Gene Wolfe obituary

American science fiction writer whose work contained haunted, potent myths about human destiny

Between 1970 or so and the turn of the century, through a seemingly unending flow of novels and stories, the American science fiction writer Gene Wolfe, who has died aged 87, enjoyed a creative prime more intense and rewarding than any of his contempories.

Wolfe became famous for the polish and skill of his more conventional seeming sci-fi, though even early readers detected complexities under the surface. There were hints of the more hidden master, a dark artificer whose haunted, potent myths about human destiny have increasingly attracted the kind of intense study more usually given to authors outside the sci-fi field such as William Gaddis or Thomas Pynchon.

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via Science fiction books | The Guardian http://bit.ly/2UOyl5o

Amazon investigates after anti-vaxxer leaflet found hidden in children's book

Mother alarmed after anti-vaccination propaganda found inside book bought for son, who is about to receive the HPV jab

Concerns have been raised that the anti-vaccination movement is targeting children via Amazon warehouses, after a Hampshire mother found a leaflet condemning the HPV vaccine tucked inside a children’s book she had purchased from the online retailer.

Lucy Boyle bought Ali Sparkes’ Night Speakers along with several other novels as a birthday present for her 12-year-old son at the start of April. He began reading the novel last week, “got a few pages in, turned over the page and there was the leaflet,” she told the Guardian.

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Les Murray, Australian poet and literary critic, dies at the age of 80

Australia’s most renowned contemporary poet published close to 30 volumes of work

Les Murray, a distinguished figure of Australian letters, has died at the age of 80 on Monday after a long illness.

One of Australia’s most successful and renowned contemporary poets, Murray’s career spanned more than 40 years. He published close to 30 books, including most recently a volume of collected works through Black Inc.

Related: Profile: Les Murray

"Back when God made me, I had no script. It was better.
For all the death, we also die unrehearsed."

Les Murray, 1938-2019

Terribly sad to hear of Murray's passing. A towering genius in every sense. Vale. #auslit #poetry https://t.co/fUJmwR54lB

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Feminist retellings of history dominate 2019 Women's prize shortlist

From Pat Barker’s reworking of Greek myth to Anna Burns’s take on the Troubles, the finalists turn familiar stories on their heads

Novels reassessing the stories of women in history, from Pat Barker’s retelling of the Iliad to Anna Burns’s Booker-winning story of a teenage girl during the Troubles, dominate this year’s Women’s prize for fiction shortlist.

Barker, the British Booker prize-winning author famous for her Regeneration trilogy, is in the running for the £30,000 award with The Silence of the Girls, which tells the story of Briseis, a princess who is made a slave to Achilles, the man who killed her husband and brothers. Greek myth and legend are also retold by previous winner Madeline Miller in Circe, a twist on the story of the witch who seduces Homer’s Odysseus.

Related: Oyinkan Braithwaite’s serial-killer thriller: would you help your murderer sister?

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JRR Tolkien’s son ‘sexually abused by one of father’s friends’

Author’s eldest child, a priest himself accused of abuse in 2001, talks of assault in recording made by his own victim

Lord of the Rings fans who settle down to watch the film Tolkien this week will be told the story of love and young friendships that later inspired the author to write his tales of Middle-earth. What the biopic won’t show, however, is the dark scandal of abuse that continues to haunt JRR Tolkien’s family more than 45 years after his death.

Last year the independent inquiry into child sexual abuse (IICSA) heard evidence of how the eldest son of The Hobbit’s author, Father John Tolkien, abused young boys during his time as a Catholic priest in Birmingham and Stoke-on-Trent.

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Extinction Rebellion rushes activists' handbook This Is Not a Drill into print

With contributions from Rowan Williams and Green MP
Caroline Lucas, the book is being given an ‘emergency’ release by Penguin

Former archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams and Green Party MP Caroline Lucas are among the contributors to a forthcoming handbook about how to become an Extinction Rebellion activist, which will feature instructions on everything from organising roadblocks to dealing with arrest.

As 65,000 copies of Swedish student Greta Thunberg’s manifesto Rejoignez-nous (Join Us) hit French bookshops this week – with British publishers also understood to be chasing English rights to the book by the teenager who has sparked a global youth movement – This Is Not a Drill by Extinction Rebellion went from manuscript to the printers in 10 days and is being rushed out by Penguin for 3 June.

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Why are comics shops closing as superheroes make a mint?

The latest Avengers film is expected to take $1bn in its opening week, but the shops that are those characters’ natural homes are battling to stay in business

With Avengers: Endgame set to break box-office records – it is predicted to make $1bn in its first week – it seems that the superhero business really is the one to be in. In Hollywood, at least.

But what of the medium in which the superhero originated – the comic book – and the purveyors of the hundreds of comics that are released every month? The high street is not as bulletproof as multiplexes, and comic shops are having a tough time of it.

