Publishing Company Blog: May 2017

Wednesday, May 31, 2017

Students take Hilary Mantel's Tudor novels as fact, says historian

John Guy tells Hay festival applicants cite author in interviews and says blur between fact and fiction is troubling

One of Britain’s most respected Tudor historians has expressed concern that prospective students imagine Hilary Mantel’s novels are fact.

John Guy told the Hay literary festival in Wales that Mantel’s Thomas Cromwell novels needed to be enjoyed for what they were: fiction.

Trees talk to each other, have sex and look after their young, says author

Peter Wohlleben’s book has become bestseller in Germany but he tells Hay festival audience it has annoyed scientists

Trees are social creatures that mother their young, talk to each other, experience pain, remember things and have sex with each other, a bestselling author has said.

If that persuades you to go and hug the nearest tree, then great, said Peter Wohlleben. Just avoid a birch: “It is not very sociable. Try a beech.”

Salman Rushdie and Margaret Atwood lead campaign for displaced writers

The two novelists are among 200 writers and artists backing Pen International’s three-year plan to promote work by censored and persecuted people

A global campaign hailed by Salman Rushdie as “a significant public stand against racism and xenophobia” has been launched, backed by more than 200 leading writers and artists, including Ai Weiwei, Margaret Atwood and Isabel Allende.

The Make Space campaign by Pen International will focus over the next three years on writers displaced through persecution and censorship, with Rushdie calling the project “a concerted effort from the heart of the literary industry to make opportunities for writers representative and fair.”

Technology is making the world more unequal. Only technology can fix this

The inequality of badly-run or corrupt states is boosted by the power of technology – but it’s also easier than ever to destabilise these states, thanks to technology. The question is: which future will prevail?

Here’s the bad news: technology – specifically, surveillance technology – makes it easier to police disaffected populations, and that gives badly run, corrupt states enough stability to get themselves into real trouble.

Here’s the good news: technology – specifically, networked technology – makes it easier for opposition movements to form and mobilise, even under conditions of surveillance, and to topple badly run, corrupt states.

With enough inequality over enough time, the cherished idiocies of the ruling elites will eventually cause a collapse

As technology pervades, spying becomes cheaper and inequality becomes more stable – but not infinitely stable

The future will see a monotonic increase in the ambitions that loose-knit groups can achieve

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Tuesday, May 30, 2017

Unseen Ruth Rendell short stories to be published

Archive research of crime fiction magazines has recovered 14 stories that will be collected under the title A Spot of Folly this autumn

A collection of short stories by Ruth Rendell, unearthed in the archive of an US detective magazine, are to be published for the first time in the UK this autumn. The stories were found in magazines – most back issues of the Ellery Queen Mystery magazine – and date as far back at the 1970s. They will be published under the title A Spot of Folly.

Cecily Gayford, commissioning editor at Profile, which will publish the collection in October, said the stories were “typical Rendell”, treading the fine line between police procedural and psychological thriller. “They feature her classic themes – marriage, jealousy, hidden secrets – and explore the boundary between normality and absolute psychopathy in the claustrophobic atmosphere of all her books,” she said.

Related: Ruth Rendell obituary

Paddington 2: first trailer emerges from darkest Peru

Ben Whishaw reprises his role as the marmalade-sandwich-munching bear in the follow-up to the hit 2014 film

The first trailer for Paddington 2 has been revealed.

A follow-up to the British-French family film, Paddington 2 stars Hugh Grant, Julie Walters, Hugh Bonneville and Imelda Staunton, with Ben Whishaw returning as the voice of Paddington. This time around, the story concerns Paddington’s quest to apprehend the thief of a rare pop-up book he has bought for his Aunt Lucy’s 100th birthday.

Monday, May 29, 2017

Sayeeda Warsi: UK policy on radicalisation 'has been flawed for years'

Speaking at Hay festival, Conservative peer says government is too focused on ideology as the sole cause of radicalisation

The British government’s decision making when it comes to catching homegrown radicalshas been flawed for years according to Sayeeda Warsi, who has said Britain “cannot afford to have sloppy, lazy, ideological-driven decision making” on national security.

Speaking at Hay literary festival on Monday, Lady Warsi – the Conservative peer and first Muslim in the British cabinet – said government policy was currently too focused on ideology as the sole cause of radicalisation, and not on other factors, including upbringing and drug and gang culture.

The Handmaid's Tale tops book charts after TV series UK debut

Margaret Atwood’s 1985 novel rockets to number one on Amazon after Channel 4 begins airing series starring Elisabeth Moss

The Handmaid’s Tale, the 1985 novel by Margaret Atwood envisaging a hellish dystopia where the US is ruled by an ultra-far-right regime that treats women as chattels, has rocketed to the top of the bestseller charts after the UK broadcast of the first episode of the TV adaptation.

Channel 4 aired the debut episode of the series, starring Elisabeth Moss and Joseph Fiennes, at 9pm on Sunday, and within hours the paperback of the Canadian author’s novel had reached number one in the Amazon charts.

Sunday, May 28, 2017

Bad memories: Colm Tóibín urges authors to lose the flashbacks

Speaking at the Hay literary festival, the Irish novelist said modern writers should emulate Jane Austen and stop overdoing the backstory

Colm Tóibín has issued a rallying call against what he sees as the scourge of modern literature: flashbacks.

The Irish novelist said the narrative device was infuriating, with too many writers skipping back and forward in time to fill in all the gaps in a story.

Stephen Fry: Facebook and other platforms should be classed as publishers

Speaking at Hay festival, writer accuses ‘aggregating news agencies’ of not taking responsibility for their content

Stephen Fry has called for Facebook and other “aggregating news agencies” to be reclassified as publishers in order to stop fake news and online abuse spreading by making social media subject to the same legal responsibilities as traditional news websites.

