Best holiday reads 2016

From gripping fiction to history, brilliant poetry to biography, our guest contributors offer their recommendations for the beach and elsewhere

• The Guardian’s summer books special: Julian Barnes, Sarah Churchwell, Kazuo Ishiguro and more pick their holiday reads

Novelist and screenwriter

Pack a collection of fairytales from the region you’re visiting. They remind us how similar we all are.

Joanna Walsh’s Grow a Pair: 9½ Fairytales About Sex is surreal, bawdy and inventive – wickedly so…

Anthony Mortimer’s translation of The Flowers of Evil is marvellous. Poetry is perfect for la plage.

Related: Summer reading with Mark Lawson and Lisa McInerney – books podcast