Royal Mint will also mark George III’s reign and VE Day 75th anniversary in 2020
King George III’s reign and the 75th anniversary of VE Day are due to be commemorated on coins released this year, the Royal Mint has revealed.
The new British coin collection will also mark 100 years since Dame Agatha Christie published her first novel and celebrate Team GB in the lead-up to the Tokyo Olympic Games.
Continue reading...Sonny Mehta, the head of Alfred A Knopf who led one of the book world’s most esteemed imprints to new heights, has died. He was 77.
Related: From The Big Short to Normal People: the books that defined the decade
Continue reading...Trade group representing 10,000 writers decided to punish author Courtney Milan, prompted a reversal, fierce debate and resignations
For years, romance publishing has been roiled by an increasingly fierce debate over the ways an industry largely controlled by white women has treated authors of color. Now, the romance industry’s largest trade group is facing backlash for trying to formally discipline a best-selling author for calling another author’s book a “fucking racist mess”.
Related: Fifty shades of white: the long fight against racism in romance novels
Continue reading...Ex-president’s picks include subjects from surveillance capitalism and the attention economy to feminism and race in Britain
Former US president Barack Obama has released a list of his favorite books of 2019, the latest in his annual tradition for sharing his curated cultural highlights of the year.
The list of 19 fiction and non-fiction titles encompasses a range of subjects from surveillance capitalism and the attention economy to feminism and race in Britain, and includes the work of a writer dubbed “the first great millennial novelist”.
As we wind down 2019, I wanted to share with you my annual list of favorites that made the last year a little brighter. We’ll start with books today — movies and music coming soon. I hope you enjoy these as much as I did. pic.twitter.com/l5qTGkAPok
The Yellow House by Sarah M Broom, described by writer Casey Cep as a “beautiful memoir, and it gives you a rich and complex portrait of the city” of New Orleans.
Cep’s own latest work, Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud and the Last Trial of Harper Lee, an account of Lee’s lost true-crime book
How To Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy by Jenny Odell
Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion by Jia Tolentino
The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power by Shoshana Zuboff
The Anarchy: The Relentless Rise of the East India Company by William Dalrymple
Normal People by Sally Rooney
Continue reading...Actor who starred in the controversial 1962 adaptation of Nabokov’s novel as a 14-year-old never matched its impact in her subsequent career
Sue Lyon, who at age 14 played the title character in the 1962 film adaptation of Vladimir Nabokov’s controversial novel Lolita, has died at age 73.
Longtime friend Phil Syracopoulos told The New York Times she died on Thursday in Los Angeles. He gave no cause of death.
Continue reading...The writer, artist and passionate Scottish nationalist was hailed as a ‘necessary genius’ for novels including Lanark and Poor Things
The writer and artist Alasdair Gray, who blazed a trail for contemporary Scottish fiction with his experimental novels, has died aged 85.
Gray came to fiction late, publishing his first novel Lanark at the age of 46 in 1981. A experimental, pornographic fantasy – 1982, Janine – followed three years later, with a rambunctious reworking of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Poor Things, appearing in 1992. As his literary reputation increased, winning both the Guardian fiction prize and the Whitbread novel award in 1992, the elaborate illustrations he created for his books began to draw attention to the pictorial art Gray had been producing all along. The stream of commissions for murals and portraits gradually increased, with writers such as Ali Smith hailing him as “a necessary genius”, and he finished his career as one of Scotland’s most admired and versatile artists.
Related: Alasdair Gray: 'I don't hate anybody'
Continue reading...Vanessa Springora describes relationship with Gabriel Matzneff, then 50, in new book
The French literary world is in shock after a leading publishing director, Vanessa Springora, alleged in a new book that she was groomed into a damaging relationship from the age of 14 with an acclaimed author who was 50.
Springora’s book, Le Consentement (Consent), will be published in France in January and has already been met with critical acclaim and sent shockwaves through the close-knit world of Paris intellectuals. It has been described as a #MeToo moment for France’s literary circles.
