Booker longlist
Here are the 13 longlisted books for this year’s Man Booker Prize: Julian Barnes The Sense of an Ending (Jonathan Cape – Random House) Sebastian Barry On Canaan’s…
Apocalypse
I like it when fiction writers have something to say about the world. I mean the real world, beyond the world of…
The ingredients of fiction
Writing fiction is not really about making stuff up. It’s more about making sense of what you already have stored somewhere in…
“Homage to Catalonia” by George Orwell
Homage to Catalonia is many books in one. It is a piece of journalism – Orwell initially went to Spain in the…
Giveaway: “The World’s Wife” by Carol Ann Duffy
I picked up a free copy of this in New Beacon Books – there was a stack of them left over from…
And the winner is…
I had an interesting experience tonight at the launch of Alex Wheatle’s new book Brenton Brown at Brixton Library. There was a speech by the author, a Q&A,…
“Too Loud a Solitude” by Bohumil Hrabal
The narrator of Too Loud a Solitude is an idiot. His boss despises him, others laugh at him. He drinks beer all…