Michael Rosen 'very poorly but stable' after night in intensive care

Well-wishers send messages to the former children’s laureate, whose book We’re Going on a Bear Hunt has inspired a global teddy bear hunt for children in lockdown

Michael Rosen’s family has said that the poet, broadcaster and author, who is suffering from suspected coronavirus, is “very poorly at the moment” but is stable and alert after a night in intensive care.

Rosen, the author of beloved children’s books from We’re Going on a Bear Hunt to Little Rabbit Foo Foo, has been charting his illness on Twitter in recent weeks.

Continue reading...

Internet Archive accused of using Covid-19 as 'an excuse for piracy'

The ‘National Emergency Library’ has made 1.4m ebooks freely available, many by current bestsellers, and sparked outrage from writers’ organisations

The Internet Archive has launched a “National Emergency Library”, making 1.4m books available free online – but has been accused of “hitting authors when they’re down” by denying them sales of books that are still in copyright.

Founded in 1996 to archive web pages, the IA began digitising books in 2005. It has long been at loggerheads with writers’ organisations who have accused it of uploading books that are not in the public domain, and denying authors potential income from sales and public library borrowing.

Continue reading...

Bristol celebrates its poet genius who died at just 17

Poems, exhibitions and a comic book to mark talent of Thomas Chatterton, 250 years after death

He was revered by poets such as Wordsworth, Shelley and Coleridge and a romanticised painting depicting his deathbed remains an enduring image of doomed artistic talent.

Now a series of projects marking the 250^th anniversary of the death, at the age of 17, of Bristol-born Thomas Chatterton is under way to remind people of his extraordinary but often forgotten life, and, perhaps, inspire a new generation of Romantic poets.

Continue reading...

Prize shares £10,000 between publishers amid coronavirus damage

Fitzcarraldo Editions wins Republic of Consciousness prize for Jean-Baptiste Del Amo’s Animalia, but money is split between five tiny presses

Small press Fitzcarraldo Editions, which published the Nobel laureates Svetlana Alexievich and Olga Tokarczuk before they were recognised by the Swedish Academy, has landed the Republic of Consciousness prize for the novel Animalia by Jean-Baptiste Del Amo – but will share the £10,000 award with its fellow shortlistees.

Half-funded by the University of East Anglia, the award celebrates the best fiction from publishers with fewer than five full-time employees. Animalia, translated from French by Frank Wynne, follows a peasant family in the 20th century as their plot of land is developed into an intensive pig farm.

Continue reading...

'Optimistic nihilism': Thomas Glavinic's ploy for getting through the Covid-19 crisis

Newspaper Die Welt has been publishing daily instalments of author’s ‘corona novel’

• Coronavirus – latest updates
• See all our coronavirus coverage

The squares of Europe’s capitals are deserted, its bars and restaurants empty, once bustling roads now silent. With no one around to talk to, the only option is to surf the internet in search of nostalgic memories and answers to the unanswerable causes of a catastrophe that has changed the world as we knew it.

When the Austrian author Thomas Glavinic came up with this post-apocalyptic scenario for his harrowing and critically acclaimed 2006 novel Night Work, translated into English by John Brownjohn in 2008, he had no idea how closely it would come to resemble the real world 14 years later.

Continue reading...

Competition launched to find real-life Dickens characters

Journalists’ Charity founded by Victorian author seeks pen portraits of modern-day Micawbers and Uriah Heeps

A charity founded by Charles Dickens has launched a competition to find real modern-day characters who could have provided the basis for one of the author’s classic creations.

Dickens helped to found the Journalists’ Charity in 1864. To mark the 150th anniversary of his death, the charity is asking for written portraits of a modern-day Dickensian character. The subject could be someone in public life, including a politician or and celebrity, or an NHS worker helping to stem the spread of the coronavirus.

Continue reading...

'Impossible to comprehend': Stephen King on horrors of Trump and coronavirus

Years after his pandemic novel, bestselling author tells CNN he is mystified that US was not better prepared

It has been four decades since Stephen King wrote The Stand, his acclaimed novel about a deadly influenza pandemic wiping out most of human civilization.

Related: Fauci warns coronavirus could kill as many as 200,000 Americans

Related: Jeanine Pirro responds to critics of appearance on Fox News show

Continue reading...

'You've bollixed up my book': letter reveals Hemingway's fury at being censored

The author threatened to ditch his British publisher, and likened him to a vicar, after his ‘Anglo-Saxon’ expressions were cleaned up

The hard-drinking, hot-tempered American writer Ernest Hemingway was furious when he discovered that the language for the English edition of his latest book had been cleaned up, a previously unpublished letter reveals. “I will make my own bloody decisions as to what I write and what I do not write,” he raged to his British publisher, adding that he did not want the book to be “bollixed up”.

The fury within the lines of the letter would have left Jonathan Cape in no doubt of Hemingway’s feelings about editorial changes to his 1932 nonfiction book about bull-fighting, Death in the Afternoon. That those changes were made without his knowledge or permission left him all the more outraged.

Continue reading...

Best free online experiences to stave off lockdown boredom

From Hamlet to Wu-Tang Clan to maths lessons for kids, there are countless ways to have fun

• Coronavirus – latest updates
• See all our coronavirus coverage

As millions of us try to find things to keep ourselves and our kids occupied during the lockdown, the good news is that many companies have decided to put some of their previously paid-for online content and services out there for free. So if you are trying to stave off cabin fever, maybe give one or two of these a try…

Continue reading...

Albert Camus novel The Plague leads surge of pestilence fiction

Author’s daughter explains 1947’s book’s renewed appeal during coronavirus lockdown

• Coronavirus – latest updates
• See all our coronavirus coverage

A plague is spreading. People are dying. Everyone is ordered to quarantine at home as the local doctor works around the clock to save victims. There are acts of heroism and acts of shame; there are those who think only of themselves, and those who are engaged for the greater good. The human condition is absurd and precarious.

That is the situation in La Peste (The Plague), Albert Camus’s classic novel published in 1947, which is now attracting new generations of readers.

Related: Publishers report sales boom in novels about fictional epidemics

Continue reading...

'Everyone is pulling together': poems by NHS workers to raise money for Covid-19 appeal

Anthology These Are the Hands collects poems from across the health service, from doctors to cleaners

Nurse Audrey Ardern-Jones writes of her colleagues around the world “who in fog-grey mists of locked-up wards / talk gently to the confused, the paranoid”. Consultant paediatric intensivist Colin Begg reflects on a night shift, and the “complexity / and compassion, / heat and harsh lighting / and at its centre, a person / trying not to die”. And medical student Anna Harvey describes working on a donor’s body, “The flesh too different from our own to compare / saturated with preservative.”

All are contributors to a new poetry anthology, These Are the Hands, that collects poems from NHS doctors and nurses at all stages of their careers, as well as others whose vital work keeps the health service going, including cleaners, interpreters and clerical staff.

Continue reading...