Continue reading...Wealthy deceased people become short-stay ‘tourists’ in young, living bodies in this dystopic thought experiment
Jane Rogers has written some highly regarded literary fiction, not least her fine historical novel Mr Wroe’s Virgins in 1991. But she’s no stranger to science fiction, either: The Testament of Jessie Lamb, about a near future in which a virus is killing off pregnant women, won the 2012 Arthur C Clarke award. Her new novel is another sci-fi dystopia, set in a Britain in which the bulk of the population are stuck in mega “estates” (“81% of children born on estates have never been off them”, we’re told; “90% have never seen the sea or a live animal”), living hardscrabble lives, addicted to immersive virtual reality games and pornography.
Into this grimly plausible extrapolation from today, Rogers drops the novel’s main premise. A scientist called Luke Butler has come up with a way of uploading the consciousnesses of dead people into the bodies of the young. This technology has revolutionary potential, although Luke develops it both secretively and recklessly. He is, we’re told, “on the spectrum” personality-wise, which seems an odd explanation for his positively Frankensteinian disregard of consequences.
Related: The Testament of Jessie Lamb by Jane Rogers – review
The handling of race seems not only derivative but thin compared with Jordan Peele’s terrifying 2017 movie Get Out
Continue reading...A PhD student has uncovered compelling evidence that parts of Oliver Twist were inspired by the work of a fellow Victorian writer
Disturbing scenes from the early life of Oliver Twist, Charles Dickens’s orphaned “item of mortality”, are among the most familiar in English literature. They have become the basis for popular films, television dramas and a much-loved musical.
But now a PhD student has identified a previously unknown source of inspiration for several of the most affecting elements in the novel, including the notorious underground world of Fagin, the seedy leader of a troop of young pickpockets.
Continue reading...At 92, Shirley Hughes has written a Christmas sequel to her enduring tale of a lost toy. Her son, who is the real Dogger’s owner, tells all…
Most mornings, when in London, I climb the stairs of the house where I grew up during the 1950s and 60s to what was my bedroom, now my mother’s studio – and there she is, at the drawing board, aged 92.
The woman that countless grandparents, parents and children call Shirley Hughes and Philip Pullman calls “a national treasure”, I have the honour of calling Mum.
Continue reading...Delia Owens’ Where the Crawdads Sing has sold more copies than any other title this year – but how does an unsolved murder fit in?
A retired wildlife biologist who spent much of her career studying hyenas, lions and elephants in southern Africa has emerged – at the age of 70 – as one of the most successful authors of the year or any year, with her debut novel one of the sleeper hits of 2019.
Related: Leah Purcell on reinventing The Drover's Wife three times: 'I borrowed and stole from each'
Related: Fights, food and fall outs: why Christmas is a gift to novelists
Continue reading...Court says state is entitled to any profits from Permanent Record because its publication breached non-disclosure agreements
Edward Snowden is not entitled to the profits from his memoir Permanent Record, and any money made must go to the US government, a judge has ruled.
Permanent Record, in which Snowden recounts how he came to the decision to leak the top secret documents revealing government plans for mass surveillance, was published in September. Shortly afterwards, the US government filed a civil lawsuit contending that publication was “in violation of the non-disclosure agreements he signed with both the CIA and the National Security Agency (NSA)”, and that the release of the book without pre-publication review by the agencies was “in violation of his express obligations”. Snowden’s lawyers had argued that if the author had believed that the government would review his book in good faith, he would have submitted it for review.
Continue reading...The last instalment in the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen series is dense, dizzying and satisfying
Alan Moore says that this wild and playful volume, the conclusion to the acclaimed League of Extraordinary Gentlemen series, will be his last major work in comics. For a man stepping back from the spotlight, his influence is as strong as ever. HBO’s reimagining of his Watchmen series is a TV blockbuster, and the masks from V for Vendetta are a symbol of modern protest. He rarely does press, but scraps are seized on, such as his claim in one interview with a Brazilian newspaper that the impact of superheroes on culture is “both tremendously embarrassing and not a little worrying”.
That might seem a strange remark from a man whose work has included Batman, Superman and the Swamp Thing – and whose latest project is jam-packed with superheroes. But Moore has spent his career muddying heroic waters, and the caped crusaders of The Tempest are not the bantering big-screen heroes of Marvel or their glowering DC counterparts. These are British superheroes. And they’re not going to save the world.
