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Friday, August 30, 2019

Nell Zink: ‘My hope for the planet is that we're invaded by kindly aliens'

Five years and five novels after she exploded on to the literary scene, so assured that some believed she was a hoax, Zink is taking on hipsters and the climate crisis

After Nell Zink’s mother died a few years ago, she asked her friend Tom to treat her for post-traumatic stress. Zink was having trouble sleeping, and her friend, a semi-famous German singer-songwriter, had retrained as a shaman. “I laid down and closed my eyes, Tom did this shamanistic ritual, and when I came out of this trance an hour later, he looked at me and said: ‘I am afraid I have to tell you, Nell, you have no subconscious mind.’”

Zink laughs hysterically while telling this very Zink-esque story. “He’d gone into my mind, and there is usually an empty room with doors. But in my case that room was completely full with an over-the-top, psychedelic party that was really loud and populated by these nightmarish creatures. It was complete overload and there was no escape.”

Her novels are usually set among exclusive social scenes with their own codes – birdwatchers, hippy communes, New York’s indie rock scene

Zink wrote each of her first two novels each in the space of only three weeks. Doxology took much longer

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Monday, August 26, 2019

Not the Booker: Skin by Luke Brown review – dystopian fun that veers into silliness

A world in which any human contact risks death is a striking image of social atomisation, but it soon becomes preposterous

Can you imagine a world in which humans are allergic to each other? Not just in the current sense (getting furiously annoyed on social media, say) but physically being unable to come into any kind of contact with another person because to do so might kill you?

It’s actually a tough ask. Luke Brown has had a valiant effort at doing the work for us – but as his novel Skin demonstrates, doing anything at all under such circumstances other than staying at home or dying immediately, becomes highly convoluted.

Related: Not the Booker: Flames by Robbie Arnott review – magic works in a wild Tasmania

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Sunday, August 25, 2019

Penguin Random House to release audiobooks to send listeners to sleep

Sleep Tales collections aimed at listeners with chronic insomnia, thought to affect 10-15% of adults

“O gentle sleep!/ Nature’s soft nurse, how have I frighted thee/ That thou no more wilt weigh my eyelids down.” Henry IV, as portrayed by Shakespeare, would have sympathised with people who struggle with insomnia. Now a major publisher has come up with a novel idea – audiobooks with such soothing sounds as soft rainfall and lapping water to relax the listener and send them off to sleep.

In a project to be launched this week, Penguin Random House has collaborated with the Sleep Council and the Children’s Sleep Charity in creating collections of “Sleep Tales” for adults and children.

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Wednesday, August 21, 2019

Former top judge lambasts recent ministers in memoir

Lord Dyson, former master of the rolls, highlights difficult relationship between judges and senior politicians

The former lord chancellor Chris Grayling “never believed access to social justice” was important while Liz Truss was a “disaster” in the same role, according to a highly revealing memoir by one of the country’s most senior, recently retired judges.

In his autobiography, Lord Dyson, formerly master of the rolls and a supreme court justice, records how he managed to “water down” government cuts to legal aid, regrets the downgrading of the justice secretary’s position and deplores the rise of antisemitism.

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Monday, August 19, 2019

Mark Halperin to release book on how to beat Trump following #MeToo allegations

Halperin, who was accused of sexual misconduct by at least a dozen women at ABC News, has written a new book

Mark Halperin, one of the most high-profile media figures to fall over sexual misconduct allegations made in the #MeToo era, is making an attempted comeback with a new book deal expected to be announced on Monday.

The revelation of Halperin’s new book, How to Beat Trump: America’s Top Political Strategists on What It Will Take, first reported by Politico, has put the pundit back under the spotlight and reignited the anger of critics including some of his original female detractors. It has also put the campaign experts and analysts who cooperated with him over his book into the line of fire.

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Professor who quoted James Baldwin's use of N-word cleared by university

Poet Laurie Sheck was investigated for her use of the racial slur, but the New School has now dismissed concerns

Laurie Sheck, the poet and professor who was investigated by her university for quoting James Baldwin’s use of the N-word in a graduate class, has been cleared of charges of racial discrimination.