Outlining his “reformation” for the internet, as part of the Hay literary festival’s programme to mark the quincentenary of Martin Luther’s Ninety-five Theses in 1517, Fry accused social media platforms of refusing to “take responsibility for those dangerous, defamatory, inflammatory and fake items whose effects will have legal consequences for traditional printed or broadcast media, but which they can escape”.

Thirty years on, Hay festival is still thinking, talking and laughing

It was conceived as an excuse to ‘have a few mates round’, but now the Hay literary festival is embracing a much wider vision and is a global event

Eddie Izzard is in the Spar, wearing leather trousers, four-inch heels and a light smattering of pancake. But this is Hay, so nobody notices. He buys his stuff and totters off down Castle Street, pausing to talk to a dog waiting in the back of a car. Later in the evening, dressed more casually, he will take to the stage to delight an audience.

Hay is like that. The familiar-looking, clean-shaven chap in the linen jacket? (Linen jackets are de rigueur for chaps, this being a literary gathering.) Why it’s Nick Clegg, ex-coalitionista, unexpectedly tall in the flesh. The other tall chap (linen jacket)? Paxo, of course, equally tall. Oh look, there’s Stephen Fry, former National Theatre boss Nick Hytner. It’s like the maxim about the 1960s, that all the people who made the swinging decade would have fitted in one room. Perhaps that’s what Bill Clinton was thinking when he famously decribed the festival as “the Woodstock of the mind”.

Jeremy Paxman at Hay festival: 'Media must stop sneering at Trump'

Broadcaster tells audience at literary festival that US president had done better than many people expected

Jeremy Paxman has said the media must stop “sneering” at Donald Trump’s presidency, suggesting the Republican had done “rather better than many people had expected” in his first months in office.

Speaking at the Hay literary festival in Wales on Saturday, the broadcaster said he would like to interview Trump and encouraged the media to respect his position in the White House.

Saturday, May 27, 2017

From social media star to bestselling writer, the young ‘Instapoet’

Rupi Kaur’s first book, Milk and Honey, sold 1.4 million copieS

Ordinarily, the illustration adorning the cover of a new book is not a big story, but such is the hype around the young Canadian poet Rupi Kaur that her plan to release the picture to her 1.3 million Instagram followers on 1 June is generating great excitement.

Kaur, 24, came from nowhere to sell 1.4 million copies of her first book, Milk and Honey. That is almost unheard of for a first-time writer, let alone a first-time poet. First self-published in 2014 and then by a publishing house the following year, the poetry collection became a New York Times bestseller. Now Kaur is building up anticipation on social media for her new anthology, which is due out in September. And here, the Observer publishes an exclusive extract.

Friday, May 26, 2017

Tree of Smoke author Denis Johnson dies aged 67

Poet and novelist, who described his work as a ‘zoo of wild utterances’, was the winner of the National Book Award and twice shortlisted for the Pulitzer prize

The acclaimed author and poet Denis Johnson has died aged 67. Best known for his classic short-story collection Jesus’ Son, Johnson won the National Book Award for his novel Tree of Smoke in 2007 and was twice shortlisted for the Pulitzer prize for fiction. His work has been compared to that of Raymond Carver and William Burroughs.

Alex Bowler, his UK publisher at Granta, called him a “singular writer and author of at least two immortal masterpieces”.

Thursday, May 25, 2017

Jimmy Barnes: biography of the year winner says writing makes sense of life

‘Booze and narcotics are all well and good, but if you really want to get out of your head, write a book,’ says Barnes, while Jane Harper wins Gold ABIA

He may have looked every bit the tough seasoned rock star, but Jimmy Barnes’ voice caught with tears as he thanked his wife Jane at the Australian Book Industry Awards on Thursday night, where the Cold Chisel frontman won biography book of the year.

Published in 2016, Barnes’ bestselling memoir Working Class Boy detailed a harrowing early life that was riddled with poverty, domestic abuse and alcoholic parents, who moved their family from Glasgow to Adelaide when he was a child.

Wednesday, May 24, 2017

Game of Thrones season seven: tense trailer promises a 'great war' is coming

The first full look at the seventh season of the hit fantasy drama teases yet more conflict in Westeros to come this summer

A new trailer for the seventh season of Game of Thrones promises conflict from all corners this summer.

Folio prize goes to Hisham Matar's memoir The Return

Acclaimed account of the author’s journey home to Libya in search of his missing father’s story is the first nonfiction book to win the £20,000 prize

A month after it secured him a Pulitzer prize, Hisham Matar’s memoir The Return has won the Rathbones Folio prize.

The Return tells the story of Matar’s journey to his native Libya in search of his missing father, Jaballa, following the fall of Muammar Gadafi’s regime. A businessman and opponent of the dictator, Jaballa was kidnapped in 1979 by security forces. Though never seen by his family again, it was known that he had been taken to the notorious Abu Salim prison in Tripoli, where 1,270 prisoners were murdered in 1996. Critical acclaim has followed the memoir, which won the Pulitzer biography prize and was also shortlisted for the Baillie Gifford prize for nonfiction and the Costa biography award.

Unseen Sylvia Plath poems deciphered in carbon paper

Duplicating sheet in old notebook examined by academics yields two unknown works, To a Refractory Santa Claus and Megrims

A carbon paper hidden in the back of an old notebook owned by Sylvia Plath has revealed two previously unknown poems by The Bell Jar author. The paper, which was discovered by scholars working on a new book, has lain undiscovered for 50 years and offers a tantalising glimpse of how the poet worked with her then husband, fellow poet Ted Hughes.