Superheroes have never been more in the public eye, but people don’t emerge from the latest Marvel movie and head to the comic shop

Related: Avengers: Endgame fans go to extraordinary lengths for franchise finale

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Nora Roberts files ‘multi-plagiarism’ lawsuit alleging writer copied more than 40 authors

After weeks of anger, bestselling novelist is suing Brazilian author Cristiane Serruya for ‘rare and scandalous’ level of plagiarism

After weeks of scandal and speculation, the bestselling author Nora Roberts has formally filed a lawsuit against Brazilian romance writer Cristiane Serruya, who stands accused of committing “multi-plagiarism” on a “rare and scandalous” level.

Roberts, who has written more than 200 novels and sold more than 500m books around the world, filed her lawsuit to a court in Rio de Janeiro. The suit claims that Serruya’s books are “a literary patchwork, piecing together phrases whose form portrays emotions practically identical to those expressed in the plaintiff’s books.” She is asking for damages at 3,000 times the value of the highest sale price for any Serruya work mentioned in the lawsuit, according to the Associated Press newswire; six of Serruya’s books are cited as including plagiarised passages, including Royal Love and From the Baroness’s Diary, with the court papers including examples of similarities with Roberts’ titles Unfinished Business, River Ends and Whiskey Beach. It also alleges plagiarism of “dozens” of other authors.

Related: Plagiarism, ‘book-stuffing’, clickfarms ... the rotten side of self-publishing

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'White Queen' died of plague, claims letter found in National Archives

Researcher says this could explain the unusually austere funeral for Elizabeth Woodville, the grandmother of Henry VIII

A 500-year-old letter discovered in the National Archives has revealed that the “White Queen” Elizabeth Woodville, the grandmother of Henry VIII, may have died of the plague.

Elizabeth, the wife of Edward IV, mother of Edward V and maternal grandmother of Henry VIII, died in 1492 after spending the last five years of her life in Bermondsey Abbey in London. No cause of death was recorded at the time, and there are no known contemporary accounts of her passing. However, while digging through transcripts and translations of Venetian documents relating to England, National Archives records specialist Euan Roger stumbled on a letter from the Venetian ambassador to London, written 19 years after her death.

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The Clockwork Condition: lost sequel to A Clockwork Orange discovered

Unfinished manuscript found among Anthony Burgess’s papers was described by the author as ‘a major philosophical statement on the contemporary human condition’

A lost “sequel” to Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange, in which the author explores the moral panic that followed the release of Stanley Kubrick’s film adaptation of his novel, has been found among papers he abandoned in his home near Rome in the 1970s.

The unfinished manuscript of The Clockwork Condition was written by Burgess in 1972 and 1973, after Kubrick’s 1971 adaptation of A Clockwork Orange was accused of inspiring copycat crimes, and was banned for decades. The 1962 novel A Clockwork Orange, Burgess’s most famous work, is set in a dystopian future, where teenager Alex and his gang revel in “ultraviolence” until the state sets about his re-education.

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EL James’s new romance whipped by critics, but still romps to No 1

The Mister sells more than 52,000 copies in a week to top book charts – but is nowhere near equivalent sales of her Fifty Shades books

EL James’s move away from the whips and handcuffs of Christian Grey to the more straightforward sexual predilections of a British aristocrat and his Albanian cleaner has landed her at the top of this week’s book charts.

The Mister, James’s first novel outside the world of Fifty Shades of Grey, focuses on the romance between Maxim Trevelyan, an earl, model, photographer and DJ, and his sex-trafficked cleaner Alessia. It sold 52,674 physical copies in its first week on sale, according to sales monitor Nielsen BookScan. This places it at No 1 on the book charts, ahead of titles by authors including Lee Child, cleaning guru Mrs Hinch, and the hit cookbook Pinch of Nom.

Related: EL James's The Mister – turns out books and sex can be this bad

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Living by the pen: British Library explores history of writing

Telegram from playwright John Osborne and Greek child’s 2,000-year-old homework among exhibits

Any modern child fretting about how they messed up their homework can be reassured – the ancient Egyptians could be just as hopeless.

“It is a bit of a disaster … it’s not good,” said curator Adrian Edwards of the 2,000-year-old Greek homework of an Egyptian child, on display at the British Library.

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Tolkien film-makers insist they were respectful after estate disavows biopic

Fox Searchlight says it is ‘so proud’ of biopic starring Nicholas Hoult, after frosty reception from the Lord of the Rings author’s estate

The makers of a forthcoming biopic about JRR Tolkien have stressed their “utmost respect and admiration” for the Lord of the Rings author, after his family distanced themselves from the film.

Fox Searchlight’s Tolkien, starring Nicholas Hoult as the author and Lily Collins as his wife Edith, is out in May. On Tuesday, the author’s estate and family issued a statement in which they said that they “did not approve of, authorise or participate in the making of this film”, and that they “do not endorse it or its content in any way”.

Related: Tolkien estate disavows forthcoming film starring Nicholas Hoult

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Lebanese author Hoda Barakat wins International prize for Arabic fiction

The Night Mail takes $50,000 prize and secures funding for an English translation

Lebanese author Hoda Barakat has won the $50,000 (£39,000) International prize for Arabic fiction (Ipaf) for her novel The Night Mail, which tells the stories of people in exile through their letters.