Book sales surge as self-isolating readers buy ‘bucket list’ novels

Paperback fiction sales rose by 35% last week, with a notable interest in challenging classics

Book sales have leapt across the country as readers find they have extra time on their hands, with bookshops reporting a significant increase in sales of longer novels and classic fiction.

In the week the UK’s biggest book chain, Waterstones, finally shut its stores after staff complained that they felt at risk from the coronavirus, its online sales were up by 400% week on week. It reported a “significant uplift” on classic – and often timely – titles including Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude and Love in the Time of Cholera, Toni Morrison’s Beloved, F Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby and Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar.

Continue reading...

Re-Animator director Stuart Gordon dies aged 72

Director made his name with shock theatre in Chicago before turning to gory screen horror – and creating Disney classic Honey I Shrunk the Kids

Stuart Gordon, the film-maker who shot to prominence with the mid-80s cult horror film Re-Animator before co-creating the Honey, I Shrunk the Kids series, has died aged 72. His family confirmed the news to Variety magazine; the cause was not released.

Gordon, who was born and grew up in Chicago, began producing radical theatre shows as a student, setting up a company in 1968 called Screw Theater. He staged an anti-war adaptation of Peter Pan (inspired by the Democratic convention riots of that year) which got him and his then girlfriend (and later wife) Carolyn Purdy arrested for obscenity; the case received national attention but the charges were later dropped. He then set up shop as the Organic Theater – described as a “take-off-your-clothes, scream and bleed theater” – which he ran for 16 years: among its successes was the Gordon-directed premiere production of David Mamet’s Sexual Perversity in Chicago in 1974.

Continue reading...

Woody Allen: 'I would welcome Dylan Farrow back with open arms'

Director says in new memoir that not raising his adopted daughter after abuse allegations – which he denies – was ‘one of the saddest things’ of his life

Woody Allen has written that he “would welcome Dylan [Farrow] with open arms if she’d ever want to reach out”, in his recently published memoir Apropos of Nothing.

In extracts published in the New York Times, Allen writes: “One of the saddest things of my life was that I was deprived of the years of raising Dylan and could only dream about showing her Manhattan and the joys of Paris and Rome. To this day, Soon-Yi [Previn] and I would welcome Dylan with open arms if she’d ever want to reach out to us as Moses [Farrow] did, but so far that’s still only a dream.”

Related: Why Woody Allen’s publisher was wrong to drop his memoir

Continue reading...

Make Room! Make Room! versus Soylent Green: can film trump book?

Richard Fleischer’s sci-fi movie takes Harry Harrison’s novel to another level – thanks in large part to its stars Edward G Robinson and Charlton Heston

I’ve just taken advantage of my time in isolation to watch Richard Fleischer’s 1973 sci-fi classic Soylent Green. My firm conclusion is that it is (even) better than the book on which it is based, Make Room! Make Room!

Related: Make Room! Make Room! is a revelatory novel to read right now

Related: Make Room! Make Room! is our reading group book for March

Continue reading...

via Science fiction books | The Guardian https://ift.tt/33JB2M0

Asterix creator Albert Uderzo dies at 92

French comic book artist, who created Asterix with the writer René Goscinny, dies at home ‘from a heart attack unrelated to the coronavius’

Asterix illustrator Albert Uderzo has died at the age of 92, his family has announced.

The French comic book artist, who created the beloved Asterix comics in 1959 with the writer René Goscinny, died on Tuesday. He “died in his sleep at his home in Neuilly from a heart attack unrelated to the coronavirus. He had been very tired for several weeks,” his son-in-law Bernard de Choisy told AFP.

Continue reading...

Valeria Luiselli wins £30,000 Rathbones Folio prize for third novel

Mexican author awarded prize for her acclaimed novel Lost Children Archive in a digital-only ceremony streamed on Twitter

Valeria Luiselli’s “singular, teeming, extraordinary” novel Lost Children Archive has won the £30,000 Rathbones Folio prize. The Mexican-born novelist and essayist is the first woman to win the prize since its inception in 2013.

The planned ceremony at the British Library in London was cancelled because of the coronavirus pandemic, but the chair of judges, Paul Farley, called on those watching the event online to imagine the award ceremony: “a podium, flutes of house prosecco, the din of assembled guests and the speeches”. Organisers of the prize broadcast the presentation live on Twitter and its website.

Related: Valeria Luiselli: 'Children chase after life, even if it ends up killing them'

Continue reading...

Close libraries now, plead library chiefs as 'terrified' London staff walk out

Lambeth librarians quit work over lack of hand-sanitising facilities and social distancing in branches as leaders call on government to shut all libraries

• Coronavirus and culture – a list of major cancellations
• Coronavirus – latest updates
• See all our coronavirus coverage

Librarians in south London staged a walkout on Friday over fears for their health during the coronavirus pandemic as leaders of the sector called for library closures to be mandated by the government and not left to local councils.

Staff in Lambeth walked out of branches on Friday afternoon, citing section 44 of the Employment Rights Act, which gives employees the right to withdraw from unsafe workplaces. They said they had been given no hand gel, no gloves, and limited access to hand-washing facilities, according to the trade union Unison.

Continue reading...

Woody Allen memoir published in US after protest stops first attempt

The controversial film director’s autobiography Apropos of Nothing had been dropped by its original publisher

Woody Allen’s memoir, dropped by its original publisher after widespread criticism, has found a new home.

The 400-page book, still called Apropos of Nothing, was released on Monday by Arcade Publishing.

Related: Why Woody Allen’s publisher was wrong to drop his memoir

Continue reading...

Theatres create first online programmes of new work in response to Covid-19

Brian Cox is among stars appearing in digital productions commissioned by the UK’s swiftly adapting arts venues, written by playwrights in isolation

The National Theatre of Scotland (NTS) and Home in Manchester are among the first theatres to commission major online programmes of work in response to the coronavirus, as theatres around the UK face months of closure caused by the outbreak. The commissions signal how arts venues are swiftly adapting in order to continue bringing new work to audiences.

Brian Cox, Alan Cumming, Adura Onashile and Cora Bissett will all star in short digital artworks “created from isolation” for the NTS’s Scenes for Survival season, launched in association with BBC Scotland and BBC Arts’ Culture in Quarantine project. Jackie Wylie, artistic director of NTS, said that Scotland has “always turned to our storytellers to offer connectivity, solace and joy. We want to bring audiences together online despite our collective isolation.” The writers Jenni Fagan, Val McDermid and Ian Rankin will contribute to the season of work, which will offer new stories as well as reworking classic ones. The programme will be available to view for free online. “Stories are what bring us together and hold us together,” said McDermid. “There will be an ‘afterwards’ and our stories will prepare us for that.”

Continue reading...

Sales soar 2,000% for Little Princess picture book on handwashing

Parents keen to encourage children into good hygiene practices during the coronavirus outbreak turn to Tony Ross’s anarchic creation for help

Parents desperate to persuade their children to keep washing their hands have been turning to Tony Ross’s anarchic creation the Little Princess for help, with sales of the picture book I Don’t Want to Wash My Hands! booming by more than 2,000% over the last month, following new hygiene advice related to the coronavirus outbreak.

