Publishing Company Blog: January 2022

Monday, January 31, 2022

Apology over Dutch book that claimed to identify Anne Frank’s betrayer

Ambo Anthos says it will stop printing The Betrayal of Anne Frank and admits more work is needed

Recipe for disaster: first runs of two new cookbooks lost at sea

A container collapse in the mid-Atlantic earlier this month sank copies of Mason Hereford’s Turkey and the Wolf and Melissa Clark’s Dinner in One

Friday, January 28, 2022

‘More than wonderful’ … Gaza bookshop to reopen after unexpectedly successful global campaign

After it was destroyed by Israeli airstrikes, Samir Mansour’s beloved book store has been rebuilt and restocked, as tens of thousands of books flood in from around the world

Thursday, January 27, 2022

The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas ‘may fuel dangerous Holocaust fallacies’

John Boyne’s story is used by more than a third of teachers in England in lessons on the Nazi genocide, a study found

Wednesday, January 26, 2022

Terry Pratchett estate backs Jack Monroe’s idea for ‘Vimes Boots’ poverty index

Campaigner has used the idea drawn from Discworld novels to register the disproportionate effect price rises have on the lower paid

Official biography of Terry Pratchett to be published

A Life With Footnotes, by the late author’s former assistant and friend, has been authorised by Pratchett’s estate and is due to be released in September

James Bond books dedicated to Paul Gallico among star lots at library auction

Books owned by The Snow Goose author up for sale this week include Ian Fleming first editions inscribed for his former colleague

Tuesday, January 25, 2022

Donna Barba Higuera wins top US children’s book award for The Last Cuentista

This year’s Newbery medal goes to story of the only girl who can remember the Earth after it is destroyed by a comet

Alan Cumming to play Robert Burns in solo dance-theatre show

Actor aims to tell the Scottish poet’s story ‘using my whole body’ in a production at the 75th Edinburgh international festival in August

Monday, January 24, 2022

Colm Tóibín is named new Irish fiction laureate in ‘exciting time to be a reader in Ireland’

The award-winning writer takes over the role intended to encourage engagement with high quality fiction

Jodorowsky animated Dune in development, says crypto group

Spice DAO, who bought a copy of the 1970s concept art for £2m in November, says a limited series is going ahead despite questions over copyright

Sunday, January 23, 2022

The shrimp returns: beloved flamenco singer Camarón stars in graphic novel

Thirty years after his death, the rich life of the Spanish Gypsy singer is depicted through 10 illustrated episodes

Eighty years late: groundbreaking work on slave economy is finally published in UK

Seminal work by scholar and future politician Eric Williams, shunned for decades, is issued by mainstream imprint

Friday, January 21, 2022

Rare photo of Charles Dickens sporting ‘glorious’ moustache goes on show

Daguerreotype profile shows an unfamiliar face to modern readers but delighted the author, who found the whiskers ‘charming, charming’

Thursday, January 20, 2022

Story inspired by near miss with Fred West wins the Portico prize

Judges of the £10,000 northern writing award said Sally J Morgan’s novel ‘vividly evokes a time when women lived in mortal fear’

From student law to Steinem: Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s library up for auction

Bonhams says late supreme court justice’s collection gives sense of who she was and how she came to be

Kate Clanchy ‘parts company’ with publisher after discrimination row

Author whose Orwell prize-winning Some Kids I Taught and What They Taught Me sparked online controversy last summer will no longer be published by Pan Macmillan

Centenary recording of Ulysses to be read by Eddie Izzard, Margaret Atwood and others

More than 100 writers, artists, comedians and musicians will voice James Joyce’s seminal novel in celebration of its publication a century ago

Wednesday, January 19, 2022

Ian McEwan’s ‘most epic book to date’ to be published in September

The Booker prize-winning author’s new novel Lessons is ‘a powerful meditation on history and humanity told through the prism of one man’s lifetime’