Related: Alan Moore drops anarchism to champion Labour against Tory 'parasites'
Continue reading...Author defends researcher who lost an employment tribunal case over her ‘offensive and exclusionary’ tweets
Having not tweeted since November, JK Rowling broke her Twitter silence today to speak up in support of a researcher who lost an employment tribunal case for using “offensive and exclusionary” language on Twitter.
Rowling tweeted about Maya Forstater, who lost her job at an international thinktank after a series of tweets including one in which she stated: “Men cannot change into women”.
Dress however you please.
Call yourself whatever you like.
Sleep with any consenting adult who’ll have you.
Live your best life in peace and security.
But force women out of their jobs for stating that sex is real? #IStandWithMaya #ThisIsNotADrill
Original author ‘liked to have his head blown’ and would have seen the funny side of film’s terrible reception, says spokesperson
TS Eliot “would have had a sense of humour” about the much derided film adaptation of Cats despite the drubbing it has received from reviewers around the world, according to his estate.
Starring big names including Taylor Swift, Idris Elba and Ian McKellen, Tom Hooper’s adaption of the long-running musical is based on Eliot’s book of children’s poems, Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats. The film has been variously described by critics as “revolting and briefly alluring” and “two seconds away from turning into a furry orgy in a dumpster”.
Related: Cats review – a purr-fectly dreadful hairball of woe | Peter Bradshaw's film of the week
Continue reading...It was Plato who claimed Sappho, the great lyric poet, as the 10th muse, joining her in sisterhood with the nine daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne, who bestowed divine inspiration across the arts and sciences. In The Tenth Muse, the US novelist Catherine Chung favours a different version of the myth. In her telling, equal parts Brothers Grimm and feminist call to arms, there were not nine daughters born to Mnemosyne but 10. The first nine came of age and duly assumed their gifts but, when it was her turn, the youngest refused. “She did not wish to sing in the voices of men, telling only the stories they wished to tell. She preferred to sing her songs herself.” Her weeping sisters implored her to change her mind, but the 10th muse would not budge. She chose instead to live as a mortal, free to use her voice as she chose.
Chung evokes the beauty of mathematics, the exhilarating grace and precision of its patterns
Related: From Alice in Wonderland to the Hitchhiker's Guide: top 10 books about mathematics
Continue reading...Editors say it was pressured into printing an edition of Ducks, Newburyport for the discount retailer but now may not see the returns
Galley Beggar Press, the tiny literary publisher behind acclaimed novels including the Booker-shortlisted Ducks, Newburyport and women’s prize for fiction winner A Girl Is a Half-Formed Thing, has been forced to make a public appeal for support after the Book People’s fall into administration left it with a £40,000 hole in its finances.
Galley Beggar’s co-director Eloise Millar turned to crowdfunding on Wednesday to ask for urgent help from readers as it faces “the biggest crisis in its seven-year history”. The publisher entered into a partnership with the discount retailer earlier this year when Lucy Ellmann’s novel was shortlisted for the Booker. Galley Beggar produced 8,000 special editions of the novel, costing it around £40,000.
Related: Book People goes into administration, with almost 400 jobs at risk
Continue reading...Rediscovered letter records that 30lb bird was dispatched by train but transferred to a replacement coach service that caught fire
Charles Dickens’s stoic response to the destruction of his Christmas turkey in a train fire has been revealed in a letter rediscovered at the National Railway Museum in York, in which the author says he “bore the loss with unbroken good humour towards the Great Western Railway Company”.
Related: Host of Christmas past: how to serve turkey like Dickens
Continue reading...Beloved cartoons, which had been retired for 24 years without any official internet presence, now have an archive site with new work in the pipeline
There will be cows, undoubtedly; there will probably also be dinosaurs. The Far Side creator Gary Larson is set to release his first new work in 24 years, it was announced on Tuesday.
A “new online era” of Larson’s beloved, surreal comic creations had been promised on the cartoonist’s website in September. His publishers Andrews McMeel have now officially launched TheFarSide.com. They said the site would feature previously unseen sketches and doodles from Larson’s sketchbooks, a daily selection of cartoons from The Far Side – previously unavailable online – as well as the “periodic unveiling of new work by Larson” from next year. “In truth, we really have no idea what might show up. But, on the other hand, what’s changed?” they said.