Billed as the “Arabic Booker”, the Ipaf also provides funding to translate the book into English. The Night Mail has already been acquired by UK publisher Oneworld, which will publish the English version in 2020.

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Robyn Crawford's memoir to detail her relationship with Whitney Houston

A Song for You: My Life With Whitney Houston will describe the nature of the pair’s friendship, from meeting as teenagers to their estrangement in 2000

Robyn Crawford is to publish a memoir about her relationship with the late soul-pop star Whitney Houston.

The book will mark the first time Crawford has spoken publicly about what a press release describes as “the moving and often complicated story of her life and relationship with Whitney” since the star’s death in 2012.

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Boris Johnson's much-delayed Shakespeare book now set for 2020

Publisher confirms Shakespeare: The Riddle of Genius will come out four years later than scheduled – and that it is still not finished

After indefinitely delaying his book on the riddle of “Shakespeare’s genius” due to the knotty puzzle of Brexit, Boris Johnson’s book on the Bard is finally set see the light of day, nearly four years late.

Originally scheduled to be published in October 2016, Johnson’s Shakespeare: The Riddle of Genius was delayed, with its publisher Hodder & Stoughton saying at the time that the book would “not be published for the foreseeable future”.

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Tolkien estate disavows forthcoming film starring Nicholas Hoult

Lord of the Rings author’s estate declares it did not ‘approve of, authorise or participate in the making of’ new biopic

The family and estate of JRR Tolkien have fired a broadside against the forthcoming film starring Nicholas Hoult as a young version of the author, saying that they “do not endorse it or its content in any way”.

Out in May, and starring Hoult in the title role and Lily Collins as his wife Edith, Tolkien explores “the formative years of the renowned author’s life as he finds friendship, courage and inspiration among a fellow group of writers and artists at school”. Directed by Dome Karukoski, it promises to reveal how “their brotherhood strengthens as they grow up … until the outbreak of thde first world war which threatens to tear their fellowship apart”, all of which, according to studio Fox Searchlight, would inspire Tolkien to “write his famous Middle-earth novels”.

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Prince's 'deeply personal' memoir announced for October

The Beautiful Ones, originally announced weeks before the singer’s death, will be released on 29 October

Prince’s unfinished memoir, The Beautiful Ones, is finally set to be released, three years after his death.

Publisher Random House confirmed to the Associated Press on Monday that The Beautiful Ones will be released in October. Spanning from his childhood to his final days as one of the most successful musical acts of all time, the long-awaited memoir will contain Prince’s unfinished manuscript alongside photos from his personal collection, scrapbooks and lyrics, including his original handwritten treatment for his 1984 hit Purple Rain.

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Why Harry Potter and Paddington Bear are essential reading … for grown-ups

Oxford don champions children’s books as figures show that sales to adults are soaring

By day, she researches the poetry of John Donne as a fellow of All Souls College, Oxford. But in the evening, when Dr Katherine Rundell wants a bit of comfort, she reads Paddington. “As an adult, the thing I love about Paddington is that the structure Michael Bond has built into his books is one of hope. Things which appear to be negative turn out to be just cogs in the greater machine. I think Bond sees life as miraculous – and that’s in the structure of the book.”

In her own forthcoming work, Why You Should Read Children’s Books, Even Though You Are So Old and Wise, Rundell argues that children’s literature offers unique insights and distinctive imaginative experiences to adults. “Defy those who would tell you to be serious,” she writes, “those who would limit joy in the name of propriety. Cut shame off at the knees... Plunge yourself soul-forward into a children’s book: see ifyou do not find in them an unexpected alchemy; if they will not un-dig in you something half hidden and half forgotten.”

Related: The best children’s books of 2018 for all ages

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Book of prayers returned to library 43 years late

Estimated late fine on book would be £6,278, tweets Royal Holloway University

A book has been returned to a library in a Surrey town after 43 years, alongside a letter including clues about who had borrowed it.

Related: 'A pen can change the world': the duo behind the 'world's largest public library'

Related: George Washington's library book returned, 221 years later

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Theresa Lola named young people's laureate for London

The 24-year-old from Bromley hopes to help young people use poetry to ‘celebrate themselves’, as under-34s drive sales to record high

Poet Theresa Lola, named the new young people’s laureate for London, says she hopes to use the role to help the capital’s demonised youth to find confidence in their voice.

The 24-year-old British-Nigerian from Bromley, south London, studied accounting and finance at university before turning to poetry. She is the third young people’s laureate, after Caleb Femi and Momtaza Mehri. The joint winner of the 2018 Brunel international African poetry prize, her debut collection, In Search of Equilibrium was published in February, and was described as breathtaking by author Bernardine Evaristo.