The academics, Gail Crowther and Peter K Steinberg, have also found a clutch of poems abandoned by Hughes that reveal the depth of his turmoil over his wife’s death. The poems had been written for his final collection, Birthday Letters, in which he broke his silence about his tumultuous relationship with Plath, which ended after she discovered he was having an affair.

Green Carnation award goes to Aids history How to Survive a Plague

David France’s study of the struggle for effective treatment of a disease that was initially widely ignored was described by judges as ‘vital and important’

An insider account of the HIV/Aids epidemic hailed by Edmund White as “epoch-making” has scooped a major prize for LGBTQ+ writing. David France’s How to Survive a Plague tells the story of how a grassroots movement of activists, some of whom faced their own struggle with the illness, forced through legal and scientific change that turned HIV from an almost certain death sentence to a manageable disease where drugs are available.

It is the third time in the prize’s seven-year history that the award has gone to a nonfiction book. Describing France’s book as the unanimous choice, chair of judges John Boyne said: “In this time of renewed activism in an increasingly uncertain world, France’s definitive account of the Aids crisis, and the activists who changed the fate of so many lives, seems vital and important to inspire everyone, not just the LGBTQ+ community.”

Neil Gaiman hopes to raise $1m for refugees with Dr Seuss reading

The American Gods author and UNHCR goodwill ambassador says he will give a dramatic recital of Fox in Socks if enough money is pledged

Neil Gaiman, bestselling author of American Gods and Neverwhere, has offered to stage a dramatic reading of Dr Seuss’s Fox in Socks, if fans pledge $1m (£769,000) to help refugees. The British author made the offer after accepting a previous challenge to read out the menu of a US dessert chain in exchange for $500,000-worth of pledges to the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR).

The challenge to read the Cheesecake Factory menu was set on Friday by US comedian and author Sara Benincasa after what she described as an “inspiration blackout” following a date at the chain, and watching the new TV adaptation of American Gods.

Top 10 unlikely romantic heroes in fiction

From the disgusting appeal of Christian Grey to the neglected charms of Shakespeare’s Don Pedro, Jenny Colgan picks her favourite difficult dreamboats

In my other job as a romantic comedy writer, I like to write attractive heroes, for obvious reasons. But when I write sci-fi (as Jenny T Colgan), the type of chap is very different. Sometimes – when I’m writing for Doctor Who, for instance – there isn’t really a romantic hero at all (or there shouldn’t be, unless you’re still mooning over those old David Tennant episodes).

When I started writing Spandex in the City, I was interested in people who date superheroes. It’s meant to be something you would automatically want to do – look at Batman and the gorgeous Vicki Vale; Spidey and Mary Jane, Supes and Lois. But actually, going out with a superhero would be awful. They work nights, they’re hyper-intense, constantly distracted – oh, and you might get killed. Only Iron Man’s Pepper Potts seems to get the point that it’s a terrible pain in the neck. So for this book I was working within slightly more difficult parameters than, say, a nice country vet called Will.

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Word up: new Chicago museum celebrates American authors

Chicago’s new American Writers Museum has given the nation a fitting centre to celebrate the influence of its literature, and with Hemingway’s birthplace also in town, the city makes for a great literary trip

Admirers of the great American novel have a treat in store, as the first museum devoted to US writers opened in Chicago in mid-May.

Seven years in the making, the $5m American Writers Museum (adult $12, child free, open Tues-Sun) offers an entertaining and sometimes surprising tour through the whole tradition, from early colonists to modernists such as Truman Capote and Tennessee Williams. Along the way visitors can learn about their rackety lives and wonderful words, and just how the US has seen itself over the years.

Tuesday, May 23, 2017

'A force of nature': tributes pour in for Bond and The Saint actor Roger Moore

The enduringly popular 007 actor has died at 89, and figures from across the world of entertainment and showbusiness have paid tribute

Stars of film, television and music have paid tribute to Roger Moore, the James Bond and The Saint actor, who died on Tuesday aged 89. A statement for his family said that Moore passed away “after a short but brave battle with cancer”.

We are saddened to hear of the passing of Sir Roger Moore, who brought joy to so many with his portrayal of Bond & his sterling UNICEF work

Few are as kind & giving as was Roger Moore. Loving thoughts w his family & friends. He will be missed too by UNICEF http://pic.twitter.com/fYAEUqAaaw

#RIP Roger http://pic.twitter.com/eh9EKIxu0G

Roger Moore , loved him

RIP Sir Roger Moore. My first Bond and one of the first actors that I loved as a kid. And a lovely, funny, warm person to boot. Farewell.

My dearest uncle Roger has passed on. What a sad, sad day this is. Loved the bones of him. Generous, funny, beautiful and kind. #ROGERMOORE

Thank you @sirrogermoore Every time you appeared on screen from childhood to adulthood you never failed to bring a smile to my face. http://pic.twitter.com/ctbqF77fFR

Saddened to hear Sir Roger Moore has passed away. James Bond should never die.

Leeds ranked fifth on Lonely Planet's Best In Europe 2017 list

West Yorkshire city has been recommended to travellers thanks to its flourishing cultural scene and thriving nightlife

Located more than 70 miles from the nearest beach and with July temperatures reaching average highs of 19C, Leeds is not necessarily the first place you would think of for your summer holiday. But Lonely Planet travel guides has seen past the city’s grey skies, ranking it fifth on their list of the 10 best places to visit in Europe in 2017.

Those responsible for the Best In Europe 2017 list – which claims to celebrate destinations with “something new, exciting or undiscovered” – cited urban regeneration efforts, a flourishing cultural scene, thriving nightlife and a growing reputation for food and craft beer among the West Yorkshire city’s attractions.