Continue reading...More than 750 historians say the ‘scorn for the rule of law’ shown by the current president is why impeachment rules were drawn up
More than 750 American historians have put their names to a letter urging the US House of Representatives to impeach Donald Trump, saying that it is their “considered judgment that if President Trump’s misconduct does not rise to the level of impeachment, then virtually nothing does”.
The 752 historians, who describe themselves as “devoted to studying our nation’s past”, include some of the biggest names in American letters. They range from the much acclaimed biographer of Lyndon Johnson, Robert Caro, to Ron Chernow, who has written award-winning lives of George Washington and Alexander Hamilton. Trump’s “numerous and flagrant abuses of power”, they write in an open letter published on Medium, “are precisely what the framers [of the US constitution] had in mind as grounds for impeaching and removing a president”.
Continue reading...Beastly Books is adjacent to the Jean Cocteau picturehouse and promises to stock signed copies of the Game of Thrones author’s books
George RR Martin has opened a bookshop in Santa Fe, New Mexico – although it isn’t, as yet, stocking his long-awaited novel The Winds of Winter.
The Song of Ice and Fire novelist, who acquired the Jean Cocteau Cinema in Santa Fe in 2013, has now opened the Beastly Books store next door. The shop is named in honour of what Martin said was Cocteau’s most famous film, Beauty and the Beast, as well as “a certain TV show I worked on in the 80s” with the same name.
Continue reading...JM Barrie’s first draft of the classic story paints the hero as a far less pleasant boy
He’s the boy who never grows up, a lovable rogue who has convinced generations of children that “dreams do come true, if only we wish hard enough”. But now a darker side to Peter Pan has been revealed with the publication last week of JM Barrie’s original manuscript, Peter Pan and Wendy.
Fans will be able to read the previously unpublished version of the story in Barrie’s own handwriting and see the amendments he made to his manuscript as he was writing it.
Continue reading...Aliya Whiteley’s Skein Island (Titan, £7.99) is a fine example of understated horror, whose accumulating sense of unease is only enhanced by being set in the familiar milieu of contemporary Britain. The eponymous island lies off the Devon coast, and is a refuge for women that offers week-long stays for selected guests. The sole payment required from each woman is a written story, a personal declaration which is then lodged in the island’s library. In measured, quietly assured prose, Whiteley introduces librarian Marianne Percival who, out of the blue, receives an invitation to stay on the island; before she goes, she suffers a terrible sexual attack. Her time there is interspersed with details of how and why the community was founded, and chapters from her husband’s viewpoint, as events conspire to bring about the break-up of their marriage. Whiteley skilfully blends Greek myth with the horrors of the second world war and scalpel-sharp observations of contemporary society in a compelling, disturbing read that examines gender roles and the power of individuals to take control of their lives.
Continue reading...Literature prize winner condemned over support for Milošević regime
Kosovo has declared Nobel literature laureate Peter Handke persona non grata in the country, as the row over the Austrian writer’s award continues to provoke anger and controversy.
Handke was awarded the prize at a ceremony in Stockholm on Tuesday. But the Swedish Academy, which selects the winner, has faced a barrage of criticism for choosing the 77-year-old author.
Related: Peter Handke's Nobel prize that dishonours the victims of genocide | Ed Vuilliamy
Continue reading...The literature laureateship, presented to Handke and 2018 laureate Olga Tokarczuk on Tuesday afternoon, faces boycotts and widespread protest
As Turkey joins Albania and Kosovo in boycotting Tuesday’s Nobel prize ceremony for Peter Handke over his support for Slobodan Milosevic’s genocidal regime, war correspondents from Christiane Amanpour to Jeremy Bowen are protesting his win by sharing their harrowing stories from the conflict in the former Yugoslavia.
The Austrian writer, whose stance on the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s and attendance at Milosevic’s funeral have been widely criticised, is due to receive his Nobel medal in Stockholm, where a large protest demonstration is expected.
Continue reading...Merriam-Webster dictionary says look-ups for its winner have boomed since it became a favoured pronoun for non-binary individuals
They, a common pronoun that can be traced back to the 13th century, has been named word of the year by Merriam-Webster dictionary because of its growing usage for non-binary individuals.
