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The Man Booker prize winning novelist George Saunders turns to short-stories for his latest book, Liberation Day. From workers dressed as ‘ghouls’ in an underground amusement park to brainwashed political protestors and story-telling slaves his protagonists underscore what it means to live in community with others. George Saunders tells Tom Sutcliffe how his stories veer from bizarre fantasy to brutal reality. The move from fantasy to stark reality can be seen in the history of Russians living in exile in Paris after the Revolution in 1917. Helen Rappaport’s After the Romanovs details how former princes, used to a life of luxury, could be seen driving taxicabs. While some emigres, like Diaghilev and Chagall, found great success in this new world, others became trapped in a cycle of poverty and homesickness for a country that was no longer theirs.The BFI and UK-wide horror film season In Dreams are Monsters celebrates how monstrous bodies of all kinds have been represented on screen over the past hundred years. Curator Anna Bogutskaya explores the symbolism and emotional impact of ghosts, vampires, witches and, arguably the most politicised of all cinematic monsters, the zombie – a terrifying, dead-eyed blank canvas for social commentary.Producer: Katy Hickman

The first event marking Black History Month UK took place thirty five years ago, and the re-claiming and documenting of Black British and International History has since evolved into a national movement. But how much has changed in those three decades? The historian Miranda Kaufmann has spent years uncovering evidence of Africans in Renaissance Britain. Her first book Black Tudors: The Untold Story was published five years ago and has since become a free online course. The British Nigerian poet Yomi Ṣode interweaves his native Yoruba with English slang in his debut collection Manorism. He explores what it means to grow up black in Britain and the pressure to be constantly adapting his behaviour and language. But he also shows the past works in mysterious ways by finding inspiration in the life of the 17th century Italian painter, Caravaggio. The curator Christine Checinska explores how fashion has formed a key part of Africa’s cultural renaissance in a ground-breaking exhibition at the V&A. Africa Fashion starts with the years of African independence that sparked radical political and social movements. But the show also includes contemporary designers who have broken with historical ideas to look to the future.The historian Peter Frankopan makes the case for world history – a view of the past from multiple foci – in the essay collection, What Is History, Now? He questions the role of history; whose stories are told and why. But the challenge of broadening horizons to encompass the whole world can make it oversimplistic and fractured. Frankopan believes the job of the historian is to look at the connections between societies, and explore what the past can tell about today’s world.Image: Thomas Gainsborough's 'Portrait of Ignatius Sancho', 1768

In her latest novel, The Unfolding, the prize-winning AM Homes has created a compelling central character: a larger than life American patriot and family man. Undone by Obama’s victory in the 2008 presidential election, he collects together a band of like-minded men to spread their version of the American dream, and to reclaim it by force if necessary. AM Homes tells Tom Sutcliffe her Big Guy’s fight to retain his influence is confounded by his failure to keep his own family from fracturing.Power, reputation and family dynamics are also central to Ibsen’s play John Gabriel Borkman, now playing at the Bridge Theatre, directed by Nick Hytner, in a new version by Lucinda Coxon. Borkman was once a great man, who put wealth and influence ahead of his family and personal life. But now, disgraced and destitute after a financial scandal, he sits alone in an upstairs room obsessively planning his comeback.Families and dynastic power is at the heart of Simon Sebag Montefiore’s history of The World: A Family History Of Humanity. The grand themes of war, migration, plague, religion and technology are told through the stories of the world’s great dynasties as they battle to stay relevant and retain power through the ages.Producer: Katy HickmanImage credit: Photograph - Front l-r Simon Russell Beale (John Gabriel Borkman) and Sebastian De Souza (Erhart Borkman), photo by Manuel Harlan