Monday, May 22, 2017

'Brave, ruthless and utterly compelling': Leah Purcell wins big at NSW premier's literary awards

The playwright’s adaptation of The Drover’s Wife will soon tour nationally and abroad, and may become a TV series – with a film already in the works

The Indigenous Australian playwright, actor and musician Leah Purcell has won $40,000 at the NSW premier’s literary awards, taking out two major prizes for her radical reimagining of Henry Lawson’s short story The Drover’s Wife – the same work that won Purcell the $100,000 Victorian prize for literature in January.

Other major winners include Heather Rose, who won the $40,000 prize for fiction for her Stella prize-winning novel The Museum of Modern Love; Thornton McCamish, who won the $40,000 non-fiction prize for his biography of celebrated correspondent Alan Moorehead; and Peter Boyle, who won the $30,000 poetry prize for Ghostspeaking.

Sunday, May 21, 2017

Anthony Horowitz: I was warned off including black character

Author of Alex Rider novels says he was disturbed to be advised against creating a black character because he was white

Bestselling author Anthony Horowitz says he was warned off including a black character in his new book after being told by an editor it would be inappropriate.

Horowitz, best known for his Alex Rider series of novels, said he found it “disturbing” that he was being advised against a white writer creating a black character.

Saturday, May 20, 2017

Historical fiction and ‘alternative facts’ … Mantel reveals all about retelling our past

The Wolf Hall author discusses the line between truth and fantasy

Hilary Mantel’s gripping account of life in the court of Henry VIII has transformed the art of historical fiction, combining exhaustive research with imagination to produce a vivid portrayal of the tyrannical king, his wives and courtiers that has won her two Man Booker prizes and inspired an award-winning television adaptation.

Now she is turning the skills she has developed in her writing to examine a much more modern theme – how fact and fiction can become confused to produce “alternative facts”.

The true crime tale that merges murder and memoir – set to be summer’s ‘must-read’

Author of The Fact of a Body explains why case challenged her beliefs on the death penalty

From addictive podcasts such as S Town and Untold to must-watch TV from Making a Murderer to The Keepers, true crime is having something of a moment. Now a book that melds memoir and murder to tell a haunting story of abuse, deep-buried secrets and the power of mercy, has become the talk of the publishing industry and is set to be one of the hits of the summer.

The Fact of a Body by Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich weaves together two distinct histories: that of Ricky Langley, a paedophile who was convicted of the murder in 1992 of six-year-old Jeremy Guillory, and Marzano-Lesnevich’s abuse by her late maternal grandfather. Early reviews hail it as “a true crime masterpiece” and compare it to Truman Capote’s seminal In Cold Blood. It was, says Marzano-Lesnevich, a book that she had to write.

Friday, May 19, 2017

French prime minister's novels put attitude to women in spotlight

Some believe the two thrillers written by Édouard Philippe may reveal clues about his thoughts on women and politics

France’s new president, Emmanuel Macron, may have written several unpublished novels inspired by everything from the Spanish conquest of Mexico to the life of a Paris pianist, but it is the literary endeavours of his newly appointed government that have come under the spotlight this week.

Nine of its members have published books, from political essays and historical biographies to pulp fiction and political crime thrillers. The culture minister heads a major publishing house, and the economy minister, rightwing Bruno Le Maire, once wrote racy romances about a lovestruck nurse – under a pseudonym – before graduating to literary fiction and memoirs.

Thursday, May 18, 2017

Study of 'sexual paranoia' on US campuses draws lawsuit from student

Laura Kipnis is being sued by a student whose case she highlights in a new book arguing against overzealous regulation

Laura Kipnis, an academic who has spoken out against the way US universities handle sex abuse claims, is being sued by a student whose harassment case against a professor features heavily in Kipnis’s latest book. Under the name Jane Doe, the graduate student claims a chapter in Kipnis’s Unwanted Advances: Sexual Paranoia Comes to Campus invaded her privacy and misrepresented her case against a philosophy professor.

Texts between the student and Peter Ludlow published in the book could be used to identify her, the student claims, though Kipnis changed her name in the book. Ludlow was dismissed from Northwestern University in Illinois following two allegations of sexual harassment. In her book, Kipnis uses Ludlow’s case to argue that universities’ application of rules on sexual conduct is overzealous and undermines civil liberties.

Bridget Jones's Baby wins Helen Fielding a pig – and the Wodehouse prize

The fourth novel about the hapless romantic heroine wins the UK’s only award for comic writing

After twice nearly winning what she described as “the Oscar for comic writing”, Helen Fielding is finally set to see a pig named Bridget Jones, after she scooped the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse prize for comic fiction.

Fielding said she intended to boast about winning the prize, which bags the author naming rights to a Gloucestershire Old Spot pig, “as long as possible to anyone who will listen”.

Wednesday, May 17, 2017

Hay festival steps in to save library in Welsh 'town of books'

It has emerged that Hay-on-Wye library has been relying on support from the event for some time, but still faces closure without fresh funds

Hay-on-Wye literary festival has stepped in to save the famously bookish town’s library after it was threatened with closure. As news emerged of the temporary cash rescue, the festival slammed plans by the local council to close libraries, saying that if a town synonymous with books could not keep its library service open, “what hope does anywhere else have?”

The rescue package was revealed as the Welsh government announced a £2.7m boost to libraries, museums and archives aimed at modernising buildings and extending digital access to collections and archives.

Hillsborough, Brexit and gun control: 2017 Orwell prize shortlist announced

With Orwell back in headlines due to the rise of ‘alternative facts’ and ‘fake news’, six books with ‘something prescient to say’ are up for best political writing prize

Six books that demonstrate how political writers have stepped up to the challenge of global change have been shortlisted for the prestigious Orwell prize for political writing. Ranging in topic from classic political biography to frontline reportage and revisionist history, all six had “something prescient to say”, the judges said.