The US dictionary, which has been in print for more than 150 years, said that look-ups for “they” increased by 313% in 2019 compared with the previous year, as the public investigated the word’s shifting use and its increasing prominence in the news.
Continue reading...President’s diktat was ignored by his top officials, Peter Bergen writes in Trump and his Generals: The Cost of Chaos
Donald Trump called for the population of Seoul to be moved during an Oval Office meeting when tensions between the US and North Korea were at their height, according to a new book about the president’s relations with the US military.
In Trump and his Generals: The Cost of Chaos, the national security and counter-terrorism expert Peter Bergen also gives new details of Trump’s demands that the families of US service members in South Korea be evacuated, which the North Korean regime would have interpreted as a clear move towards war. In both cases, Trump’s impetuous diktats were ignored by his top officials.
Related: North Korea insults Trump as 'heedless and erratic old man' as tension rises
Continue reading...Lesley McDowell was one of five judges for the Saltire Scottish fiction book of the year, but claims gender bias slanted decision against Lucy Ellmann
A judge of one of Scotland’s most prestigious literary awards has resigned over its choice of winner, claiming that her fellow judges had not read all of the books, and selected a book by a male author about a woman over three books by women about women.
The Saltire Society literary awards gave out a host of prizes at the National Museum of Scotland last weekend. The Scottish fiction book of the year went to Ewan Morrison for his novel Nina X, described by judges as a “great feat of imagination, showing digital modernity through the eyes of a young woman emerging from a lifetime within the confines of a Maoist commune”.
Related: Lucy Ellmann: ‘We need to raise the level of discourse’
Continue reading...Blaze complying with ministry directive meant for schools harks back to Qin dynasty and Nazi Germany, critics say
A county library in north-western China has been criticised for burning books in line with a nationwide cull of “illegal” or “improper” materials used in school libraries.
Reports and photos of two women burning a pile of books outside the Zhenyuan county library in Gansu province emerged at the weekend. According to Chinese media, an article on the county’s website detailed a “removal and destruction” cleanup at the end of October, focusing on illegal, religious, and biased books.
这张照片最值得注意的地方是什么吗？是图书馆的这些文科馆员主动选择焚书这个动作执行了上级关于清理命令，认真专注演绎着是人就能联想的成语，并且作为成绩放在官网上。 pic.twitter.com/1IP44mcBG7
Related: Creeping censorship in Hong Kong: how China controls sale of sensitive books
Continue reading...Snowman and Snowdog producers have made Christmas treat from Judith Kerr’s children’s classic
“Talk the tiger,” Judith Kerr’s two-year-old daughter Tacy used to instruct her at bedtime. She was demanding more of the story her mother, who had trained as an artist but was then working as a television screenwriter, had started inventing for her after a visit to the zoo.
Talk the tiger Kerr did, and then over the course of a year she started writing it down and illustrating it. A friend recommended that she use bright indelible inks rather than her usual watercolours. The tiger sprang vividly to life and rapidly into homes up and down the land when his encounter with a little girl called Sophie was published as The Tiger Who Came to Tea in 1968. It was an immediate success and has remained in print ever since. Kerr, of course, became a prolific, highly respected and hugely loved children’s author over the subsequent half century, notably for the domestic adventures of another – albeit slightly smaller – cat, Mog, who was rightly felt to merit her own obituary in this paper when she alas ate her very last egg for breakfast. Kerr died in May at the age of 95.
Continue reading...As the comet Borisov speeds across our universe, Alastair Reynolds shares books to expand our frontiers
All of a sudden the interstellar space around our solar system – the enormous gulf that separates us from the nearest stars and their planets – is starting to look congested. There is traffic out there: mysterious objects on their way between solar systems.
The first time we spotted one of these interlopers was in 2017, when ‘Oumuamua – a long, thin thing about the size of the Shard skyscraper – pulled off the unusual trick of accelerating as it was heading away from the sun. ‘Oumuamua is almost certainly a piece of weird, attention-seeking rock rather than an alien spacecraft, but by the time we realised how curious this comet was, it was already speeding beyond the reach of any rockets.