First published in 2001, the children’s book follows the Little Princess as she’s asked to wash her hands repeatedly, after playing outside, playing with her dog, going on her potty and sneezing. “‘WHY?’ said the Little Princess. ‘Because of germs and nasties,’ said the Maid.”

Continue reading...

Waterstones staff say their health is at risk as stores stay open

Bookshop workers say sanitiser not provided and they are discouraged from wearing gloves

• Coronavirus – latest updates
• See all our coronavirus coverage

Waterstones is facing a backlash after members of staff said they had not been provided protective equipment to serve customers as hundreds of its stores remained open despite the coronavirus outbreak.

Employees of the bookselling chain said they had not been provided hand sanitiser and had been discouraged from wearing face masks or gloves as it would “cause panic”.

Continue reading...

Feeling overwhelmed? How art can help in an emergency by Olivia Laing

Novels, films and paintings offer more than escapism – they provide hope, which is a vital precursor to change

Long before the arrival of Covid-19, the speed and contents of the news had made me feel almost overwhelmed with fear. Faced with a flood of images that includes migrant children in cages, melting glaciers and forest fires, it has felt impossible to process information, let alone assess the best way to react.

We’ve entered an era characterised by the twin forces of speed and instability, in which a superabundance of potential threats – running from Islamic State to nuclear war, the rise of the far right, Brexit, environmental catastrophe and now a global pandemic – is matched by a dearth of time in which to process them. It’s impossible to keep up, and far too alarming to look away. Thanks to the accelerating effects of social media, it’s begun to seem as if the social landscape is shifting at such a rate that thinking, the act of making sense, is permanently balked. It’s increasingly difficult to distinguish real danger from rumours, speculations, conspiracy theories and deliberate lies, a process the spread of coronavirus around the globe has only intensified. Logging into Twitter or following the rolling news has meant being trapped in a spin-cycle of hypervigilant anxiety.

If this virus shows us anything, it’s that we’re interconnected, just as Dickens said. We have to keep each other afloat

That’s the thing about utopias, they keep you going, in a way that reading The Road does not

Related: Fiction to look out for in 2020

Related: The best books about new beginnings

Continue reading...

via Science fiction books | The Guardian https://ift.tt/3dc3hae

Britain has always relished the idea of a national emergency. Will that change now?

Since the second world war, we’ve overloaded on dystopian fantasies. We may not want to experience another for a while

• Coronavirus latest updates
• See all our coronavirus coverage

Britain sees itself as a stable country, and also as one that’s good in a crisis. So it has mixed feelings about national emergencies: it dreads them, understandably, but a corner of the national psyche is fascinated by them – and even sometimes relishes them. This ambivalence has haunted our culture and politics since the end of Britain’s last great, successfully navigated national emergency: the second world war.

Since 1945, British or British-set novels, films, speculative documentaries and television dramas have repeatedly imagined the suspension of everyday life in the face of catastrophes, from economic collapse to social breakdown, environmental disaster to nuclear war. From the horror movie shocks of the 2002 film 28 Days Later to the heartbreaking delicacy of Raymond Briggs’ 1982 anti-nuclear graphic novel When the Wind Blows, Britain has been good at scaring itself about the future.

Related: Why the cruel myth of the 'blitz spirit' is no model for how to fight coronavirus | Richard Overy

Genuine national emergencies, we are now learning, can be drawn-out, hugely dangerous and utterly disorientating

Related: Coronavirus: at a glance

Andy Beckett is a Guardian columnist

Continue reading...

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

Lockdown: Simon Armitage writes poem about coronavirus outbreak

Poet laureate says society may emerge from the pandemic ‘slightly slower, and wiser, at the other end’

Simon Armitage has written a poem to address the coronavirus and a lockdown that is slowly being implemented across the UK, saying that the art form can be consoling in times of crisis because it “asks us just to focus, and think, and be contemplative”.

The poet laureate’s new poem, Lockdown, moves from the outbreak of bubonic plague in Eyam in the 17th century, when a bale of cloth from London brought fleas carrying the plague to the Derbyshire village, to the epic poem Meghadūta by the Sanskrit poet Kālidāsa.

Continue reading...

'This is a scary time': coronavirus emergency fund set up for authors

Author Philip Pullman said the grants of up to £2,000 designed to meet urgent need ‘will be enormously reassuring’

• Coronavirus and culture – a list of major cancellations
• Coronavirus – latest updates
• See all our coronavirus coverage

A £330,000 emergency fund for authors is being launched to support those facing “unmanageable” losses from the cancellation of events, book tours and school visits during the coronavirus pandemic.

The Society of Authors, which launched the emergency fund, said that many authors were set to be affected, with some already losing thousands of pounds a day as work is called off.

Continue reading...

'Downton for kids': BBC brings forward Malory Towers adaptation

Enid Blyton’s girls’ boarding school adventure provides tales of hope in times of crisis

When Enid Blyton wrote the schoolgirl series Malory Towers after the second world war she injected tales of hope and camaraderie into it to reflect a Britain coming together after a time of crisis.

Now the BBC hopes its modern adaptation of the boarding school adventures of 12-year-old Darrell Rivers will do the same and it has brought the programme forward by a fortnight to Monday as a boost for children missing their final week of school because of the coronavirus.

Continue reading...

Livestreaming schedule: music, art, literature and events from Australia and beyond

As the coronavirus crisis roils on, creatives and cultural organisations are moving their work online. Here’s what’s coming to a monitor near you

• 21–22 March: Members of the beleaguered live music scene have banded together to create Isol-Aid, a “socially (media) distanced music festival” featuring 74 Australian musicians including Angie McMahon, Julia Jacklin, Stella Donnelly, Alice Skye, Didirri and heaps of others. The two-day festival will run from midday to midnight on Saturdayand Sunday, with artists streaming 20-minute sets from self-isolation live on their Instagram accounts. It’s free but viewers are encouraged to stream or buy merchandise to support artists, and donate to a fundraiser set up by Support Act.

Continue reading...

Eight authors share $1m prize as writers face coronavirus uncertainty

Bhanu Kapil, Yiyun Li and Namwali Serpell are among the winners of the 2020 Windham Campbell literary prize

• Coronavirus and culture – a list of major cancellations
• Coronavirus – latest updates
• See all our coronavirus coverage

The day before British-Indian poet Bhanu Kapil learned she had won a Windham Campbell prize, she had been wondering about how to balance writing, teaching and caring for her elderly mother. The next day, she received an email from the prize’s director, Michael Kelleher, informing her that she had been awarded $165,000 (£141,000).

“Sitting in bed, wondering about the future, I’d said, aloud, ‘Help’,” said the 51-year-old, who had never won a poetry prize before. “The moment Michael told me I’d won, I felt as if what I’d called out had been received. And I am not a religious person.”