“We are at a huge moment in the history of the Western world like the rise of China and of populism, and these are issues that everyone is grappling with. We found writers are stepping up to the challenge,” judge Jonathan Derbyshire, executive comment editor of the Financial Times, said. He added: “I feel very optimistic about the future of political writing.”

Cheap books, high price: why Amazon.com’s ‘one-click’ sales can cost authors dear

US sales on the web giant have recently begun defaulting to secondhand merchants, meaning writers receive nothing at all from purchases

It is a hard sell: the idea that cheaper books might be a bad thing. But an adjustment to how Amazon sells books on its site is being attacked by authors’ groups, which claim secondhand copies of new books sold at rock-bottom prices are selling in such high quantities from the retailer that authors are unable to earn a living.

A week ago, buyers on Amazon.com, the US site, began seeing heavily discounted secondhand copies of books sold by third-party sellers being presented as the default buying option, instead of new copies supplied to Amazon by publishers. Using that “buy-in-one-click” button for, say, George Saunders’s novel Lincoln in the Bardo, you’ll get it for a bargain $10.52 – but that’s an “as-new” copy from a secondhand seller, not a new copy sourced by Amazon.com (which will cost you $14.64).

Tuesday, May 16, 2017

George RR Martin says Game of Thrones spin-offs will all be prequels – and announces a fifth

After HBO reveals plans for TV offshoots from their hit adaptation, Martin promises he is still working on sixth book The Winds of Winter

Game of Thrones creator George RR Martin has reassured fans that he will complete the sixth novel in his A Song of Ice and Fire series, despite working with screenwriters on five new TV spin-offs. But he has admitted that the TV commitments had pushed the hotly anticipated book down the agenda.

“Yes, I am still working on Winds of Winter and I will continue working on it until it’s done,” Martin wrote on his blog. But fans, who have already waited six years for the latest instalment in the fantasy series, should not hold their breath. “I will confess, I do wish I could clone myself, or find a way to squeeze more hours into the day, or a way to go without sleep. But this is what it is, so I keep juggling,” he added before listing his commitments: The Winds of Winter, five new TV shows for HBO, and four new Wild Card books.

Monday, May 15, 2017

Roger Zelazny was genre-defining, not obscure | Letters

Joseph Arnaud writes that many of today’s authors owe a debt to Roger Zelazny

While I found Andy Beckett’s article (Accelerationism: how fringe philosophy predicted how we live, The long read, 11 May) informative and insightful, I must object in the strongest possible terms to the depiction of Roger Zelazny as obscure and the Lord of Light as forgotten. Zelazny was a genre-defining author whose works are still in print and in demand half a century after he wrote them. Lord of Light is an award-winner and regarded as an absolute classic of the genre. His name and his work are well known by anyone who pays attention. Many of our current crop of top authors acknowledge their debt to him. For example, Neil Gaiman dedicated American Gods to Zelazny.
Joseph Arnaud
Canterbury, Kent

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Saturday, May 13, 2017

Former mercenary Simon Mann reveals thriller he wrote in jail

He spent seven years in prison after a failed coup in Equatorial New Guinea. Now the ex-SAS officer has turned to writing

The life story of Simon Mann reads like pages torn from a thriller. Now the former mercenary and SAS officer is to publish a thriller of his own: an international action adventure written to stay sane in prison in Africa.

“I wanted to write something for my son Freddie, who was 13 at the time, and I realised he would want to read something grown-up.”

Friday, May 12, 2017

Harry Potter prequel written on postcard stolen in burglary

Untitled story set three years before wizard’s birth and handwritten by JK Rowling was stolen from property in Kings Heath, Birmingham

An untitled Harry Potter prequel handwritten on a postcard by JK Rowling has been stolen in a burglary in Birmingham.

The 800-word story, written on an A5 card, sold for £25,000 at a charity auction at Sotheby’s in 2008.

Thursday, May 11, 2017

Are things getting worse for women in publishing?

Voices from within an industry overwhelmingly staffed by women speak out about senior management that appears increasingly dominated by men

Have you experienced a gender gap in publishing? Tell us your stories

When Edie and Eddie started work as junior editors in the same corporate book publisher, they had much in common: firsts from Oxbridge and career ambition. And a passion for books and ideas. When Edie saw her role model moved out of the chief executive’s office to be replaced by a man, the two joked about what it took to get to the top.

But as both observed the same thing happen at one publishing house after another, the joke wore thin. And Eddie, frustrated at the lack of promotion, changed. “He donned a suit and began to walk and talk like the men he saw getting on in the business and suddenly things changed for him,” Edie recalls. “It was as simple as that.”

You get the sense with the remaining women in senior management that they have gone as far as they are going to go

Wednesday, May 10, 2017

Dylan Thomas prize goes to Australian 'genius' Fiona McFarlane

Short story collection The High Places, which skips continents, eras and genre, takes £30,000 award

Fiona McFarlane has won the £30,000 International Dylan Thomas prize for her “deliciously unsettling” short story collection, The High Places.

Flitting across continents, eras, and genres, McFarlane’s 13 stories examine the spectrum of emotional life, with moments of uneasy anticipation, domestic contentment and ominous desperation. Praised as “deliciously unsettling” by the Observer, The High Places includes stories as varied as a scientist living on a small island with only a colossal squid called Mabel and the ghost of Charles Darwin for company, a middle aged couple going on a disastrous holiday with friends in Greece, and an Australian farmer who turns to Old Testament methods to relieve a debilitating drought.

