NEWS
Planned assassination of Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk (From The Guardian)
According to reports in the Turkish press, the author of international bestsellers including My Name is Red was targeted as part of a campaign to sow chaos in preparation for a military coup…The suspects have now been remanded in custody, among them retired military officers and [...]
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It is difficult when describing this book not to find yourself trotting out phrases that make it sound less than it is: “this little book”, “this slim volume”, “a quiet yet sweet story”, “ a simple tale”.
On the other hand there is an equal danger in outlining the enormous themes (tolerance, race, culture, maleness and [...]
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Rohinton Mistry’s novel of India is at once sweeping and quite intimate. In the tradition of James Clavell and others, he shows the impact of political and societal upheaval upon individuals. Moving smoothly between past and present, he shows us what has brought each of his four main characters to where their lives intersect.
Dina Dalal, [...]
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In his introduction to the second collection of Paris Review interviews (I’ll admit that I haven’t read the first, but it hardly seems necessary to read them in any particular order), Orhan Pamuk writes frankly about the crises of confidence he suffered as a young writer. Cautiously hopeful about his chances of success, yet dogged [...]
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“You SHALL go to the ball … !”
I don’t know one end of a pair of skis from the other. Actually - I lie. The front is the end that sticks up - right?
The Chalet Girl - Kate Lace’s first book for Headline’s Little Black Dress imprint - is not therefore a title that [...]
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NEWS
AL Kennedy wins 2007 Costa Book of the Year Award
With 5 votes to in-effect runner-up Catherine O’Flynn’s 3. Read the Guardian coverage here.
“Kennedy’s writing has always slipped the leash of expectation, leaving gender stereotypes far behind. She’s un-pigeon-hole-able because inimitable.” Join in the debate at Guardian blogs here.
Fear that Nabokov’s may burn his father’s unfinished [...]
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1 ) How did you get into writing? What made you want to write? What keeps you writing? Technically three questions, but feel free to answer them in one long paragraph!
I started writing during a bout of depression in my early & mid twenties - mainly bad poetry, as it was the only [...]
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This book is not an easy read. In it, Arkady Babchenko recounts his periods of service as a Russian soldier engaged in the first and second Chechnyan wars. At eighteen, he was drafted into the army during the first war to fulfill his military service obligations and spent six months in training and about six [...]
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This book on the Metropolitan Museum of Art is unusual, it’s not a sweeping history, nor is it a documentary, in fact, it doesn’t even follow a linear path. Instead, it’s a collection of interviews with the various workers and people involved in running the New York museum, not just the bigwigs, but “the [...]
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Len Chester (also known as dovegreyreader’s father) was only fourteen when he joined the Royal Marines as a bugle boy - that is, a drummer signalling instructions and commands on his instrument, to anybody unfamiliar with the term as I was. It was May 1939: the worst or best possible time to join up, depending on how [...]
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