Biography

Related: Generation next: the rise – and rise – of the new poets

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Barcelona school removes 200 sexist children's books

Other schools look to follow after Tàber school takes out one-third of its collection, deeming the books ‘highly stereotypical and sexist’

Several schools across Barcelona are considering purging their libraries of stereotypical and sexist children’s books, after one removed around 200 titles, including Little Red Riding Hood and the story of the legend of Saint George, from its library.

The Tàber school’s infant library of around 600 children’s books was reviewed by the Associació Espai i Lleure as part of a project that aims to highlight hidden sexist content. The group reviewed the characters in each book, whether or not they speak and what roles they perform, finding that 30% of the books were highly sexist, had strong stereotypes and were, in its opinion, of no pedagogical value.

Related: Must monsters always be male? Huge gender bias revealed in children’s books

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'It drives writers mad': why are authors still sniffy about sci-fi?

This week, Ian McEwan said his new AI novel was not science fiction – and the world went mad. Sarah Ditum looks at why the genre retains its outsider status

Ian McEwan’s latest novel, Machines Like Me, is a fiction about science – specifically, artificial intelligence. It is set in an alternative reality where Alan Turing does not kill himself but invents the internet instead; where JFK is never assassinated and Margaret Thatcher’s premiership ends with the beginning of the Falklands war. The near future of the real world becomes the present of the novel, giving McEwan the space to explore prescient what-ifs: what if a robot could think like a human, or human intelligence could not tell the difference between itself and AI?

Machines Like Me is not, however, science fiction, at least according to its author. “There could be an opening of a mental space for novelists to explore this future,” McEwan said in a recent interview, “not in terms of travelling at 10 times the speed of light in anti-gravity boots, but in actually looking at the human dilemmas.” There is, as many readers noticed, a whiff of genre snobbery here, with McEwan drawing an impermeable boundary between literary fiction and science fiction, and placing himself firmly on the respectable side of the line.

In 1968, Vladimir Nabokov told the BBC: 'I loathe science fiction with its gals and goons, suspense and suspensories'

Science fiction retains a rather juvenile set of associations that can make readers embarrassed to enjoy it. Some decide, if they like a book, it’s too good to be SF

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via Science fiction books | The Guardian http://bit.ly/2GupvpL

Charlotte Brontë's hair found in ring on Antique's Roadshow, say experts

Ring discovered in attic and presented on TV show contains braid of author’s hair and was probably made to mark her death

A lock of braided hair in a ring discovered in a Welsh attic is “very likely” to have been the hair of Charlotte Brontë, according to the Brontë Society.

The ring came to light on the latest episode of the Antiques Roadshow, filmed in Erddig, north Wales. An unidentified woman said it had belonged to her late father-in-law. It has an inscription on the inside, bearing the name of the author of Jane Eyre, and the date of her death in 1855.

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Unseen Kafka works may soon be revealed after Kafkaesque trial

Zurich court rules safe-deposit boxes can be opened and shipped to Israel library

A long-hidden trove of unpublished works by Franz Kafka could soon be revealed after a decade-long battle over his literary estate that has drawn comparisons to some of his surreal tales.

A district court in Zurich upheld Israeli verdicts in the case last week, ruling that several safe-deposit boxes in the Swiss city could be opened and their contents shipped to Israel’s national library.

Related: Kafka’s Last Trial by Benjamin Balint review – long battle over a literary legacy

Related: Up in smoke: should an author's dying wishes be obeyed?

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Hunchback of Notre-Dame goes to top of bestseller list after fire

Different editions of the Victor Hugo classic occupy five slots in Amazon France’s top 10

Victor Hugo’s 19th-century literary classic The Hunchback of Notre-Dame has soared to the top of France’s online bestseller list after the fire that ravaged the 850-year-old Paris cathedral on Monday night.

By Wednesday morning different editions of the 1831 novel occupied the first, third, fifth, seventh and eighth slots in Amazon France’s bestseller list, with a history of the gothic architectural masterpiece taking sixth place.

Related: Notre Dame and the culture it inspired – from Matisse to the Muppets

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Unknown Daphne du Maurier poems discovered behind photo frame

Poems believed to have been written by the Rebecca author in her 20s were found by auctioneers before a sale of intimate letters

A handful of youthful poems by Daphne du Maurier have been found in an archive of letters, with two previously unknown discovered hidden behind a photograph frame.

The two unknown poems were found tucked underneath a photo of a young Du Maurier in a swimming costume standing on rocks, which was part of an archive of more than 40 years of correspondence between the author and her close friend Maureen Baker-Munton, now put up for auction by Baker-Munton’s son Kristen.

“When I was ten, I thought the greatest bliss / Would be to rest all day upon hot sand under a burning sun .. / Time has slipped by, and finally I’ve known / The lure of beaches under exotic skies / And find my dreams to be misguided lies / For God! how dull it is to rest alone.”

Related: Sex, jealousy and gender: Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca 80 years on

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Gene Wolfe, 'magnificent' giant of science fiction, dies aged 87

Hailed by authors from George RR Martin to Neil Gaiman, Wolfe was most known for his magnum opus The Book of the New Sun

Gene Wolfe, a towering figure in science fiction whose magnum opus The Book of the New Sun was hailed as a masterpiece by Ursula K Le Guin, has died at the age of 87.