Related: Maria Tumarkin on winning the 2020 Windham Campbell: 'It feels like a complicated gift'

Continue reading...

Hay literature festival cancelled due to coronavirus, putting future in jeopardy

Organisers call on public to donate to emergency fund to shore up future of UK’s ‘Town of Books’

• Coronavirus and culture – a list of major cancellations

The future of the Hay literature festival is in doubt following the cancellation of this year’s event due to the coronavirus outbreak, with organisers calling on the public to donate money in order to stop it folding in 10 days. The announcement follows widespread cancellations of cultural events due to Covid-19, including Glastonbury and Oxford literary festival.

The annual book celebration in Hay-on-Wye has huge economic implications for the border town. Each year, the influx of thousands of book lovers generates around £25m for the area, which is one of the lowest-paid regions in the UK.

Related: Coronavirus and culture – a list of major cancellations

Continue reading...

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie rejects 'delusional' plagiarism claim

Author’s agents say renewed accusations by Anne Giwa-Amu, that her 1996 debut novel was plagiarised, constitute ‘harassment’

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s literary agency has fiercely dimissed “delusional” claims that her award-winning novel Half of a Yellow Sun was plagiarised.

Nigerian-Welsh author Anne Giwa-Amu alleged in a YouTube video uploaded on Saturday that Half of a Yellow Sun plagiarises her own debut novel, Sade, which was published in 1996. In the video, Giwa-Amu describes Adichie’s book as “a rewrite of Sade” and says that “no one should profit from stealing another person’s work”. She uploaded a lengthy document to her website, laying out what she called “similarities” between the two novels.

Continue reading...

Around the world from your sofa: British Library to put rare globes online

Examples include 1679 pocket globe and 1730 terrestrial globe showing California as an island

What better way to see the world in these travel-restricted times than from the comfort of your sofa? The British Library is this month putting on a digital display of some of its more hidden treasures, including historic globes which will be available to explore online.

The library has about 150 historic globes in its vast collection of books, manuscripts and maps. Most are so delicate they are rarely seen by visitors.

Continue reading...

'I feel fine': George RR Martin reassures fans from self-isolation

Game of Thrones author is ‘aware I’m very much in the most vulnerable population’ but is working hard on The Winds of Winter

• Coronavirus and culture – a list of major cancellations
• Coronavirus – latest updates
• See all our coronavirus coverage

It is the pandemic news we have all been needing: George RR Martin is using his hours of confinement to work on his long-awaited Game of Thrones novel, The Winds of Winter.

“For those of you who may be concerned for me personally … yes, I am aware that I am very much in the most vulnerable population [for coronavirus infection], given my age and physical condition. But I feel fine at the moment, and we are taking all sensible precautions,” the 71-year-old author told fans on his website. “Truth be told, I am spending more time in Westeros than in the real world, writing every day. Things are pretty grim in the Seven Kingdoms … but maybe not as grim as they may become here.”

Related: George RR Martin: ‘Game of Thrones finishing is freeing, I’m at my own pace’

Continue reading...

Make Room! Make Room! is a revelatory novel to read right now

Harry Harrison’s sci-fi novel about Earth on the edge of disaster is both bracing and cathartic as Covid-19 continues to spread

Society has broken down. The weather’s weird. The air is foul with pollution. No one can travel anywhere. The government is unaccountable, brutal, corrupt, criminal. The police spend their time beating up protestors while ignoring most crimes because that uses up too many resources. People keep coming up with really crappy vegan alternatives to meat. Everyone is exhausted. The only nice place left on Earth is Denmark.

Related: Make Room! Make Room! is our reading group book for March

It was really the first book, fiction or nonfiction, about overpopulation. The idea came from an Indian I met after the war, in 1946. He told me, ‘Overpopulation is the big problem coming up in the world,’ (nobody had ever heard of it in those days) and he said, ‘Want to make a lot of money, Harry? You have to import rubber contraceptives to India.’ I didn’t mind making money, but I didn’t want to be the rubber king of India!

… But I started reading a bit about overpopulation, and got the idea for the book. It stayed in my head as I watched the population trend going the wrong way.

Make Room! Make Room! presents a gripping scenario of where current trends may be leading. Such scenarios are important tools in helping us to think about the future, and in bringing home to people the possible consequences of our collective behaviour. When such a serious goal can be achieved through an engrossing work of fiction we are doubly rewarded. Thank you, Harry Harrison.

Continue reading...

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

Delivery by skateboard? Coronavirus sees indie booksellers get inventive

As customers self-isolate, independent bookshops are set to take a hit – but many are offering storytime streams, discounts and even phone calls for the lonely

• Coronavirus and culture – a list of major cancellations

The booksellers at Burley Fisher Books in Haggerston are expecting their bikes to get a lot of use over the coming weeks. On Friday, they encouraged anyone self-isolating and in need of a new book to tell them the last book they read and enjoyed. If the customer was intrigued by their suggestion, they could buy it online and the booksellers would hand deliver it to anywhere in the London borough of Hackney. They were not anticipating more than 1,000 retweets and hundreds of requests for recommendations.

“Lots of people were saying they’d just read Girl, Woman, Other, so we were recommending Nudibranch by Irenosen Okojie for that. It was mostly fiction – people will be looking for big stories when they’re self-isolating, things to take them out of the home they can’t leave,” said co-owner Sam Fisher. “It was difficult to know the etiquette when delivering – should we knock on the door, leave it on the doorstep? But it was nice to be bringing the shop out into the community and we’ve got a lot of support. If it keeps up, we’ll all be very fit.”

Continue reading...

Amazon bans sale of most editions of Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf

Ban, which also includes other Nazi propaganda books, follows decades of campaigning by Holocaust charities

Amazon has banned the sale of most editions of Hitler’s Mein Kampf and other Nazi propaganda books from its store following decades of campaigning by Holocaust charities.

Booksellers were informed in recent days that they would no longer be allowed to sell a number of Nazi-authored books on the website including Hitler’s autobiographical screed and children’s books designed to spread antisemitic ideas among children.

Continue reading...

'Dead Sea Scrolls fragments' at Museum of the Bible are all fakes, study says

• Washington museum hired experts to examine purchases
• Artefacts came from controversial ‘Post-2002’ collection

When Steve Green paid millions of dollars from his family fortune for 16 fragments of the ancient Dead Sea Scrolls, it seemed the perfect addition to their new Museum of the Bible in Washington DC.

Related: Trade in Dead Sea Scrolls awash with suspected forgeries, experts warn

Continue reading...

Wordsworth exhibition explores true nature of William and Dorothy's bond

Show at National Trust’s Wordsworth House and Garden in Cumbria to mark 250th anniversary of poet’s birth

More than two centuries ago there was cruel and rude gossip about how startlingly close the relationship between William Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy was.

“The rumour mill has continued,” admitted Zoe Gilbert, visitor experience manager at Wordsworth’s childhood home in Cumbria. “We still get asked that question today.”

