In fiction this week, Eileen Battersby reviews The Discreet Hero by Mario Vargas Llosa. Sarah Gilmartin's New Fiction column looks at Skin, Paper, Stone by Máire T Robinson. Claire Coughlan reviews A Place Called Winter by Patrick Gale. Anna Carey's Word for Word column celebrates school fiction, the cheerful world of dorms and midnight feasts, and Sara Keating's ebooks column looks at a new form of censorship or bowdlerisation of literature. The Hennessy New Irish Writing winners for March are revealed as we publish this month's winning short story and poems. There is also a new poem, The Knot, by Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin.

In non-fiction, author Rob Doyle reviews The Temple of Perfection: A History of the Gym by Eric Chaline. Gearóid Ó Tuathaigh, former professor of history at NUI Galway, reviews Histories of the Irish Future by Bryan Fanning. And Catriona Crowe, head of special projects at the National Archives of Ireland, reviews Common People: The History of an English Family by Alison Light.