

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Read more: Backrooms: why being trapped in the film’s endless corridors feels a lot like modern life

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More unsettling scenes are on show at British Landscapes: A Sense of Place at Pallant House Gallery in Chichester. The exhibition traces the evolution of landscape painting over the last 300 years. Among them are Paul Nash’s disconcerting, sepia-toned landscapes painted in the aftermath of the first world war. He’d served as a war artist and emerged from the conflict determined to capture countryside stripped bare by battle. He’s among several artists on show who turned to the countryside after the war, trying to capture its disappearing character and preserve a sense of what was being lost.

My favourite work on display is Cerne Abbas Giant by Eric Ravilious (1939). Seen through barbed wire, the landmark is rendered in earth browns to reflect the way it was turfed over to prevent it acting as a landmark for the Luftwaffe.

British Landscapes: A Sense of Place is at the Pallant House Gallery until November 1 2026.

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Read more: British Landscapes: A Sense of Place shows how ideas of scenery have evolved across 300 years of art

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This article features references to books that have been included for editorial reasons, and may contain links to bookshop.org. If you click on one of the links and go on to buy something, The Conversation UK may earn a commission.