Wolfe’s publisher Tor, when announcing the news on Monday, described him as a “beloved icon”. “He leaves behind an impressive body of work, but nonetheless, he will be dearly missed,” said the publisher, pointing to The Book of the New Sun’s ranking in third place in a Locus magazine poll of fantasy novels – behind only The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit.

Related: Gene Wolfe by Neil Gaiman

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via Science fiction books | The Guardian http://bit.ly/2Zom3V8

Gene Wolfe, 'magnificent' giant of science fiction, dies aged 87

Hailed by authors from George RR Martin to Neil Gaiman, Wolfe was most known for his magnum opus The Book of the New Sun

Gene Wolfe, a towering figure in science fiction whose magnum opus The Book of the New Sun was hailed as a masterpiece by Ursula K Le Guin, has died at the age of 87.

Wolfe’s publisher Tor, when announcing the news on Monday, described him as a “beloved icon”. “He leaves behind an impressive body of work, but nonetheless, he will be dearly missed,” said the publisher, pointing to The Book of the New Sun’s ranking in third place in a Locus magazine poll of fantasy novels – behind only The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit.

Related: Gene Wolfe by Neil Gaiman

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Fewer than 2% of British children's authors are people of colour

Only 1.96% of authors and illustrators between 2007 and 2017 were British people of colour, compared to 13% of the population

For a decade in the UK, fewer than 2% of all children’s book creators – authors and illustrators – were British people of colour, according to the latest research into the publishing industry’s systemic lack of diversity.

Commissioned by BookTrust, the UK’s largest children’s reading charity, the report by UCL associate professor Melanie Ramdarshan Bold combines an analysis of all children’s books published in the UK between 2007 and 2017, as well as interviews with 15 writers of colour including Benjamin Zephaniah and Malorie Blackman. BookTrust director of children’s books Jill Coleman said it reveals a “desperate lack” of people of colour in the industry.

Related: Why are children’s books stuck in monochrome? | Sanchita Basu De Sarkar

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Mary Bryant’s great escape from Australian prison comes to life in novel

Meg Keneally tells how childhood stories told by her father, Schindler’s Ark author Thomas, inspired her novel

She is celebrated as the first woman to escape from life as a convict in Australia, a fearless Cornishwoman who stole a boat in 1791 with her family and other convicts and sailed to East Timor in search of a new life. Now Mary Bryant and her remarkable journey – which ended in her being recaptured and sent back to England – has inspired a historical novel, Fled, by Australian author Meg Keneally.

Keneally, daughter of Booker prize-winning Thomas, who wrote the novel on which Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List was based, said it was her father who first introduced her to Bryant’s astonishing story.

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The best recent science fiction – review roundup

Beneath the World, a Sea by Chris Beckett; From the Wreck by Jane Rawson; Zero Bomb by MT Hill; Poster Boy by NJ Crosskey; and A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine

Chris Beckett brings literary flair and sociological insight to his award-winning science fiction, and his seventh novel, Beneath the World, a Sea (Corvus, £17.99), is no exception. Repressed London policeman Ben Ronson, a specialist in “culturally sanctioned crimes”, is sent by the UN to the strange realm of the Submundo Delta, in South America. With its own flora and fauna and a zone that induces amnesia, the Delta is unlike anywhere else on Earth: visitors find themselves stranded in an affectless psychological Sargasso. Creole settlers have been killing the native lifeforms known as duendes, humanoid creatures who have a destabilising psychic effect on the minds of observers. Ronson is tasked with bringing an end to the killings, but his interactions with the residents, tourists and scientists – who have their own shady reasons for visiting the Delta – lead to a Kafkaesque rite of passage in which he must come to terms with his dark inner self. Beckett is superb at undercutting reader assumptions with a casual line of dialogue or acute psychological observation: the book reads like Conrad’s Heart of Darkness reimagined by JG Ballard.

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via Science fiction books | The Guardian http://bit.ly/2v2FeWu

Why Mrs Hinch and the 'cleanfluencers' are sweeping up the book charts

Sophie Hinchliffe, a hairdresser who dispenses cleaning advice to 2.3m Instagram followers, has sold more than 160,000 copies of her first book in three days. What’s going on?

In 1861, the original domestic goddess Mrs Beeton warned her readers: “not only health but life may be said to depend on the cleanliness of culinary utensils.” More than a century and a half later, more than 150,000 people have rushed to snap up a copy of Instagram “cleanfluencer” Mrs Hinch’s guide to a spotless home, Hinch Yourself Happy, which promises to reveal “how a spot of cleaning is the perfect way to cleanse the soul”.