Related: The Rosewater Redemption by Tade Thompson review – stunning conclusion
Continue reading...New literature laureate tells journalists ahead of prizegiving that it is the wrong moment to question his suppport for Slobodan Milosevic
Nobel literature laureate Peter Handke brushed off questions about his support for the genocidal regime of Slobodan Milosevic at a press conference on Friday, telling gathered journalists that it was not the moment to answer “ignorant” queries.
The Austrian author’s Nobel prize win in October has been widely criticised by writers and politicians over his stance on the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s. A petition signed by almost 60,000 people is calling on the Nobel committee to revoke the award from the “apologist for the ‘butcher of Balkans’ Slobodan Milosevic”. Handke spoke at Milosevic’s funeral in 2006, calling him “a rather tragic man”.
Related: 'A troubling choice': authors criticise Peter Handke's controversial Nobel win
Svenska Akademiens presskonferens med Peter Handke slutade med en hätsk attack mot de närvarande journalisterna.https://t.co/q1O2ETYtML pic.twitter.com/wL7omEyev7
Continue reading...Peter Englund, former permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy and current member, refuses to celebrate the controversial 2019 literature laureate
Days before the Nobel laureate Peter Handke receives his award, a longstanding member of the Swedish Academy has announced that he will be boycotting the ceremonies because celebrating the Austrian writer’s win would be hypocritical.
Peter Englund, the former permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy, told Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter on Friday that he would not participate this year because “to celebrate Peter Handke’s Nobel prize would be gross hypocrisy on my part”. Handke was set to give a press conference about his win at noon on Friday, with his laureate’s lecture due on Saturday. Formal presentation of his medal is timetabled for Tuesday.
Continue reading...Annual survey shows sharp cuts to local authority funding have led to the loss of 17% of branches, alongside sharp staff and funding shortfalls
Almost 800 libraries have closed since the Conservative government implemented austerity in 2010, new figures reveal.
The Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy’s (Cipfa) annual survey of the UK’s libraries, excluding Northern Ireland, shows there are 3,583 library branches still open in the UK – 35 fewer than last year. Since 2010, 773 have closed.
Related: Do libraries run by volunteers check out?
Continue reading...Study expands on archive finds revealed in 2011, and suggests that the French state may have abetted the 1960 car crash that killed him
Sixty years after the French Nobel laureate Albert Camus died in a car crash at the age of 46, a new book is arguing that he was assassinated by KGB spies in retaliation for his anti-Soviet rhetoric.
Italian author Giovanni Catelli first aired his theory in 2011, writing in the newspaper Corriere della Sera that he had discovered remarks in the diary of the celebrated Czech poet and translator Jan Zábrana that suggested Camus’s death had not been an accident. Now Catelli has expanded on his research in a book titled The Death of Camus.
Until today, everyone thought Camus had died because of an ordinary car crash. The man refused to tell me his source but he claimed it was completely reliable
Continue reading...• Biography of iconic cricket writer Neville Cardus wins
• Author is first writer to win award three times
Duncan Hamilton has won the 31st William Hill Sports Book of the Year, making him the only author in the award’s history to have triumphed three times. The author was presented with the £30,000 cash prize for his biography of the celebrated Guardian cricket writer Neville Cardus.
Times sports correspondent Alyson Rudd, chair of the judges, said: “We were bowled over by the quality of the writing and the way in which Hamilton brings to life the characters that defined cricket between the two world wars. The author explains that Neville Cardus was unknowable but this book does a very fine job indeed of guiding us through his career and motivations.”
Related: How great romantic Neville Cardus changed sports writing for ever | Duncan Hamilton
Continue reading...News presenter alluded to her joint victory with Margaret Atwood but failed to give the name of Girl, Woman, Other’s author
The BBC has apologised after one of its presenters referred to Booker winner Bernardine Evaristo as “another author” while discussing her joint victory with Margaret Atwood.
Evaristo won in October for her polyphonic novel Girl, Woman, Other, which is told mostly from the perspectives of 12 black women. The honour was shared with Atwood, who won for The Testaments, in a controversial decision that some said diminished Evaristo’s achievement in being the first black woman to take the award.