Related: Wordsworth treasures donated to poet's Lake District home

Continue reading...

Narnia to Wonderland: Oxford’s Story Museum brings kids’ books to life

In a district once ranked bottom for reading, the revamped attraction aims to awaken children to the joy of storytelling

For fans of children’s literature, it is an unmissable sight: Philip Pullman’s own alethiometer, a detailed realisation of the magical symbol reader described in Northern Lights, gleaming with secrets – or possibly even particles of “Dust” – on display at the new Story Museum in Oxford.

An unforgettable peek at the mysterious compass-like device is just one of the unique literary experiences on offer when the children’s museum reopens next month, after a £6m redevelopment.

If you concentrate on the story, it does the hard work for you. But somehow, we’ve lost our way with that

Continue reading...

Bag firm adds ‘unique’ appeal by stitching in historical figures’ letters

Antiquarians voice growing anger at the breaking up of original letters by famous names from Queen Victoria to Charles Dickens and even Napoleon

Love historic documents signed by figures such as Queen Victoria and Charles Dickens? Love luxury handbags? A new company is targeting this novel crossover market with exclusive bags containing snippets of authentic manuscripts by famous figures – to the fury of antiquarian booksellers, who say they are destroying cultural assets.

Sekrè, a German-Swiss startup, is selling the “luxury handbags with a secret” – the secret being that they contain fragments of original documents by the likes of Queen Victoria (a letter to the field marshal Henry Lord Hardinge from 1855), King Frederick William III (a love letter from 1829), Empress Maria Theresia of Austria ( authorising the deployment of her army in 1756) and Dickens (a handwritten letter from 1851). Costing up to €6,800 (£6,000), many of the lines have already sold out.

Continue reading...

Coronavirus and culture – a list of major cancellations

Covid-19’s impact on the arts world has led to countless films and concerts being scrapped or postponed and theatres and galleries closed. Here’s an updating list of what’s affected so far

Latest

• Disney postpones indefinitely release of Mulan, The New Mutants and Antlers.
• Steve Martin and Martin Short cancel shows in Dublin and London (13-15 March).
• Record Store Day postponed until June.
• BAM in New York cancels all live events and announces it will run its cinemas at 50% capacity.
• BPM festival (Miami, 22 March) postponed, new dates TBA.
• Under the Southern Stars Australia tour (3-19 April) cancelled.
• Rage Against the Machine postpone North American tour (26 March to 20 May), new dates TBA.
• Paris Opera cancels all performances of Manon until 3 April, George Balanchine until 10 April, the concert of Monteverdi, Rossi and Handel on 18 March, Don Giovanni from 21 March to 24 April.
• Lifeboat (Catherine Wheels production) at East Linton Community Hall, Scotland, on 14 March cancelled.
• London Irish Centre announces cancellation of St Patricks Day events.
• Rathbones Folio prize ceremony cancelled, winner will be announced 23 March.
• International Booker prize shortlist ceremony cancelled (was 2 April).
• Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike at Charing Cross Theatre postponed.

Continue reading...

The best recent science fiction and fantasy – review roundup

The Rearranged Life of Oona Lockhart by Margarita Montimore; The Lost Future of Pepperharrow by Natasha Pulley; By Force Alone by Lavie Tidhar; Providence by Max Barry; and House of Earth and Blood by Sarah J Maas

It’s New Year’s Eve 1982 and Oona Lockhart, who turns 19 tomorrow, faces a dilemma: to remain in New York with her musician boyfriend, or to leave him for university in London. A day later, the choice has been made for her. Oona is no longer 18, and it’s no longer the 1980s. She awakes in the body of her 51-year-old self, and the year is 2015. So begins Margarita Montimore’s thought-provoking The Rearranged Life of Oona Lockhart (Gollancz, £14.99). The novel follows Oona over the course of eight disordered years as, on each New Year’s Day, she finds herself inhabiting her own body at a different age: one year she is 51, the next 27, then 40 … It’s a non-sequential journey of self-discovery in which she must come to terms, both psychologically and practically, with her unique predicament. Knowledge of the future allows her to amass material wealth, but does awareness of her mistakes allow her to avoid making them once again? By turns tragic and triumphant, heartbreakingly poignant and joyful, this is ultimately an uplifting and redemptive read.

Continue reading...

via Science fiction books | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2U1taB0

Amazon flooded with self-published coronavirus books

Rush of instant publications ranges from children’s stories to cut-and-paste ‘guides’ plagiarising official advice

As the coronavirus spreads around the world, it is not only health professionals and politicians who are being kept busy. Amazon has been flooded with badly put together, often plagiarised “guides” to combatting the virus.

The retailing giant has already been removing “tens of thousands” of listings from “bad actors” attempting to artificially raise prices on items such as face masks and hand sanitiser. Now it is fighting a losing battle against the writers rushing out self-published books to profit from coronavirus fears. Generally shorter than 100 pages, dozens have been published in the last few weeks, promising worried readers ways to prevent or avoid the virus.

Continue reading...

Sydney writers' festival 2020: Bernadine Evaristo, Lisa Taddeo and Anna Weiner announced

Themed around the Doomsday Clock, writers Anna Weiner, Daniel Lavery, Bruce Pascoe and Leslie Jamison will also be appearing

The 2019 Booker prizewinner, Bernardine Evaristo, Three Women author Lisa Taddeo and essayist Leslie Jamison are among the Sydney Writers festival lineup, which was announced on Thursday evening.

Joshua Wong – a student activist who played a pivotal role in pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong – will be appearing via video link. The program also features Uncanny Valley author Anna Weiner; The Blazing World and Memories of the Future author Siri Hustvedt; Dark Emu author Bruce Pascoe; and Australian actor Yael Stone.

Related: Bernardine Evaristo: 'These are unprecedented times for black female writers'

Continue reading...

Government will abolish the 20% 'reading tax'

Rishi Sunak confirmed ebooks and online newspapers will no longer be subjected to sales tax

The government will abolish the 20% “reading tax” on ebooks and online newspapers from December, although it is unclear whether publishers will pass the full saving on to customers.

Printed books and newspapers have always been zero-rated for VAT but until now their digital equivalents – such as books from Amazon’s Kindle service or online subscriptions to news websites such as the Times or the Guardian – have been subject to the sales tax.

Continue reading...

The Mirror and the Light shines with huge first-week sales

Hilary Mantel’s conclusion to her Thomas Cromwell trilogy sold more than 95,000 copies in three days

Hilary Mantel’s much-anticipated The Mirror and the Light has been selling a copy every 2.7 seconds since its release last Thursday, with the final book in the two-time Booker winner’s trilogy selling more than 95,000 print copies in just three days.

According to figures from sales monitor Nielsen BookScan, 5p in every £1 spent on books in the UK last week went towards a copy of The Mirror and the Light. After an eight-year wait since the last book, 2012’s Bring Up the Bodies, excited fans lined up to buy the novel at bookshops around the UK at midnight on Wednesday.

Continue reading...