After assigning Baldwin’s 1962 essay The Creative Process to her class at the New School in New York, Sheck had asked the students to discuss how the 2016 documentary about the writer and civil rights activist, I Am Not Your Negro, altered Baldwin’s actual quote, in which he had used the racial slur. A graduate student, who, like Sheck, is white, had objected to her language.

Related: White professor investigated for quoting James Baldwin's use of N-word

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Olivia Laing splits James Tait Black prize win with fellow shortlistees

In Crudo, her winning novel, Laing explained she had ‘said that competition has no place in art and I meant it’

Olivia Laing, who this weekend won the £10,000 James Tait Black award for her debut novel Crudo, will not be taking all of her winnings home with her. Instead, the acclaimed author has announced she will be dividing the money between her fellow shortlisted writers, because “competition has no place in art”.

Established in 1919, the James Tait Black prizes have in the past gone to names from Angela Carter to Cormac McCarthy. Crudo, in which Laing channels the spirit of the writer and performance artist Kathy Acker, had been shortlisted alongside three other novels. Judge Alex Lawrie said Crudo was “fiction at its finest: a bold and reactive political novel that captures a raw slice of contemporary history with pace, charm, and wit”.

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Sunday, August 18, 2019

Book charting grim life at offshore refugee ‘prison’ sweeps Australia’s literary prizes

The Kurdish-Iranian author, who wrote using a smuggled phone, receives awards by Skype because he remains in detention

Behrouz Boochani is one of Australia’s most-celebrated contemporary writers. Last week, the Kurdish-Iranian journalist won a A$25,000 (£14,000) national biography award for No Friend but the Mountains, a book judges described as “profoundly important”. It wasn’t the first prize the book had received in Australia: it has now won the Victorian Premier’s Literary award, the New South Wales Premier’s Literary award and the Australian Book Industry’s non-fiction book of the year.

One critic described it as a “masterpiece,” another called it “the standout book of the year” and another, novelist Michelle de Kretser, said it was “lucid, poetic and devastating”.

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In no man’s land: anger as publisher puts book criticising army on hold

Penguin group rejects claim of censorship after halting publication of Simon Akam’s The Changing of the Guard

After beating four other publishing houses in an auction, William Heinemann was in no doubt that The Changing of the Guard would more than reward the five-figure advance it paid to its author, Simon Akam.

The publisher boasted that the 182,000-word book examining the evolution of the British Army after 9/11 would be “an explosive, intimate authoritative account … based on exclusive interviews, rigorous research and on-the-ground reporting”.

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Reader, I downloaded him: boom times for the literary long listen

Whether on Radio 4 or Amazon Audible, the appetite for classic works in audio form has never been greater

Four hours of Beatrix Potter, 10 hours of Marcel Proust, or 72 hours of Sherlock Holmes. How about every single word of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre and George Eliot’s Silas Marner? Sound overwhelming? Radio bosses clearly think not – so much so they have commissioned a plethora of literary adaptations to delight growing numbers of fans of “the long listen”.

“There is an appetite for the epic that has simply surpassed our expectations,” says Celia De Wolff, who has produced and directed a marathon adaptation of Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time, to be broadcast over three days this bank holiday weekend on Radio 4. A seven-volume epic published between 1913 and 1927 may not seem an obvious choice for contemporary audiences short on time but rich in entertainment options, but a fast-growing audience is transforming the industry.

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Saturday, August 17, 2019

Passionate, tender, heartbreaking … letters reveal Leonard Bernstein’s 10-year secret affair

The West Side Story composer met and fell in love with a young Japanese fan on tour and their romance lasted until his death

One was among the most brilliant composers and conductors of the 20th century, a sexagenarian who brought the world one of the great love stories of musical theatre. The other was a 26-year-old who worked in a Tokyo insurance company. Now, a newly revealed cache of letters shows that in the last decade of his life Leonard Bernstein embarked on a passionate relationship with a Japanese man.

“I noticed that he was gazing upon me,” Kunihiko Hashimoto, now 66, said. It is hard to explain about his eyes. It was not to try to talk to me nor seduce me, just he was looking at me. It was irresistible.”

