Manville’s academic psychologist finds herself trapped in a tower block wasteland in 1980s Warsaw. Bizarre and surreal details add to the sinister vibe

Part cold war thriller, part Kafkaesque reverie, this movie takes us back to the sinister drear of Poland in 1981, when General Jaruzelski has just introduced martial law in reaction to the dangerous new mood of freedom occasioned by the Solidarity trade unions. The director is Kasia Adamik, daughter of The Green Border’s Agnieszka Holland; the film is adapted from a story by Olga Tokarczuk, called Professor Andrews Goes to Warsaw.

Lesley Manville plays Professor Andrews, an academic clinical psychologist (like Tokarczuk) from Britain with testy, peremptory mannerisms; her indulgence is a fondness for taking Polaroid photos. She has attained a certain level of celebrity for a book on dreams, despite claiming that she never dreams herself. Andrews has been invited to give a lecture in Warsaw, during which she begins to outline views on mental illness not unlike those of Laing or Foucault; but her speech is chaotically disrupted by students shouting that Poland itself is an oppressive asylum.

More than 180 writers sign letter renewing calls for information on 12 authors detained incommunicado since 2001 crackdown on free speech by Isaias Afwerki

More than 180 writers have signed a letter to Eritrean president Isaias Afwerki calling for proof of life for 12 writers arrested in 2001.

Nobel laureates Olga Tokarczuk and JM Coetzee join prominent writers including Colm Tóibín, Elif Shafak, Isabel Allende, Ben Okri, Yann Martel, Kamila Shamsie and Tsitsi Dangarembga in signing the letter organised by PEN International and dated 18 September, marking 25 years since a government crackdown on the independent press. “Within days, Eritrea’s free press and the nation’s independent voices were systematically crushed,” opens the letter.

Belvoir St Theatre, Sydney
Pamela Rabe is brilliant in this adaptation of the Nobel laureate’s novel, but its deeply felt sense of horror and grief is gone

When Olga Tokarczuk published Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead in 2009 in her native Poland, she was accused of inciting eco-terrorism – remarkable for any novel, let alone the tale of a 60-something English teacher recounting a string of murders in her village. All the victims are hunters, and Mrs Duszejko insists the local animals are enacting summary justice; unsurprisingly, most of the village thinks she’s mad.

But Tokarczuk’s book is radical. It proposes a way of thinking about animals that, when taken to its logical conclusion, explodes the world as we know it. It’s transgressive in more subtle ways, too. Mrs Duszejko is the kind of protagonist we rarely see: a 60-something woman who is smart, rebellious, eccentric, angry – and effective.

John Lanchester, Patmeena Sabit and Guardian readers discuss the titles they have read over the last month. Join the conversation in the comments

I find it hard to read contemporary fiction while I’m in the middle of writing a novel, so I use the time after finishing as an opportunity to catch up. I hugely enjoyed two British novels, Drayton and Mackenzie by Alexander Starritt, about friendship and business, and The New Life by Tom Crewe, about gay life in the 1890s. European fiction: Eurotrash by Christian Kracht is a funny novel about going on a road trip with a deranged parent; Perfection by Vincenzo Latronico is about the horrible life of digital nomads; Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk is an unclassifiable, riveting sort-of mystery.

Francis Spufford, Manish Chauhan and Guardian readers discuss the titles they have read over the last month. Join the conversation in the comments

I’ve been reading a very short book by Claire Baglin, translated by Jordan Stump, On the Clock. Set on the edge of somewhere in Brittany, all run-down blocks, dual carriageways and drive-in eateries, it’s a dark, sometimes funny story of a working-class family and a young woman starting work in a fast-food restaurant. Through a few short scenes we get a real insight into the quotidian soullessness of the work.