Pls RT: The @BBC described me yesterday as 'another author' apropos @TheBookerPrizes 2019. How quickly & casually they have removed my name from history - the first black woman to win it. This is what we've always been up against, folks. https://t.co/LxxDBJrUYh
Continue reading...Tributes paid to ‘a deeply original writer who used his own mortality as a lens’ and was still writing days before his death
Joe Hammond, the author who wrote movingly about his diagnosis with motor neurone disease (MND) and his own mortality, has died at the age of 50.
The British writer and playwright became famous in 2018 when he wrote for the Guardian about writing 33 cards for his two young sons, Tom and James, for the birthdays he would not live to see.
Related: I'm writing 33 birthday cards for the sons I won't see grow up
Continue reading...The Unbearable Lightness of Being’s author has lived in France since fleeing communism in 1975, and has previously questioned ‘the notion of home’
After more than 40 years in exile, Milan Kundera, the Czech-born author of The Unbearable Lightness of Being, has been given back the citizenship of his homeland.
Petr Drulák, the Czech Republic’s ambassador to France, told public television he visited the 90-year-old author in his Paris apartment last Thursday to hand deliver his citizenship certificate.
Related: How important is Milan Kundera today?
Continue reading...This week, Richard sits down with duo Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck, who write science fiction together under the name James SA Corey. Their bestselling space-opera series, The Expanse, which started in 2012 and is due to end in 2021, is set in the middle of the 24th century, when humanity has colonised the solar system. Human society is now beyond race and gender, and is instead divided on a planetary level: those living on Earth, on Mars and on various asteroids, moons and space stations called Belters.
The eighth book in the series, Tiamat’s Wrath, is the latest, while the fourth season of the award-winning TV adaptation will launch on Amazon Prime on 13 December.
Continue reading...‘Britain’s most dreaded literary prize’ for bad sex in fiction awarded to the novels The Office of Gardens and Ponds and Pax
In a year of two Booker prize winners and two Nobel laureates, the Bad sex award has plumped for two recipients of “Britain’s most dreaded literary prize”: Prix Goncourt winner Didier Decoin and British novelist John Harvey.
Related: ‘Mouthful by mouthful’: the 2019 Bad sex award in quotes
Continue reading...In Free, Melania, obtained by the Guardian, Kate Bennett also reports that president and first lady sleep in separate rooms
Melania Trump suspects Roger Stone, a longtime ally and adviser to Donald Trump, of being behind the release of nude photos from her modelling past, a new book claims.
Related: Trump's 'demeaning fake orgasm' made me speak out – ex-FBI lawyer Lisa Page
Friends say she still refuses to believe Trump would do that to her. As for Stone, she’s not so sure
Related: Melania Trump loudly booed at opioid awareness youth summit in Baltimore
Continue reading...In correspondence going to auction this week, the writer describes how he burned a manuscript titled The Temple at Thatch
An unpublished letter in which a “despondent” Evelyn Waugh recounts how he burned his first attempt at a novel is to be auctioned this week.
Part of a set of 10 unpublished letters, mostly written to his friend Richard Plunket Greene, the missives date from a difficult period in Waugh’s life. The would-be author spent six months teaching at Welsh prep school Arnold House in 1925 and, while there, wrote to Plunket Greene about the lack of enjoyment he found in teaching the boys. “The older they are the more stupid I find them,” he wrote.
Continue reading...Two members of the committee set up to oversee reforms to the scandal-rocked award announce they are leaving
Two members of the external committee set up to oversee reforms to the scandal-hit Nobel prize in literature quit on Monday, with one claiming the work to change the culture in the Swedish Academy was taking too long.
The august and mysterious 18-strong panel of the Swedish Academy, which selects the Nobel laureate each year, was forced to introduce several new measures after a sex scandal involving the husband of a former member escalated into a bitter row that resulted in several resignations and the 2018 award being postponed. One of the measures was to establish a team outside the academy to assist in finding candidates to consider for the prize.
The Swedish Academy has sent out three letters in response to protests from Bosnia and Kosovo against the Nobel Prize for Literature going to Peter Handke, who has consistently downplayed Serb massacres in the 1990s. The letters should be displayed in a museum of genocide denial. pic.twitter.com/hIpm0nUA1T
Continue reading...