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Friday, August 16, 2019

Art Spiegelman's Marvel essay 'refused publication for Orange Skull Trump dig'

Maus author says he was told the comics giant – whose chairman is a prominent Trump supporter – was trying to remain apolitical

Art Spiegelman, the legendary graphic novelist behind Maus, has claimed that he was asked to remove criticism of Donald Trump from his introduction to a forthcoming Marvel book, because the comics publisher – whose chairman has donated to Trump’s campaign – is trying to stay “apolitical”.

Spiegelman, who won a Pulitzer prize for Maus, his story of the Holocaust, has written for Saturday’s Guardian that he was approached by publisher the Folio Society to write an introduction to Marvel: The Golden Age 1939–1949, a collection ranging from Captain America to the Human Torch.

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Rolled over: why did married couples stop sleeping in twin beds?

A new cultural history shows that until the 1950s, forward-thinking couples regarded sharing a bed as old-fashioned and unhealthy

“The twin-bed seems to have come to stay,” proclaimed the Yorkshire Herald in 1892, “and will no doubt in time succeed the double bed in all rooms occupied by two persons”.

The proclamation may have proved less than accurate, but for almost a century between the 1850s and 1950s, separate beds were seen as a healthier, more modern option for couples than the double, with Victorian doctors warning that sharing a bed would allow the weaker sleeper to drain the vitality of the stronger.

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JB Priestley, grand old grumbler, dies at 89 – archive, 16 August 1984

16 August 1984: His canon of more than a 100 plays and books guarantees him a lasting place in 20th century English literature

‘They’ve been too long about giving me it,’ growled JB Priestley, when he joined the ranks of the Order of Merit - never more than 24 strong - after Benjamin Britten’s death. ‘There’ll be another vacancy very soon.’

He was wrong. It was not until Tuesday this week, nearly seven years later, that the Grand Old Tyke of English letters died peacefully at home, one month short of his 90th birthday.

Related: In praise of … JB Priestley | Editorial

Related: J.B. Priestley's 'The Linden Tree'

Related: Priestley, Pears and Redgrave among leftwingers spied on by MI5, files reveal

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Thursday, August 15, 2019

Robert Macfarlane finally wins Wainwright nature writing prize

Underland was the author’s fourth work to be shortlisted, and judges decided unanimously that the ‘claustrophobic thriller of sorts’ was his best

After making the shortlist for the UK’s top nature-writing award three times, Robert Macfarlane has finally won the Wainwright Golden Beer book prize for what judges called his “best book”: a journey into the worlds beneath our feet, Underland.

Related: Underland by Robert Macfarlane review – a dazzling journey into deep time

Related: Finding solace in nature, with Luke Turner – books podcast

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White professor investigated for quoting James Baldwin's use of N-word

Laurie Sheck, who teaches at the New School, says inquiry followed a complaint that she had discussed Baldwin’s use of the slur

The Pulitzer-nominated poet Laurie Sheck, a professor at the New School in New York City, is being investigated by the university for using the N-word during a discussion about James Baldwin’s use of the racial slur.

The investigation has been condemned by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (Fire), which is calling on the New School to drop the “misguided” case because it “warns faculty and students that good-faith engagement with difficult political, social, and academic questions will result in investigation and possible discipline”.

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Tuesday, August 13, 2019

Taking a stanza: Simon Armitage cancer poem engraved on a pill

Poet laureate’s second work in his official capacity honours a planned new research centre and has been carved into a tiny tablet

Simon Armitage’s latest poem, a “bullet / with cancer’s name / carved brazenly on it”, is yet to be printed or read aloud by the poet laureate from the stage. Instead, the work has been engraved by micro-artist Graham Short on to a 2cm x 1cm chemotherapy pill, in what Short said was probably the hardest job had had ever done.

Entitled Finishing It, the poem – Armitage’s second as poet laureate – was commissioned by the Institute of Cancer Research in London. It is intended to symbolise the new generation of cancer treatments that the Institute’s planned Centre for Cancer Drug Discovery will create, and which it hopes will turn cancer into a manageable disease.

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Foyles sets up libraries for high-end retirement homes

The bookseller is moving into lending for the first time, supplying ‘hospitality-led’ luxury developments

London book chain Foyles is to supply libraries to high-end retirement homes in a deal with a residential developer.