Come on in, the water's dystopian! JG Ballard's Drowned World hits an Essex pool

A Chelmsford swimming baths has turned Ballard’s prescient apocalyptic novel into a truly immersive performance. Our writer pulls on his trunks and dives in

It’s Saturday night in Chelmsford, and 100 people are waiting for security to admit us into a postapocalyptic hellscape. We aren’t queuing outside Wetherspoons, but standing in our swimwear in the changing rooms of the Riverside leisure centre.

We’re here for the world premiere of a performance inspired by JG Ballard’s The Drowned World as part of the Essex book festival. In 2018, director Ros Green commissioned a multimedia event called The Nuclear Option in a secret nuclear bunker in Kelvedon. Now she’s asked an outfit called Wet Sounds, which creates underwater listening experiences, to adapt Ballard’s dystopian novel. “Perhaps not that many people who come to the evening will have read the book,” she says. “My hope is that this will catalyse them to do so.”

No one applauds when the lights go up – because there are no norms for how to respond to this kind of performance

Continue reading...

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

Good deeds: the mobile library reaching refugee's hearts and minds

Amid the boredom and squalor of Greece’s refugee camps, the Echo library van’s books provide comfort and escape

‘The Anne Frank came back to us recently from a man living in a tent in Malakasa,” Keira Dignan says. We’re on board the Echo mobile library, a donated minivan lined with DIY bookshelves, as it motors between refugee camps in Greece. The 24-year-old librarian is telling me about the most popular books held on its wooden shelves. “He said that reading about her situation had given him strength in his own.”

Greece is estimated to host 90,000 refugees and migrants, and is struggling to cope. The Turkish government’s recent decision to open the border is likely to lead to another surge of displaced people. The Echo library was founded in 2016, at the height of the refugee crisis, and relies on a 15-strong volunteer team alongside donations to stock its shelves and pay for the van’s fuel – costs that come to roughly £13,000 a year. Dignan came to volunteer after finishing university in 2018 and never left.

Continue reading...

Make Room! Make Room! is our reading group book for March

Set in the then distant future of 1999, Harry Harrison’s classic dystopia, which inspired the film Soylent Green, is your climate-crisis fiction choice

Harry Harrison’s Make Room! Make Room! has come out of the hat and will be the subject of this month’s reading group.

This classic work of science fiction from 1966 was one of the most popular nominations for our climate theme – and with its story of scarce resources and subsequent societal breakdown, it looks like a prescient novel.

Continue reading...

via Science fiction books | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2Q2q9z4

Precious stolen work by Persian poet Hafez, now recovered, will be sold

After much intrigue, one of the earliest copies of the 14th-century author’s revered Divan, illuminated with gold, to be auctioned in April

A “magnificent” stolen manuscript by the revered 14th-century Persian poet Hafez, which was dramatically discovered earlier this year by a Dutch art sleuth, is set to be sold at auction next month.

Related: Bigger than Elvis: Hafez, the Persian poet who unites Iran

Continue reading...

Edmund de Waal brings library of exile to British Museum

Installation of books by banished writers is gesture of ‘beautiful activism’ in climate of ‘violent’ library closures, says artist

The closure of so many libraries in the UK over the last decade has been “violent and vile” and is “absolutely heartbreaking,” the artist Edmund de Waal said as he opened his own temporary library at the British Museum.

De Waal has created an installation titled library of exile, which contains 2,000 books by exiled writers from Ovid and Tacitus to TS Eliot and Judith Kerr.

Continue reading...

Woody Allen memoir may still go ahead in France, despite controversy

The film director’s book Apropos of Nothing was dropped by its US publisher after staff walkouts, but the French publisher says ‘Allen is not Roman Polanski’

Woody Allen’s controversial memoir will still be published in France despite its US publisher dropping it, with his French publisher saying that the film director is “not Roman Polanski” and that “the American situation is not ours”.

Allen’s memoir, Apropos of Nothing, was acquired last week by Hachette in the US. The move was quickly condemned by the author’s daughter Dylan Farrow, who has alleged that Allen sexually abused her as a child, allegations that Allen has denied. Allen’s son Ronan Farrow, whose book Catch and Kill – also published by Hachette – details his investigations into institutional sexual abuse in the media and Hollywood, also blasted the decision and announced he would no longer work with Hachette.

Continue reading...

Glastonbury and Hay festival organisers press on despite coronavirus fears

Most UK events, theatres and museums yet to be affected by outbreak

• Coronavirus – live updates

Those in charge of theatres, galleries, concert halls, arts centres and festivals in the UK are all busy with contingency planning, but most have not yet been significantly affected by the coronavirus outbreak.

The London book fair, which was scheduled to run from 10-12 March, has been one of the highest-profile cancellations but organisers of other mass participation events taking place in the spring and early summer are ploughing on with their plans.

Related: What does coronavirus mean for holidays, travel insurance and gigs?

Continue reading...

Stephen King attacks axing of Woody Allen book

Writer ‘uneasy’ over US publisher’s decision to drop director’s memoir

Author Stephen King has hit out at publisher Hachette over its decision to drop publication of Woody Allen’s memoir after a protest from his son, the author Ronan Farrow, prompted a walkout of staff at the publishing group’s New York office last Thursday.

“The Hachette decision to drop the Woody Allen book makes me very uneasy,” King, the horror writer, said on Twitter. “It’s not him; I don’t give a damn about Mr Allen. It’s who gets muzzled next that worries me.”

If you think he's a pedophile, don't buy the book. Don't go to his movies. Don't go listen to him play jazz at the Carlyle. Vote with your wallet...by withholding it. In America, that's how we do. https://t.co/znGZu0wJEF

Continue reading...

Noughts & Crosses author hits back at race-bait claims

Malorie Blackman responds on Twitter after Daily Mail critic calls drama ‘less a TV show than a political statement’

The author of Noughts & Crosses has defended her story against allegations that she is feeding racial division in Britain.

Related: ‘For casting purposes I was born in the wrong skin’ – Noughts and Crosses star Paterson Joseph

Btw, to those accusing me of being anti-white or stating I must hate white people to create such a story as Noughts and Crosses, I'm not even going to dignify your absurd nonsense with a response. Go take a seat waaaay over there in the cold, dark and bitter haters' corner.

Continue reading...

CS Lewis’s lost letters reveal how wife’s death tested his faith

During the final weeks of his life, the Narnia author wrote to a US academic about his struggle with grief and theology

The great tragedy of CS Lewis’s life was the loss of his wife, Joy Davidman, to cancer in 1960. Her death tested the faith of the Chronicles of Narnia author, who was also a prominent Christian thinker.

Now a cache of previously unpublished letters from Lewis, written in the months before his own death, reveal the extent to which his grief remained raw, even as he confronted his own physical decline and mortality.

Just to see the handwriting, you get a sense of Lewis’s personality. He was a very intense but warm person

Continue reading...