Experts express doubt that Anne Frank was betrayed by a Jewish notary

A new book by Rosemary Sullivan suggests that Arnold van den Bergh could have revealed the family’s hiding place, but other historians are not convinced

Government pauses plans to rewrite UK copyright laws after authors protest

Intellectual property rule changes were mooted in the wake of Brexit but have been shelved after warnings about how this could hit writers’ incomes

Tuesday, January 18, 2022

UK children pick ‘anxiety’ as their word of 2021

In the second pandemic year, this was the top choice of more than 8,000 children asked for the words they would use to discuss health and wellbeing

Monday, January 17, 2022

Trans activists will not be charged over picture of JK Rowling’s home

Police Scotland said no criminality had been found after photograph of writer’s address was put online

Anne Frank may have been betrayed by Jewish notary

Book claims to have solved mystery over who gave away family’s hiding place during second world war

Robert Burns letters reveal poet was advised not to write in Scots dialect

Burns warned use of dialect would alienate London readers in letter that forms part of major project by University of Glasgow

Sunday, January 16, 2022

‘Me against the world’: why superheroes are so often orphans

Batman, Spider-Man and many others lost parents when young. A new exhibition explores their complex stories

Saturday, January 15, 2022

Deborah Levy: I used writing as therapy to help me talk again after jailing of my father

Acclaimed novelist reveals she became almost silent as a child due to stress

Friday, January 14, 2022

Republican school bill mocked for claim Frederick Douglass debated Lincoln

Virginia bill banning teaching of ‘divisive concepts’ confused black civil rights campaigner with white senator Stephen Douglas

Amitav Ghosh: European colonialism helped create a planet in crisis

Indian author says pillaging of lands and killing of indigenous people laid foundation for climate emergency

Tuesday, January 11, 2022

UK book sales in 2021 highest in a decade

Booming appetites for crime, sci-fi and romance drive fiction sales 20% higher than in 2019, with Richard Osman the year’s bestselling author

Maya Angelou becomes first Black woman to appear on a US quarter

US treasury secretary says the writer and civil rights campaigner’s appearance on the coin represents ‘what we value, and how we’ve progressed as a society’

Monday, January 10, 2022

Joelle Taylor wins TS Eliot poetry prize for ‘blazing’ C+nto & Othered Poems

Judges praise the former UK slam champion’s ‘vivid’ collection, exploring author’s experience of being a butch lesbian

‘Insurrection’ named the American Dialect Society’s word of 2021

The term for a violent attempt to overthrow a government beat ‘vax/vaxx’ to the top spot, while ‘yassify’ won informal word of the year and ‘Fauci ouchie’ the most creative

Sunday, January 9, 2022

PEN prize-winning Ugandan novelist Kakwenza Rukirabashaija illegally detained and tortured

The author is being held after tweets criticising President Yoweri Museveni and his son

Friday, January 7, 2022

Trinity College Dublin begins €90m project to relocate vulnerable books

Restoring and moving 750,000 volumes and ancient manuscripts expected to take five years

New chapter of hope: indie bookshops defy the odds to hit nine-year UK high

Independent sellers have battled lockdowns, supply-chains issues and Amazon to reclaim their place in the industry. We speak to the people who opened their own

Thursday, January 6, 2022

1921 Census of England and Wales reveals nation reeling from war

Census uncovers personal impact of economic turmoil, housing crisis and Spanish flu pandemic

Literary mystery may finally be solved as man arrested for allegedly stealing unpublished books

Filippo Bernardini is accused of impersonating publishing figures to steal manuscripts, in scam that has stumped authors and editors for years

Wednesday, January 5, 2022

Nobel winner Pablo Neruda was almost denied prize because of odes to Stalin

As well as revealing the full shortlist, newly opened archives show that the 1971 judging panel were concerned the Chilean winner’s politics were ‘incompatible with the purpose of the prize’

Norman Mailer has not been ‘cancelled’, his son insists

Random House has not dropped a collection of essays by the late writer as reports have suggested – the publisher declined to make an offer on the book in the first instance