The partnership with Elysian Residences will launch at its development in Stanmore, north-west London, when it opens later this year, with a mix of biographies, travel writing, novels and specialist books selected by Foyles. Residents at the development, which aims to combine “UK development expertise with a US hospitality-led approach to care”, will be able to borrow from a collection maintained and refreshed every quarter by the book chain. Foyles is being paid a lump sum for the work.

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Monday, August 12, 2019

JD Salinger estate finally agrees to ebook editions

Author’s son explains that wish for accessibility has persuaded trustees to look past his father’s dislike of digital media

After years of refusing to allow publishers to digitise his works, the estate of JD Salinger has announced that the author’s famously small body of work will be published as ebooks for the first time.

Salinger’s son Matt said that the author had always valued accessibility, but preferred the experience of reading a physical book. The Catcher in the Rye author, who died in 2010 at the age of 91, also hated the internet; Matt told the New York Times that he once explained Facebook to his father, who had been horrified that people shared personal information online.

Related: From everyteen to annoying: are today's young readers turning on The Catcher in the Rye?

Related: Ebooks are not 'stupid' – they're a revolution

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Sunday, August 11, 2019

Behrouz Boochani wins National Biography award – and accepts via WhatsApp from Manus

Judges call Kurdish Iranian writer and refugee’s memoir an ‘astonishing act of witness’

The Kurdish Iranian writer Behrouz Boochani has continued his sweep of the Australian literary prize landscape, winning the $25,000 National Biography award on Monday – yet another award the refugee was unable to accept in person, as he enters his sixth year of detention on Manus Island.

Boochani’s autobiography No Friend but the Mountains tells of his journey from Indonesia to Australia by boat, and his subsequent imprisonment on Manus Island by the Australian government, which continues to refuse him entry.

Related: Writing from Manus prison: a scathing critique of domination and oppression | Omid Tofighian

Related: One little Syrian refugee didn't stop drawing. She gave me this message to show you | Ben Quilty

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‘Greta effect’ leads to boom in children’s environmental books

The 16-year-old climate change activist has galvanised young people to read more about saving the planet

Some seek to convey the wonder of endangered animals while others give tips on how to tackle waste or tell tales of inspirational environmental activists.

All are part of what children’s publishers are calling “the Greta Thunberg effect”: a boom in books aimed at empowering young people to save the planet.

Greta’s doing this amazing thing, as are lots of other people you’ve never heard of all around the world

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Saturday, August 10, 2019

Rylance, Depp and Pattinson bring Coetzee to big screen

Waiting for the Barbarians, a complex story of immigration and integration, to premiere at Venice film festival

Film-makers struggled for 20 years to get investors interested in a film adaptation of Waiting for the Barbarians, JM Coetzee’s novel. His complex tale of immigration and integration was not the easiest sell.

But, in today’s unsettled world, the story feels pertinent as never before. Now the film, starring Mark Rylance, Johnny Depp and Robert Pattinson, is receiving its world premiere at this month’s Venice film festival.

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Waterstones living-wage protesters leave bookselling

As the UK chain’s owner prepares to take over Barnes & Noble, the staff who had pressed for better pay say they resigned due to low wages

Five Waterstones booksellers who delivered a petition to head office calling for the introduction of a living wage in April have all now resigned, citing low pay and pressure as reasons for their departure.

The news comes in the week that Waterstones’ owner, the investment firm Elliott Advisors, completes its acquisition of US book chain Barnes & Noble in a $683m (£566m) deal. Waterstones chief executive and managing director James Daunt will become chief executive of the 627-branch Barnes & Noble, while also heading up 293 Waterstones shops.

If sitting with the MD for several hours trying to get our point across doesn’t make things better, nothing’s going to

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Friday, August 9, 2019

Amazon's new Lord of the Rings 'cannot use much of Tolkien's plot'

Scholar working on the show says the author’s estate has refused permission to depict any of the events shown in Peter Jackson’s films

A JRR Tolkien expert working on Amazon’s forthcoming multi-series adaptation of The Lord of the Rings has claimed that the retail and streaming giant has been refused permission by the estate to use the bulk of the book’s plot.