Mrs Hinch, AKA Sophie Hinchliffe, is a hairdresser from Essex who dispenses regular cleaning advice to her 2.3 million Instagram followers: how to make a bed “‘bedgasm’ ready for the week ahead”, her favourite cleaning gloves, dousing her bathroom in disinfectant and karate-chopping cushions. Her book, a mix of memoir and advice, promises that cleaning (which she calls “hinching”) “can soothe anxiety and stress”, according to her publisher Michael Joseph, which bought the rights to the book in a “heated” 11-way auction in December. Published on 4 April, the book sold sold 160,302 copies in three days – making it the second fastest-selling non-fiction title of all time, just behind Kate Allinson and Kay Featherstone’s recipe collection Pinch of Nom, which broke the record just last month by selling 210,506 copies in three days.

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David Cameron memoir still set for autumn, despite Brexit extension

Despite a reported agreement between Cameron and Theresa May, publisher William Collins confirms it will be published before latest Brexit deadline

David Cameron’s publisher has insisted that the former prime minister’s memoirs are still due out this autumn “as planned”, following reports that the autobiography has been delayed due to the extended Brexit deadline.

Cameron sold his memoir to publisher William Collins for a reported £800,000 in 2016, promising that he would “be frank about what worked and what didn’t”. The deal came shortly after he stepped down as an MP to avoid being a “distraction” to Theresa May.

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'It's massive, it's hard, I don't understand it!' TS Eliot dance show hits UK

As her acclaimed take on Four Quartets heads to London, choreographer Pam Tanowitz explains why she’s still trying to crack the poem

Her choreography has been hailed by the New York Times as some of the greatest dance being made in the world. And yet her creations have never been performed outside the US until now. Next month, Pam Tanowitz’s Four Quartets will receive its UK premiere at London’s Barbican.

It is the first time the TS Eliot estate has granted permission for the poet’s last great work to be used in a dance production. Tanowitz had been carrying lines from it in her head for a decade before Gideon Lester, artistic director at Bard College, New York, commissioned her to choreograph a piece to mark the 75th anniversary of the first publication of the Four Quartets last summer.

The production was two years in the making, but Tanowitz has still not cracked all of the poem’s secrets. “It’s massive, it’s hard, it’s abstract. I still don’t understand the poem,” she says. “I don’t think you would ever understand it. It’s the kind of thing where you pick it up in a different headspace, age, or whatever’s going on in your life, and you get different things from it.”

Four Quartets is at the Barbican, London, 22-25 May.

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JK Rowling backs crime writing scheme for BAME and working-class women

The author is supporting the Killer Women mentoring programme saying she knows how hard it is to be unknown

JK Rowling has backed a new scheme aimed at discovering female crime writers from black, Asian, minority ethnic (BAME) and working-class backgrounds, hoping that it will help “open doors to new and as yet undiscovered voices in crime fiction”.

Killer Women, an author collective of 20 female crime writers, opens its new mentoring scheme on Wednesday for unpublished women from under-represented backgrounds who want to write crime or thriller novels. Entrants must submit a synopsis and sample chapters of their writing and the four winners will receive mentoring and support from writers including the award-winning Jane Casey, author of the Maeve Kerrigan series, and Emma Kavanagh, a police and military psychologist turned crime author.

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'Extraordinary' 500-year-old library catalogue reveals books lost to time

The Libro de los Epítomes was a catalogue for Hernando Colón’s 16th-century collection, which he intended to be the biggest in the world

It sounds like something from Carlos Ruiz Zafón’s The Shadow of the Wind and his The Cemetery of Forgotten Books: a huge volume containing thousands of summaries of books from 500 years ago, many of which no longer exist. But the real deal has been found in Copenhagen, where it has lain untouched for more than 350 years.

The Libro de los Epítomes manuscript, which is more than a foot thick, contains more than 2,000 pages and summaries from the library of Hernando Colón, the illegitimate son of Christopher Columbus who made it his life’s work to create the biggest library the world had ever known in the early part of the 16th century. Running to around 15,000 volumes, the library was put together during Colón’s extensive travels. Today, only around a quarter of the books in the collection survive and have been housed in Seville Cathedral since 1552.

It’s an amazing story. Instead of being a needle in a haystack, it was a needle in a bunch of other needles

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Man Booker International shortlist dominated by women authors and translators

Six-book shortlist includes last year’s winner Olga Tokarczuk, Annie Ernaux and Juan Gabriel Vásquez

In an unprecedented gender split, women have dominated the 2019 Man Booker International shortlist, with five female authors and an all-female cast of translators up for the £50,000 prize.

Whittled down from 108 books in 25 languages to six books in five languages – Arabic, French, Spanish, German and Polish – the prestigious award for fiction in translation, split equally between author and translator, has never had so many women shortlisted.

Related: Lost to translation: how English readers miss out on foreign female writers

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Rachel Cusk archive snapped up by library – despite burnt and lost manuscripts

Harry Ransom Center in Texas, which buys papers of authors including Ian McEwan and Arthur Miller, has acquired Cusk’s notebooks, laptop and even drawings by her children

The papers of the Canadian-born novelist Rachel Cusk have been acquired by a library and museum at the University of Texas at Austin. The cache, however, contains none of her draft manuscripts, which she admitted had been used to light fires, drawn on by her children, or lost.

