Time (December 31) has Vladimir Putin as its person of the year (“A tsar is born”). An article on Qiu Xiaolong, a Chinese writer of crime, shows how the detective genre allows writers to address issues that may otherwise be proscribed in China. (54-year-old Qiu’s Shanghai-based Inspector Chen novels, like Red Mandarin Dress, have also been translated into English to great success.) As he tells Time: “A cop walks around and knocks on people’s doors, asks questions. It’s become a convenient way to write about things I want to explore.” In the December 31 issue of Newsweek, Melinda Liu tells a personalised history of China over the last 30 years (‘Mao to now’) to show how individual lives have been transformed.

Meanwhile: In the New Statesman Richard Dawkins writes on Isaac Newton. The New Yorker has a short story (‘Natalie’) by Anne Enright who won this year’s Booker Prize for The Gathering.