In November 2017, Amazon beat Netflix to a $250m (£207m) deal with the Tolkien estate, HarperCollins and Warner Bros to acquire the rights to the fantasy story, and is reportedly spending around $1bn on the adaptation. Details were scarce in the announcement, but Sharon Tal Yguado, Amazon’s head of scripted programming, then promised “a new epic journey in Middle-earth”.

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The best recent science fiction, fantasy and horror – review roundup

The Warehouse by Rob Hart; Gods of Jade and Shadow by Silvia Moreno-Garcia; Growing Things by Paul Tremblay; Sanctuary by VV James and Trolls by Stefan Spjut

In The Warehouse (Bantam, £12.99), Rob Hart has written a cautionary tale exploring the effects of runaway capitalism, corporate greed and consumer complacency in a near-future dystopia where governments no longer function and “The Cloud” runs everything. Amazon writ large, The Cloud is the invention of billionaire Gibson Wells, who oversees a city-state environment called MotherCloud, where every aspect of workers’ lives is rigorously monitored and controlled. Mired in this hellhole is Paxton, working as a security guard for the very concern that demolished his own startup company, and Zinnia, an industrial spy who befriends Paxton in a bid to get at vital information. Hart expertly interleaves the story of how The Cloud came into existence with a slow-burning thriller narrative, while hammering home the iniquity of the system and the soul-destroying monotony for those trapped within it. Featuring an explosive twist-in-the-tail climax, this terrifying hybrid of Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four and Zamyatin’s We is a triumph.

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Why are there so many new books about time-travelling lesbians?

At a time when historical amnesia is making itself widely felt, these stories show how readily the past can be rewritten

Time-travel stories sit at a nexus of the literal and figurative. All of us are travelling through time – at the ambling pace of a human life, moving in a direction we think of as forward, with the future ahead and the past behind. But memory is a form of time travel, the study of history is an attempt at building time machines, and past and future are entangled.

In 2016, I sat down with my co-author Max Gladstone to write our novel This Is How You Lose the Time War, which follows two time-travelling female spies as they fall in love. That same year was also when I first heard people speaking earnestly and frequently about feeling as if they were in the wrong timeline, as the Brexit referendum results rolled in and Donald Trump was elected US president. But our book did not feel like it was specifically about 2016; as we finished and moved on to other projects, I remember being troubled that it would feel inadequate to the moment, that when the world needed rallying cries against fascism and white supremacy, we’d given it a time-crossed love story.

Every time we affirm that queer people have always existed and often led happy lives, we change not the past but history

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Thursday, August 8, 2019

Lost Proust stories of homosexual love finally published

Written in the late 1890s but held back from publication, the nine tales in Le Mystérieux Correspondant are due out this autumn

Nine lost stories by Marcel Proust, which the revered French author is believed to have kept private because of their “audacity”, are due to be published for the first time this autumn.

Touching on themes of homosexuality, the stories were written by Proust during the 1890s, when he was in his 20s and putting together the collection of poems and short stories that would become Plaisirs et les jours (Pleasures and Days). He decided not to include them.

Related: I’m going back to Proust this August. The truly long read is a summer treat | Alex Clark

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David Berman, acclaimed US indie songwriter, dies aged 52

No cause of death has been announced for songwriter and poet known for his projects Silver Jews and Purple Mountains, and his wry, witty lyrics

David Berman, regarded as one of the most poetic voices in US indie rock, has died aged 52. His record label Drag City confirmed the news, but hasn’t confirmed the cause of death.

Berman was best known for his project Silver Jews, known for wry, Berman-penned lyrics. They formed in 1989 in New Jersey, when Berman was living and working with Stephen Malkmus and Bob Nastanovich, who would go on to form the successful band Pavement. Malkmus has paid tribute to Berman, writing on Twitter: “His death is fucking dark ..depression is crippling.. he was a one of a kinder [sic] the songs he wrote were his main passion esp at the end. Hope death equals peace cuz he could sure use it.”

