“An Artist of the Floating World” by Kazuo Ishiguro
An elderly, celebrated artist, Masuji Ono, is living in retirement in Japan just after the end of World War Two. His daughter is having trouble in her marriage…
Article in The Bookseller
There was a nice piece about my novel On the Holloway Road in The Bookseller recently. It’s the main business magazine for…
Extract from Susan Sontag’s diary
“X” is when you feel yourself an object, not a subject. when you want to please and impress people, either by saying…
“The Question of Bruno” by Aleksandar Hemon
The writing grabbed me from page one: there is a real rhythm to it, and the description is beautiful. The first story…
How to explain the credit crunch to a five-year-old
1. The government promised Mummy and Daddy they would be happy if they spent their lives working to make someone else rich. 2. Mummy and Daddy did what…
“Prisons we choose to live inside” by Doris Lessing
"Of course, there are original minds, people who do take their own line, who do not fall victim to the need to…
Food crisis
Wonderful article in the December New Internationalist about the global food crisis. As the magazine points out, we hear a lot about…
Quote for the day
Washing one’s hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral.…