Literary events

Death and the King’s Horseman

Went to see this play by Nobel-prize-winning Nigerian playwright Wole Soyinka at the National Theatre, and it was fantastic. I don’t go to the theatre very often, but if I could see more plays like this I’d go all the…
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Luke Bitmead Award 2009

I was happy to see a call for entries for the Luke Bitmead Writers’ Bursary 2009. Luke wrote an excellent book, White Summer, in 2006, but died only a few months after it was published. His second book, Heading South,…
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Ismail Kadare and dissent

Interesting piece in The Guardian recently about the Albanian writer Ismail Kadare and his alleged ties to the Hoxha regime. I went to see Ismail Kadare speak at the Southbank Centre in London last year, and he addressed this issue…
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New Kerouac novel

I was excited to read recently that Jack Kerouac’s unpublished first novel The Sea is my Brother is to be published next year. I thought Peter Townshend wrote an excellent piece about the event and its possible implications. One note…
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David Foster Wallace

I really need to read more. Apparently David Foster Wallace, who committed suicide last month after years battling depression, was the “most brilliant American writer of his generation.” I have not read any of his books – in fact, I…
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Caine Prize for African Writing

I’ve been attending quite a few readings at the Southbank Centre lately, and always find that, while I spend some time wondering why I am there, I get something from the experience in the end. Last Sunday it was the…
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