Hachette cancels plan to publish Woody Allen memoir

• Staff at Hachette’s New York office walked out in protest
• ‘The decision to cancel Mr Allen’s book was a difficult one’

Hachette has dropped plans to publish a memoir by Woody Allen, the Oscar-winning film director who has been accused of sexually abusing his daughter.

Related: Ronan Farrow condemns his publisher over Woody Allen memoir

Continue reading...

Bard labour: boost workplace productivity 'by reading a poem'

Poetry world thrilled at news the New York Times’ morning meeting begins with Wordsworth or Simic

Those seeking to have more productive morning meetings are often advised to hold them standing up, keep them as short as possible and – in desperate times – to serve coffee and pastries. A US newspaper executive had a different idea: read a poem.

In a recent column, the New York Times’ Marc Lacey wrote that – as well as discussing how best to cover natural disasters, mass shootings and political scandals – the paper’s otherwise grim morning news meeting had acquired the new feature to “inspire us and boost our creativity”.

Continue reading...

No more 'nagging wives': how Oxford Dictionaries is cleaning up sexist language

After extensive research, reference publisher is quietly replacing examples that ‘unnecessarily perpetuate stereotypes’ – while also reflecting how language is used

In years past, a reader Googling the definition of “anatomy” on their phone would have found a couple of example sentences demonstrating how the word might be used: “He left dusty handprints on his lady customers’ anatomies,” or “She was unable to reach for the bag in case she revealed more of her anatomy than she already had.”

Not any more. After a huge project that involved picking over tens of thousands of example sentences, Oxford University Press (OUP) has been quietly replacing hundreds of those that “unnecessarily perpetuate sexist stereotypes” in Oxford Dictionaries, the dictionary source licensed by Apple and Google. Now the example given for anatomy is “people should never be reduced to their anatomies” – and the “lady customers” have been consigned to the past.

Women’s hair was always being described with adjectives like lustrous, and there was a lot of stuff about women’s appearance that wasn’t necessary

Continue reading...

Jon Culshaw to play Bill Bryson in Notes from a Small Island adaptation

Dead Ringers impressionist takes lead role in stage version of bestselling book on British identity

The impressionist Jon Culshaw is to play Bill Bryson in a new stage adaptation of Notes from a Small Island, the Iowa-born author’s bestselling book about British eccentricities.

Culshaw, whose impersonations have long been heard on the radio show Dead Ringers, said that Bryson’s “delicious wit” made it a joy to prepare for the role. Bryson said he was “intrigued and excited to see how Notes from a Small Island will be translated into a theatrical experience. I am especially delighted that Jon Culshaw will be taking the lead role. I have no doubt that he will be a better me than I am.”

Continue reading...

Hachette workers stage walkout to protest publication of Woody Allen memoir

Workers say company is not listening to their concerns over support for film-maker accused of sexual abuse

Dozens of Hachette employees staged a walkout of its New York City offices on Thursday in protest against the company’s decision to publish Woody Allen’s autobiography.

Grand Central, a Hachette imprint, announced this week it would publish the Hollywood director’s Apropos of Nothing on 7 April. Financial terms were not disclosed for the book, which Grand Central quietly acquired a year ago.

Related: Woody Allen autobiography to be published next month

Continue reading...

Stella prize 2020: Charlotte Wood, Favel Parrett and Tara June Winch make shortlist

Josephine Rowe’s short story collection also honoured while Jess Hill and Caro Llewellyn round up nonfiction

Winning the Stella prize in 2016 changed Charlotte Wood’s life.

The Natural Way of Things was her fifth novel, but it was the first to truly catapult her into the spotlight.

Related: Charlotte Wood captures the feminist zeitgeist again in The Weekend

Related: Stella Count shows gender bias in book reviews is changing

Continue reading...

Publishers report sales boom in novels about fictional epidemics

Camus’ The Plague and Dean Koontz’s prescient The Eyes of Darkness enter bestsellers lists

“What’s true of all the evils in the world is true of plague as well. It helps men to rise above themselves,” wrote Albert Camus in La Peste (The Plague), his 1947 novel about of how a deadly plague devastates a quarantined town.

More than 70 years later, the global threat of the coronavirus is sending today’s readers towards novels about epidemics in droves. Publishers around the world are reporting booming sales of books including La Peste, as well as Stephen King’s The Stand and Dean Koontz’s “frighteningly relevant” The Eyes of Darkness, which has become the subject of conspiracy theories online owing to its prescience.

Continue reading...

Oprah admits to 'not looking for Latinx writers' as American Dirt controversy continues

Winfrey’s book club to air two-part panel on novel accused of cultural appropriation this week – but critics say she failed to address their concerns

Oprah Winfrey has admitted that she is “guilty of not looking for Latinx writers” in a forthcoming episode of her influential book club, after her choice of Jeanine Cummins’s controversial novel American Dirt was widely criticised.

In the two-part show, which will be broadcast on Apple TV+ from Thursday, Winfrey defends her choice of the novel because it made her feel personally connected to immigrants’ stories, reported the Associated Press (AP), which attended the taping last month. But she acknowledged the widespread criticism of American Dirt, the story of a woman and her son fleeing Mexico for the US that has been slammed for stereotypical portrayals of Mexico and Mexicans.

Related: Publisher cancels Jeanine Cummins tour for American Dirt over safety fears

Continue reading...

Transphobia row leaves Scottish poetry scene in turmoil

After the Scottish Poetry Library aired concerns over ‘escalating disharmony’, campaigners have questioned its respect for trans writers

A bitter conflict is escalating in the Scottish literary scene with the Scottish Poetry Library (SPL) standing accused of “institutional transphobia” after it said that it would not support “bullying and calls for no-platforming of writers”.

The organisation – an influential part of Scotland’s thriving poetry scene – released its statement in February after what it described as an “escalation, particularly on social media, of disharmony” and an increase in writers being no-platformed at literary events. It stressed that the statement was to encourage freedom of expression and was not tied to a specific incident, but, speaking to the National, SPL director Asif Khan said that these issues had affected the mental health of some unnamed poets, claiming some had become suicidal.

Continue reading...

Fever dreams: did author Dean Koontz really predict coronavirus?

From ‘Wuhan-400’, the deadly virus invented by Dean Koontz in 1981, to the plague unleashed in Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake, novelists have long been fascinated by pandemics

According to an online conspiracy theory, the American author Dean Koontz predicted the coronavirus outbreak in 1981. His novel The Eyes of Darkness made reference to a killer virus called “Wuhan-400” – eerily predicting the Chinese city where Covid-19 would emerge. But the similarities end there: Wuhan-400 is described as having a “kill‑rate” of 100%, developed in labs outside the city as the “perfect” biological weapon. An account with more similarities, also credited by some as predicting coronavirus, is found in the 2011 film Contagion, about a global pandemic that jumps from animals to humans and spreads arbitrarily around the globe.

But when it comes to our suffering, we want something more than arbitrariness. We want it to mean something. This is evident in our stories about illness and disease, from contemporary science fiction all the way back to Homer’s Iliad. Even malign actors are more reassuring than blind happenstance. Angry gods are better than no gods at all.