Tuesday, May 9, 2017

From Bill’s crime novel to Hillaryland: why the Clintons are taking over your bookshelf

From autobiographies and political essays to sci-fi imaginings, brace yourself for a deluge of books by, about or featuring Hillary and Bill

To the great literary movements of the 21st century so far – transrealism and books with the word “girl” in the title – we can add another: books by, and about, the Clintons. Book deals will be impossible to get unless your name is Hillary or Bill Clinton; proposals will be rejected unless they feature the former president or presidential candidate. Within a year, you will not be able to go into a bookshop without being faced with rows of book jackets featuring a stylised bob-and-pantsuit line drawing or nicely lit shots of one of the Clintons looking weary but unbroken.

First, due in September, Hillary’s book will be published. It is not a memoir exactly, but a collection of essays based on inspirational quotes that have, she says, “helped me celebrate the good times, laugh at the absurd times, persevere during the hard times and deepen my appreciation of all life has to offer”.

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The Essex Serpent adds top British Book Award to prize haul

Sarah Perry crowns a much-garlanded year for her gothic romp, honoured alongside authors including Kiran Millwood Hargrave and JK Rowling

Two word-of-mouth bookselling success stories – Sarah Perry’s novel The Essex Serpent and Kiran Millwood Hargrave’s young adult tale The Girl of Ink and Stars – have taken the top prizes at the British Book Awards.

A gothic romp inspired by a local legend in the author’s native Essex, Perry’s second novel had an astonishing trajectory, selling more than 200,000 copies in hardback alone – 40 times more than the initial sales target – and scooping up nominations as varied as the Costa fiction award to the Wellcome prize for books about medicine and health. At the ceremony in London on Monday night, Perry’s novel beat Sebastian Barry’s Costa prize-winning novel Days Without End and Paul Beatty’s The Sellout, which won the 2016 Man Booker prize, to take the fiction award, before also winning the overall “book of the year”.

Joanna Lumley: Idris Elba should not play James Bond as he doesn't fit description

Absolutely Fabulous star says casting should be ‘colour-blind’ but that Elba does not correspond to Ian Fleming’s description of character

Joanna Lumley has said that Idris Elba should not play the role of James Bond because he doesn’t fit the description of the character in Ian Fleming’s original novels.

Hellboy to be rebooted with Stranger Things star – but without Guillermo del Toro

David Harbour to replace Ron Perlman as the demonic superhero in an ‘R-rated reboot’ of the franchise, with Game of Thrones director Neil Marshall

Stranger Things actor David Harbour is set to star as demonic superhero Hellboy in a film version of the irreverent comic-book franchise.

According to the Hollywood Reporter, director Neil Marshall, best known for his work on Dog Soldiers, The Descent and Game of Thrones, has been lined up to direct the film, which has the working title of Hellboy: Rise of the Blood Queen. Neither Guillermo Del Toro, who directed two previous instalments of the franchise, nor Ron Perlman, who starred in the films, are involved in the new version.

Now back my real Third Act, fighting to take Democracy out of the claws of fascists and racists. What any real superhero must do.

Monday, May 8, 2017

New Curtis Sittenfeld novel will imagine Hillary Clinton's life without Bill

As-yet untitled novel will tell the story of Hillary Rodham and her life after she turns down marriage proposal from Bill Clinton ‘once and for all’

Curtis Sittenfeld has signed a book deal to write a novel about Hillary Clinton that will imagine how the former secretary of state’s life would have panned out if she had not married Bill Clinton.

According to publisher Random House, the as-yet-untitled novel is “told from the point of view of Hillary Rodham, in which (as she did in real life) she turns down marriage proposals from Bill Clinton, then ultimately turns him down once and for all, and how her life spins out from there”.

We're so excited about @csittenfeld's next fiction project! https://t.co/1lSX0Nnw3p

Francis Spufford wins the Ondaatje prize with Golden Hill

‘Astonishingly rich’ portrait of 18th-century New York scoops award for book with finest sense of place

Golden Hill, Francis Spufford’s joyous romp through 18th-century New York, has added the Royal Society of Literature’s prestigious Ondaatje prize to its growing list of accolades. Describing the novel as “an unpredictable, exhilarating, protean novel”, the judges placed Spufford’s fiction debut at the top of five titles shortlisted for the £10,000 prize, which goes to a book of fiction, nonfiction or poetry that best evokes the “spirit of a place”.

Announcing the winner, judge Henry Hutchings praised the author’s “sense of texture” and his ability “not just to reconstruct the topography of a cultural moment far from our own, but to make the details so delicious”. He added: “Golden Hill stood out as a book with an astonishingly rich understanding of place. It’s a densely woven portrait of colonial New York, teeming with vitality and humanity.”

Related: Top 10 New York novels

Dickens' campaigning journalism explored in display at author's home

Charles Dickens Museum examines London social issues the Oliver Twist writer campaigned on and mined for his novels

Anyone at large in the small hours of the morning in Victorian London might have bumped into the most famous writer of the age: Charles Dickens criss-crossing the city, walking off insomnia and depression, but also scooping up material for his campaigning journalism. En route he would have passed theatres and cathedrals, shops and pubs, Bethlem mental hospital and the Marshalsea, where his father had been imprisoned for debt.

Milo Yiannopoulos to self-publish memoir and sue Simon & Schuster

The far rightwinger, dropped by the publisher following his comments on child abuse, vows to make lives of ‘professional victims a living hell’

After his memoir Dangerous was very publicly dumped by his publisher, hard-right professional provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos has announced he will instead self-publish the book – and that he will sue Simon & Schuster for $10m for backing out of the deal.

The memoir will be the first book to be published under his own Dangerous Books label, which will specialise in titles by authors who “can’t get published”. The venture was revealed as part of Milo Inc, a new media venture announced by Yiannopoulos.