Cusk’s archive, comprisingn items dating from the 1980s to the present day, include more than a dozen notebooks, teaching notes and diary entries, as well as drawings by her children, records of everyday life and a MacBook Pro laptop. They have been acquired for an undisclosed sum by the Harry Ransom Center, a library and museum at the university that is also home to the archives of Ian McEwan and Arthur Miller.

When my children were small I used to fantasise about the writer’s life, the life I believed other writers were living

Related: Rachel Cusk on the reaction of women to her book A Life's Work

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Beowulf the work of one author, research suggests

Debate over whether poem was written by multiple authors or one has raged for years

Beowulf, the epic poem of derring-do and monsters, was composed by a single author, research suggests, pouring cold water on the idea it was stitched together from two poems.

One of the most famous works in Old English, Beowulf tells of the eponymous hero who defeats the monster Grendel and his mother, thereby rescuing the Danes from a reign of terror, before dying after a battle in which he defeats a dragon.

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Waterstones staff deliver petition for living wage to company HQ

Booksellers from branches across the country challenge managing director James Daunt, some saying they can’t afford food and rent

Waterstones staff testified to cutting back on food in order to afford rent as they travelled across the country to deliver a 9,300-signature petition to the chain’s London headquarters, calling for the introduction of a living wage.

On Monday, booksellers from branches around the UK were heading to Waterstones Piccadilly to deliver the petition, which asks managing director James Daunt to start paying staff a real living wage of £9 an hour, or £10.55 in Greater London. When the petition, started by a Waterstones staff member, first came to light, 2,400 writers including Kerry Hudson, Sally Rooney and David Nicholls put their names to a second petition, asking Daunt to consider offering booksellers “the financial recognition deserving of their skill, passion, expertise and hard work”.

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Trends for spring: what’s new in the world of design

A seaweed house, eye-popping cakes, furniture as art and art as furniture are among the ideas turning heads this season

It kills sea turtles, eats through pipes, blights beaches, smells awful and plays havoc with asthma sufferers. It is sargassum, a brown seaweed or algae – brown because it’s likely infected with agricultural fertilisers and wastewater. Would you like a house made from it? Mexican inventor Omar Sánchez Vázquez does. The proud owner of the world’s first home made from sargassum points out the algae is a highly functional, thermal, organic material which absorbs its own weight in carbon dioxide, is half the price of traditional bricks and strong enough to withstand hurricanes. Baking the algae bricks “gets rid of the stink” and if you jazz them up with plants, even the waste colour doesn’t look so bad.

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Yinka Shonibare's tribute to UK diversity acquired by Tate

The British Library artwork features thousands of books celebrating cultural icons

A library with thousands of batik-bound books celebrating the diversity of the British population has been acquired by Tate.

Yinka Shonibare’s artwork, The British Library, has gone on display at Tate Modern after being bought for the permanent collection.

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John Oliver's Pence parody about gay rabbit among most-objected books

• Library association names 2018’s most complained about titles
• Alex Gino’s George, story of transgender child, tops list

Not everyone was amused by John Oliver’s send-up of a picture book by the wife and daughter of Vice-President Mike Pence.

Last Week Tonight With John Oliver Presents A Day in the Life of Marlon Bundo, in which the Pence’s family bunny turns out to be gay, was among the books most objected to in 2018 at US public libraries.

Related: John Oliver: ‘Maybe Brexit is a great idea. There’s absolutely nothing to suggest that’

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Philip Pullman leads call for UK government action on ebook piracy

Pullman calls piracy ‘an offence against moral justice’ as authors including Kazuo Ishiguro and Margaret Drabble issue warning to business secretary Greg Clark

Philip Pullman has described ebook piracy as “an offence against moral justice”, as he and authors including Nobel laureate Kazuo Ishiguro and Margaret Drabble call on the UK government to take action against the “blight” of online book piracy.

Pullman, who is president of the Society of Authors, is one of 33 writers to have put their names to a letter to the business secretary, Greg Clark. The authors – who also include novelists Joanna Trollope and Malorie Blackman, poet Wendy Cope and historian Antony Beevor – say that illegal book downloads are becoming increasingly prevalent, pointing to research from the Intellectual Property Office that one in six ebooks read online in the UK are pirated.

Related: 'I can get any novel I want in 30 seconds': can book piracy be stopped?

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Put the word out: Chiswick may be Britain’s most literary location

London suburb names former residents from Betjeman and Burgess to Thackeray and Yeats among its 250 writers

Bath, Edinburgh and the Lake District are each deeply steeped in literary history and are justly proud, while Stratford-upon-Avon could claim to being the single most important literary destination in Britain. But now there is an unlikely new contender. The largely well-heeled London suburb of Chiswick is claiming that a succession of literary residents makes it the top writerly neighbourhood in the country.