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Wednesday, August 7, 2019

Israel National Library unveils reclaimed Franz Kafka archive

Papers and manuscripts were salvaged by author’s friend Max Brod

Israel’s National Library has unveiled a missing batch of Franz Kafka’s papers, ending more than a decade of legal wrangling between Israel and Germany over his legacy.

As he battled with tuberculosis in an Austrian sanatorium, Kafka, a German-speaking Jew from Prague, asked his close friend Max Brod to destroy all his letters and writings.

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

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Protest seeks to stop US libraries supporting Drag Queen Story Hour

Nearly 100,000 Christians have signed a petition to end backing for the events that present kids with ‘unabashedly queer role models’

Nearly 100,000 Christians have signed a petition to the American Library Association protesting against its support of “Drag Queen Story Hour”, but the ALA has said it “strongly opposes any effort to limit access to information, ideas and programmes that patrons wish to explore”.

First established in San Francisco in 2015 by the writer Michelle Tea, Drag Queen Story Hour, in which drag queens read stories to children in libraries and bookshops, is intended to “give kids glamorous, positive, and unabashedly queer role models”. It has spread across the US and internationally, but has drawn fire from conservative groups. In June, a Denver bookshop was targeted by far-right groups for hosting a story time, while Republican Larry Householder has attacked Ohio’s libraries for using taxpayers’ “hard-earned dollars” to “teach teenage boys how to become drag queens”.

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Toni Morrison: farewell to America's greatest writer – we all owe her so much | Chigozie Obioma

Booker nominated author Chigozie Obioma reflects on losing a ‘literary mother’ and her encouragement for generations of black and African writers to come

It was with a heavy heart that I woke up, like many, to the news of the passing of the great African American writer Toni Morrison. As I have mourned and digested the news, my reaction has slowly gone from shock to dismay, then to a sense of inchoate peace.

Related: Toni Morrison: a life in pictures

Related: Toni Morrison obituary

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Tuesday, August 6, 2019

John Steinbeck: US court hears appeal in case for control of author's estate

The writer’s family has battled for control of the Nobel prizewinner’s classic works for decades

Another chapter is set to play out this week in a decades-old family dispute over control of the classic works by the author John Steinbeck.

A three-judge panel of the ninth US circuit court of appeals heard arguments in Alaska’s largest city on Tuesday in an appeal by the estate of Steinbeck’s late son, Thomas Steinbeck, over a 2017 jury verdict in California.

Related: John Steinbeck was a sadistic womaniser, says wife in memoir

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Toni Morrison: a life in pictures

With novels including Beloved and The Bluest Eye, the acclaimed author who dramatised the African American experience with fierce passion for five decades, has died aged 88

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Toni Morrison: Nobel prize-winning author on racism - video obituary

Toni Morrison, who chronicled the African American experience in fiction for more than five decades, has died aged 88. The novelist was the first African American woman to win the Nobel prize for literature and is widely regarded as a champion for repressed minorities. Speaking on racism,  Morrison said in an interview : "If you can only be tall because someone else is on their knees, then you have a serious problem. And my feeling is white people have a very, very serious problem"

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Turkish government destroys more than 300,000 books

Regime says it is cracking down on anything linked to Fethullah Gülen, the Muslim cleric it blames for 2016’s attempted coup

More than 300,000 books have been removed from Turkish schools and libraries and destroyed since the attempted coup of 2016, according to Turkey’s ministry of education.

Turkey’s education minister Ziya Selçuk announced last week that 301,878 books had been destroyed as the government cracks down on anything linked to Fethullah Gülen, the US-based Muslim cleric who is accused by Turkey of instigating 2016’s failed military coup. Gülen has denied involvement.

Related: 'Suffocating climate of fear' in Turkey despite end of state of emergency

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Toni Morrison, author and Pulitzer winner, dies aged 88

With novels including Beloved and The Bluest Eye, the Nobel laureate dramatised African American experience with fierce passion

Toni Morrison, who chronicled the African American experience in fiction over five decades, has died aged 88.

In a statement on Tuesday, her publisher Knopf confirmed the news that the author died in Montefiore Medical Center in New York on Monday night.