Minette Walters announces first book in decade – and retirement from crime fiction

After a 10-year hiatus, the British author, famed for her psychological thrillers, is back with a new book – a historical novel about the Black Death

Crime novelist Minette Walters is set to return with her first novel in 10 years, after a long hiatus caused by what she calls “complicated reasons” – including a desire to stop writing crime fiction.

Often credited as the “queen of the psychological thriller”, the British author says she will stop writing in the genre, with her next novel The Last Hours to be her first venture into historical fiction.

Australian artists, writers and actors call on Fairfax Media not to cut arts coverage

Film critic Margaret Pomeranz, novelist Charlotte Wood and festival director Wesley Enoch appear with others in new #FairGoFairfax video

The film critic Margaret Pomeranz, novelist Charlotte Wood and festival director Wesley Enoch have joined a growing group of creatives and critics protesting against cuts to arts coverage at Fairfax newspapers, and losses to arts criticism in Australia more broadly.

Our deputy Arts Editors in recent years have included @d3wic @bhakthi @han_francisco, huge advocates for the arts in Melbourne. What next? https://t.co/IUseuyvVFh

No arts page in the SMH. Has management given up or they simply can't put one together without arts staff and freelancers? #fairgofairfax

There is no AAP wire service equivalent for the arts. The experienced journalists are the only ones who can deliver. #fairgofairfax

More support from the Aussie comedy scene: @nazeem_hussain sent this message of solidarity to #Fairfax journalists. #fairgofairfax @withMEAA http://pic.twitter.com/CD2F5XFFrK

We at @hayestheatre will never forget the support from arts writers when we opened. It meant we could survive and grow. #savefairfaxarts

Our private response to art makes us human. Our public response makes our culture. My thoughts on #fairgofairfax: https://t.co/jXSCYaC4ZB

Fairfax provides arts coverage that's crucial to the cultural ecology & is one of the only majors to cover independent arts. #fairgofairfax

My first directing gig reviewed and published in the @smh by paid professional - I still have it taped above my desk #savefairfaxarts

Heartfelt thanks to Liz Ann Macgregor, director of @MCA_Australia, for her message of support for Fairfax's arts coverage. #fairgofairfax http://pic.twitter.com/cFni0N28lJ

Taryn Fiebig and I support arts journalists at @SydneyHerald. These folk are passionate and brilliant and should be cherished! @elissablake http://pic.twitter.com/IVng96gNpq

Friday, May 5, 2017

JK Rowling is driven by ego like Kim Kardashian, says Joanna Trollope

City of Friends author claims the way Harry Potter creator airs opinions over Twitter poses threat to literary industry

The author Joanna Trollope has criticised JK Rowling, comparing the Harry Potter writer to Kim Kardashian because of her “insatiable” appetite for social media.

Trollope described artists who air their opinions over platforms such as Twitter as being overly influenced by their ego and claimed that this posed a threat to their entire industry.

OK, here it is. Please don't start flame wars over it, but this year I'd like to apologise for killing (whispers)... Snape. *runs for cover*

Late starters surge ahead on Desmond Elliot debut fiction prize shortlist

Two of the three authors still in contention for the prestigious first novel award – Francis Spufford and Kit de Waal – are in their 50s

The 2017 Desmond Elliott prize for debut fiction has taken on an air of experience, with two of the three shortlisted authors in their 50s.

Fifty-six-year-old Kit de Waal joins 53-year-old Francis Spufford on a shortlist for the £10,000 award completed by Rowan Hisayo Buchanan – a relative spring chicken at 27.

Thursday, May 4, 2017

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child to open on Broadway in April 2018

The hit fantasy play, which has broken records in London, will move to the the Lyric Theatre in New York

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child Parts One and Two will premiere on Broadway on 22 April 2018.

Wednesday, May 3, 2017

John le Carré to make rare public appearance to discuss new novel

Author will take part in An Evening with George Smiley at Royal Festival Hall to mark return of his most famous character

He first appeared in 1961 as a short, fat, quiet man whose bad clothes “hung about his squat frame like skin on a shrunken toad”.

But that unassuming bespectacled man, with his deep love of the lesser German poets, was far from ordinary; he was George Smiley, one of the greatest, cleverest spies in fiction.

What can sci-fi teach us about the future of health? | Ara Darzi

We need innovative thinking in healthcare now more than ever – so we’re asking for ideas from writers whose work is all about escaping the limitations of the past

In State of Wonder, the American writer Ann Patchett imagined the discovery made by a charismatic but despotic professor, Dr Annick Swenson, who travelled deep into the Amazon basin and found a tribe in which the women went on bearing children until the end of their lives. While their bodies aged as normal, their reproductive systems stayed daisy-fresh.

Membership Event: Ann Patchett in conversation

The big gains are likely to come from innovations in the general purpose technologies that have transformed our world

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Seven British spies uncovered in new biography of real-life M

Author of Maxwell Knight, ‘MI5’s Greatest Spymaster’, uncovers details of hitherto unknown agents in interwar years

Seven British spies have been outed in a new biography of Maxwell Knight, the naturalist and spymaster who is believed to have been the model for M in Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels. The seven worked for MI5 in the interwar years and included prominent members of the Communist party and fringe members of the Bloomsbury circle.

The identities of the spies are revealed in M: Maxwell Knight, MI5’s Greatest Spymaster, a new biography by historian Henry Hemming. “It was a totally unexpected find,” Hemming said. “I had no intention of finding this out, but as I started going through the files and building up a picture of who the spies run by Knight were, I realised that with a bit of detective work I could find out their names.” Although he admitted absolute proof of the spies’ true identities would only be found in closed MI5 files, he was “99.9% certain” that he had identified the ring.