Dean Koontz's novel 'The Eyes of Darkness' (1981) made reference to a killer virus called “Wuhan-400”

Continue reading...

via Science fiction books | The Guardian https://ift.tt/32P9zbc

'I've been waiting years for this’: midnight queues as The Mirror & the Light finally hits shelves

After an eight-year gap and more pre-orders than Atwood, readers are excited to get hold of new Hilary Mantel book – even while knowing how it ends

Almost 500 years after Thomas Cromwell was imprisoned in the Tower of London, the 1,000-year-old site was illuminated on Wednesday evening with an image marking the long-awaited release of the conclusion to Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall trilogy, The Mirror & the Light.

On the other side of London, at Waterstones Piccadilly, hundreds of fans were queuing in the rain to be the first to get their hands on a copy of the novel – and to meet the author herself. Angela had already got stuck into her copy, and said she’d taken the day off work on Thursday to devote entirely to reading. “I want to go back to the 16th century.”

Related: The Mirror & the Light by Hilary Mantel review – Cromwell’s end

Related: The Mirror & the Light by Hilary Mantel – read the exclusive first extract

Continue reading...

London book fair cancelled over coronavirus fears, amid growing anger

Around 25,000 publishers, authors and agents were due to attend the fair next week, where deals for biggest books are struck

One of the world’s biggest international literary events, the London Book Fair, has been cancelled over coronavirus fears, amid growing anger that the delay in calling it off was putting people’s health at risk and an unfair financial strain on publishers.

Organiser Reed Exhibitions announced on Wednesday that the escalation of the illness meant the fair, which was scheduled to run from 10 to 12 March, would be called off. Around 25,000 publishers, authors and agents from around the world had been due to attend the event, where deals for the hottest new books are struck.

Continue reading...

Ronan Farrow condemns his publisher for plans to release Woody Allen memoir

Writer known for #MeToo investigations – whose sister says Allen abused her – suggests he can no longer work with Hachette

Ronan Farrow has distanced himself from the publisher of his latest book after the company announced plans to publish a memoir by his father, Woody Allen, saying the move “shows a lack of ethics and compassion for victims of sexual abuse”.

The journalist, best known for his groundbreaking investigations into claims of sexual abuse and misconduct against powerful men, issued a scathing statement in response to Hachette’s announcement on Monday that it would release Allen’s memoir, Apropos of Nothing, on 7 April.

Hey, just wanted to share my thoughts on some recent news: pic.twitter.com/ovPczgx8pB

Related: Ronan Farrow launches Catch and Kill podcast: ‘A reservoir of raw material’

Continue reading...

Fresh call for Oxford dictionaries to change 'sexist' definitions

Open letter continues drive to remove ‘damaging everyday sexism’ in its entries, such as citing ‘bitch’ as a synonym for woman

The leaders of Women’s Aid and the Women’s Equality party are among the signatories to an open letter calling on Oxford University Press to change its dictionaries’ “sexist” definitions of the word “woman”.

The letter points out that some Oxford Dictionaries’ definitions of the word include synonyms such as “bitch” and “maid”, and says that derogatory and sexist examples of usage include, “God, woman. Will you just listen?”

Continue reading...

Woody Allen autobiography to be published next month

Hachette division to release film-maker’s memoir Apropos of Nothing, once thought unpublishable in the #MeToo era

A memoir by Woody Allen, rumoured for years and once thought unpublishable in the #MeToo era, is coming out next month. Grand Central Publishing, a division of Hachette Book Group, announced on Monday that the book is called Apropos of Nothing and will be released on 7 April.

“The book is a comprehensive account of his life, both personal and professional, and describes his work in films, theatre, television, nightclubs and print,” according to Grand Central. “Allen also writes of his relationships with family, friends and the loves of his life.”

Related: Woody Allen claims he's 'done everything the MeToo movement would love to achieve’

Continue reading...

Hilary Mantel says 'invective' against Meghan is partly due to racism

Wolf Hall novelist adds that centuries on from Henry VIII, a female royal such as the Duchess of Sussex is ‘still perceived as public property’

Hilary Mantel has said that racism has been an element in the “invective” against Meghan, Duchess of Sussex.

The novelist, who is about to publish the third part in her trilogy about the life of Thomas Cromwell, The Mirror and the Light, was asked by the BBC if Meghan had been a victim of racism. She said that “racism is a factor” in the criticism the duchess has faced since marrying Prince Harry.

Related: The Mirror and the Light by Hilary Mantel review – a shoo-in for the Booker prize

Continue reading...

Reading group: which climate science fiction should we read in March?

From Mary Shelley to Margaret Atwood, the genre has been worrying over climate change for centuries. Please help choose one from many novels

For this month’s reading group, we’re after nominations for science fiction books that have something to say about the climate crisis.

It’s been a while since we last tackled SF, and since we’re in the middle of an ongoing climate emergency, we thought we’d focus on fiction that is based in the science endorsed by experts; a serious subject, but not at all limiting. The climate and changing weather have been among the most fertile subjects for speculative fiction since at least the days of the ark. Older, in fact, since flooding also had such a big influence on the epic of Gilgamesh and Enkidu. It’s perhaps stretching the definition of climate to say that if Aeolus had kept his bag of winds closed, Aeneas would never have been blown off course and the subsequent body of western literature would have been utterly different. But it is true to say that nearly all ancient epics were governed by the moods of the Mediterranean climate, the furies of the equinox and Zephyr’s willingness to blow away the winter.

Continue reading...

via Science fiction books | The Guardian https://ift.tt/38jpxv2

Women's prize for fiction lines up 'heavy hitters' on 2020 longlist

Three Booker winners lead a 16-strong field contending for £30,000 prize in what judges described as ‘an extraordinary year’

The Mirror and the Light isn’t published until Thursday, but the conclusion to Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall trilogy has already made the longlist for the Women’s prize for fiction.

Some of the biggest names in fiction are in direct competition this year for the £30,000 award, which celebrates “excellence, originality and accessibility in writing by women in English from across the world”. Mantel, who won the Booker price twice for the previous novels in her historical trilogy about the life of Thomas Cromwell, is up against two other Booker winners: Anne Enright’s Actress, in which a daughter explores her famous mother’s breakdown, and Bernardine Evaristo’s Girl, Woman, Other, a polyphonic exploration of black womanhood. A prominent omission from the longlist is Margaret Atwood’s The Testaments, which jointly won the Booker with Evaristo’s novel last year.

Continue reading...

Top authors take to Instagram to defend teenage book lover

Callum Manning, 13, whose reviews were savaged by pupils, backed by Matt Haig and others

A 13-year-old boy who was taunted for his online book reviews has received messages of support from bestselling authors.

Callum Manning, from South Shields, created an Instagram account last week to post about some of the books he had read. But he was left “devastated” after other pupils at his new school began to mock the reviews in a group chat he had joined.

Continue reading...