Related: Toni Morrison: 'I want to feel what I feel. Even if it's not happiness'

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Hillary and Chelsea Clinton co-write The Book of Gutsy Women

Their book profiles more than 100 path-breaking women down the centuries, from a 17th-century radical nun to Greta Thunberg

Hillary Clinton is set to publish a new book about the women who have inspired her, from Mary Beard to Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie – “leaders with the courage to stand up to the status quo, ask hard questions, and get the job done”.

After publishing her memoir about the 2016 presidential election campaign, What Happened, Clinton teamed up with her daughter Chelsea to write The Book of Gutsy Women, due out in October from Simon & Schuster. “If history shows one thing, it’s that the world needs gutsy women,” the Clintons say. “So in the moments when the long haul seems awfully long, we hope you will draw strength from these stories. We do.”

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Monday, August 5, 2019

'Stealth closures': Essex groups back away from volunteer-run libraries

Council has cancelled 25 branch closures, but still wants to hand others to volunteers. A number of community groups now say they were cornered into showing interest

Community groups in Coggeshall, Chigwell, Harlow and Holland-on-Sea have withdrawn expressions of interest in taking over libraries in Essex, claiming that the council has publicly misrepresented their requests for more information as support for the controversial plans.

In November, Essex county council announced plans to close 25 of the county’s 74 branch libraries, as well as handing a further 19 to volunteers and 15 to run in partnership schemes. After months of protests throughout the county, the council announced last month that all branches will remain open for the next five years.

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Sunday, August 4, 2019

Waterstones founder has ‘no guilt’ over loss of small bookshops

His business expanded aggressively in the 1980s and 90s, but indies ‘had a shot’, says Tim Waterstone

The founder of Waterstones has said he feels no guilt over the aggressive expansion of his chain which led to the closure of nearly 500 independent bookshops in the UK.

Tim Waterstone, who founded the bookseller in 1982, told the BBC’s Desert Island Discs on Sunday that the competition simply wasn’t up to scratch. “I didn’t feel guilty,” he says. “I’d just have to say, no, they had a shot.

We had self-confidence and a very clear offer, and wonderful staff and a wonderful business model. We weren't sympathetic

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Thursday, August 1, 2019

Edward Snowden memoir to reveal whistleblower’s secrets

In Permanent Record, the former spy will recount how his mass surveillance work eventually led him to make the biggest leak in history

After multiple books and films about his decision to leak the biggest cache of top-secret documents in history, whistleblower Edward Snowden is set to tell his side of the story in a memoir, Permanent Record.

Related: Edward Snowden: 'The people are still powerless, but now they're aware'

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Fall or, Dodge in Hell by Neal Stephenson review – enter a virtual-reality afterlife

The US author’s latest slice of speculative fiction contrasts a computerised fantasy world with a dystopic post-truth ‘Ameristan’

At a paltry 883 pages, Fall or, Dodge in Hell is short by Neal Stephenson’s standards. Reamde, from 2011, to which Fall is a sequel, is 1,044 pages long, and his multi-award-winning three-part Baroque Cycle (2003-04) runs to 2,671 pages. You certainly can’t fault him when it comes to giving readers value for money, and not just in terms of pages. A typical Stephenson novel will contain enough plot for two or three regular-sized books, and enough thought-provoking ideas for four or five. And the bonus here: Fall is the best thing he’s written in ages.

In Reamde, games developer Richard “Dodge” Forthrast developed an immersive virtual reality MMORPG – a massively multiplayer online role-playing game – called T’Rain. It made him rich, and provoked a kidnap/terrorism Russian-mafia storyline too intricate to summarise here. Luckily you don’t need to know all the ins and outs of the former novel to enjoy Fall, which starts with Forthrast, now a middle-aged billionaire, waking in his luxurious Seattle apartment. We get a leisurely account of his morning, and of the routine medical procedure he has scheduled. But something goes wrong in the clinic and he dies under anaesthetic. His will instructs that his body be cryonically preserved and his brain scanned neuron by neuron in the hope that technology will eventually be developed that can bring him back to life. Soon enough, virtual reality provides him with just such a second chance.

The info-dumping is still there – fans of Stephenson expect nothing less – but mixed with an old-school fantasy novel

Related: Some Remarks by Neal Stephenson – review

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