The Dark Tower trailer: Idris Elba and Matthew McConaughey go to war in the fantasy epic

A long-awaited adaptation of Stephen King’s novel, the film sees Elba’s gunslinger take on McConaughey’s evil sorcerer The Man in Black

The first trailer for The Dark Tower has been revealed.

The fantasy epic, an update of the Stephen King novel of the same name, stars Idris Elba as fabled last gunslinger Roland Deschain, who is seeking to find the titular tower and save his dimension, Mid World, from destruction by Matthew McConaughey’s evil sorcerer Walter Padick, AKA The Man in Black.

@McConaughey To find the tower is my purpose. I'm sworn.

@McConaughey I deal in lead. #DarkTowerMovie http://pic.twitter.com/IvpjVKFHCH

Colson Whitehead leads Arthur C Clarke award shortlist

The Underground Railroad heads up finalists for science fiction honour in wake of Pulitzer prize win and presidential endorsement

Pulitzer prize winner Colson Whitehead has been shortlisted for the Arthur C Clarke award for science fiction, with his novel The Underground Railroad appearing on a six-book list that may be the prize’s most diverse yet.

Brought to fame by his Pulitzer win – and his selection for both former US president Barack Obama’s summer reading list and Oprah’s book club – Whitehead’s sixth novel follows two slaves who try to find freedom from their Georgia plantations by following the underground railroad: a network of safe houses in reality, Whitehead transforms the route into a literal, steampunk railway.

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Colson Whitehead leads Arthur C Clarke award shortlist

The Underground Railroad heads up finalists for science fiction honour in wake of Pulitzer prize win and presidential endorsement

'I am Fan Yusu': China gripped by Dickensian tale of a migrant worker's struggle

The online essay chronicling the dismal plight of millions of Chinese has turned its unassuming author into an overnight literary sensation

As a girl, Fan Yusu looked to Charles Dickens for an escape from her life of rural poverty, immersing herself in the travails of Oliver Twist as he fled a Victorian workhouse and set off for the big smoke.

But it is the story of Fan’s own flight to the big city that has captured hearts and minds in her native China after an online account of the migrant worker’s struggles made her an overnight literary sensation.

Tuesday, May 2, 2017

Medieval Jewish papers tell vivid stories in Cambridge exhibition

11th-century documents from Genizah store in Old Cairo synagogue cover whole range of human life, co-curator says

From the faded brown ink on the yellowed paper of a document going on display this week in Cambridge, a startling picture emerges of a young man who lived and loved in 11th-century Cairo.

Toviyya wanted to marry Faiza, but he evidently had quite a reputation. The document, translated into English and on show for the first time in an exhibition at Cambridge University Library, records at great length that Toviyya swore in front of witnesses that his life would henceforth be blamelessly dull.

Jean Stein, pioneering oral historian, dies aged 83

Literary editor and author of bestselling books including Edie: An American Girl is believed to have killed herself

Bestselling author Jean Stein, known for her pioneering oral histories, is believed to have killed herself by jumping from a penthouse in upper Manhattan in New York. She was 83.

Stein began her career as an assistant to theatre director Elia Kazan on the original production of Tennessee Williams’s play Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. An editor on the Paris Review, she rose to prominence for her pioneering use of oral narratives to write three histories of the US in the 20th century. One of them, 1982’s Edie: An American Girl, became an international bestseller. Melding together the voices of family and friends including Andy Warhol, for whom Edie Sedgwick acted as muse, the book used the socialite’s troubled story to shed light on the decade. Norman Mailer praised it as “the book of the 60s that we have been waiting for”.

Major report on libraries' future slammed as over-optimistic

Carnegie Trust’s analysis ‘seriously avoids the truth of what is happening’, according to library campaigner Tim Coates

A report on the future of public libraries from the prestigious Carnegie Trust has been slammed as “over-optimistic”, amid calls for it to be withdrawn. Leading library campaigner Tim Coates has filed a formal complaint with the charity’s trustees, claiming that the report, published last month, “seriously avoids the truth” about the long-term decline of the sector and misrepresents data on library use.

In an open letter, Coates says that the report, called Shining a Light, omits key evidence about the impact of cuts and underfunding and “seriously avoids the truth of what is happening”. He adds that the report “fails to draw the right conclusions from data in the research it has carried out”.

James Bond, Lord of the Rings, Narnia – the books we most pretend to have read

Fleming, Tolkien and CS Lewis are the authors that people most claim – falsely – to have read. But why? And how does this year’s most-fibbed-about list compare with those of previous years?

A few years ago, while working at a regional newspaper, I had to interview a local author about his self-published novel. It was a 500-page brick of a thriller with tiny, close type, a good third of which a professional editor would cheerfully have hacked out.

“What did you think?” the writer demanded. “Oh, I loved it,” I blithely lied, having managed about two pages before it brought on a migraine. He then quizzed me on the finer points of the sprawling, outlandish plot, and the individual characteristics and motivations of the cast of thousands. By the end , I was so exhausted I might as well have read the damn thing. But I think I got away with it.

'My body shall be all yours': the startling sex letters of Joyce, Kahlo and O'Keeffe

An eye-wateringly explicit new stage show celebrates erotic correspondence sent by famous figures through the ages

“I did as you told me, you dirty little girl, and pulled myself off twice when I read your letter.” He might be celebrated for his epic and allusive novels, but James Joyce came straight to the point when writing to his partner, Nora Barnacle. This was the opening salvo of a letter from 1908 and is just one of scores of explicit missives he sent her.

A new stage show is celebrating such letters of desire sent by famous figures through the centuries, whether explicit or coded, erotic or romantic. Theatre-maker Rachel Mars is curating a selection to be read aloud in the performance which is part of the Hotbed “festival of sex” at Camden People’s theatre in London. These will be interspersed with anonymised modern messages: texts, tweets and dating app sexts.

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