Kim Il Sung’s improbable rise to power; the miracles (and misfortunes) of manufacturing; ordinary lives on a fringes of Putin’s Russia; a Parisian experiment in squatting; the uprising at the heart of the Reformation; stories by Curtis Sittenfeld; new novels from Heather Parry and Tash Aw; our pick of titles on the environment — plus the best books to understand Germany as it goes to the polls