Among Chiswick’s line-up, now set out for inspection on a literary timeline, are two winners of the Nobel prize in literature, one Booker prize winner, two Oscar winners and a poet laureate. With the tally of local writers now reaching 250, what started as a Twitter boast is gaining ground. And this weekend, as Chiswick prepares for its literary festival, a challenge has gone out to other suburbs, towns and villages: can you beat Chiswick?

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Free short story vending machines delight commuters

‘Short story stations’ in Canary Wharf print one- three- and five-minute reads on demand

“Every single day,” says Paresh Raichura, “I’m on the lookout for something new to read.” On his hour-long commute to Canary Wharf, where he works for the Financial Ombudsman, he picks up Time Out or a local paper or the freesheet Metro, but says: “I’ve stopped reading all the long novels I used to read.”

Why?

Related: The Guardian view on fiction vending machines: attention seekers | Editorial

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Amazon shoppers misled by 'bundled' star-ratings and reviews

Guardian study finds inferior items appear highly praised, making ratings worthless

Badly translated versions of classic books and critically panned remakes of Hollywood films appear to have glowing endorsements on Amazon thanks to the website’s policy of bundling together reviews of different products.

Analysis by the Guardian shows products that have actually been given one-star ratings appear alongside rave reviews of better quality items, making it impossible for consumers to judge the true value of what they are about to buy.

We would like to hear from readers who have noticed similar issues to those mentioned here. You can share your experiences with us by filling in this encrypted form – anonymously if you wish. We will not publish anything without contacting you and only the Guardian has access to contributions. You can read terms of service here.

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Vonda N McIntyre obituary | Steve Holland

A leading writer of science fiction for half a century

Vonda N McIntyre, who has died aged 70, was foremost among a legion of new female science-fiction authors in the early 1970s inspired by humanist writers such as Ursula K Le Guin, Joanna Russ and Samuel Delany. With Dreamsnake (1978), she became only the second woman to win the Nebula award and the third to win the Hugo award for best novel.

Dreamsnake was the story of a young healer, Snake, who uses genetically modified serpents to deliver healing venom; a third serpent – the dreamsnake – is used when the patient is incurable. An error in trust leads to the death of her dreamsnake and Snake struggles to function fully as a healer.

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via Science fiction books | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2TTnUgt

HarperCollins UK profits double due to Tolkien TV deal with Amazon

Boost from rights sale for multi-series adaptation, as eBooks continue to decline

The publisher HarperCollins UK has more than doubled its profits thanks to a hugely lucrative deal with Amazon for the rights to make multiple TV series based on The Lord of the Rings for its global streaming service.

The 200-year old book publisher said the Amazon rights deal had fuelled record profits of £24.9m for the year to the end of June 2018.

Welcome to the Second Age: https://t.co/Tamd0oRgTw

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JK Rowling PA must repay author £18,734 after court rules fraud

Harry Potter author sought damages against Amanda Donaldson ‘to protect reputation of existing staff’

A sheriff has ordered a former personal assistant of JK Rowling to repay £18,734 to the Harry Potter author £18,734 after ruling she had obtained the money fraudulently.

JK Rowling sought damages against Amanda Donaldson in a civil case brought under the author’s married name, Joanne Murray.

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Polish priest apologises for Harry Potter book burning

Reverend says the public destruction of ‘evil’ items, including JK Rowling’s books and Buddhist figurines, was not intended to condemn specific authors or religions

A priest in northern Poland who led a public burning of books that included Harry Potter titles and other “evil” items parishioners wanted destroyed has apologised.

Father Rafał Jarosiewicz called the burning of objects thought to be connected to magic and the occult, and deemed by their owners to be an evil force, “unfortunate”. Images from the burning last Sunday at the Catholic parish of Our Lady Mother of the Church and St Catherine of Sweden, in Gdansk, were originally posted on the Facebook page of SMS z Nieba (SMS from Heaven) , a foundation that uses unconventional means to carry out religious work across Poland.

Related: Harry Potter among books burned by priests in Poland

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Short story vending machines to transport London commuters

The machines, made by French company Short Édition, will dispense free one, three and five-minute stories … with the first penned by Anthony Horowitz

Weary city workers will have a new way of passing the time on their commute once the UK’s first short-story vending machines are installed at Canary Wharf this week.

Dispensing one, three and five-minute stories free to passersby at the touch of a button, the vending machines are made by French company Short Édition. They already feature in locations across France, in Hong Kong and the US, where Godfather director Francis Ford Coppola was such a fan he invested in the company and had a dispenser installed at his San Francisco restaurant, Cafe Zoetrope.

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Harry Potter among books burned by priests in Poland

Anti-sorcery post by evangelical Catholic group widely mocked on Facebook

Catholic priests in Poland have burned books that they say promote sorcery, including one of JK Rowling’s Harry Potter novels, in a ceremony they photographed and posted on Facebook.

Three priests in the northern city of Koszalin were pictured carrying the books in a large basket from inside a church to a stone area outside. The books were set alight as prayers were said and a small group of people watched on. A mask, various trinkets and a “Hello Kitty” umbrella were also visible in the pictures of the makeshift bonfire.

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