Derek Raymond, the English noir writer whom Interpol knew better as Robin Cook, could spell in at least two languages, as his dystopian novel A State of Denmark proves. Leave aside comparisons to Orwell, with the novel’s imagined totalitarian England run by a media-backed dictator called Jobling, and instead concentrate on the words frazione, presa, [...]
You probably wouldn’t pick one of Northern Ireland’s best known poets, academic - and traditional music enthusiast to boot - to be the novelist to have translated the spirit of the internet into book form. In Shamrock Tea (2001) though Ciaran Carson has, in my humble view, done exactly that - and there’s not a hint [...]
4th Estate celebrate their 25th birthday this year, and to mark it have produced a very nice film which reminds you of many of the great books they’ve published
This Is Where We Live from 4th Estate on Vimeo.
Some favourites here include Michael Chabon’s novels, Robert Fisk’s huge book on the middle east, and most recently [...]
‘You couldn’t make it up’, screams the tabloid tv presenter as he recounts the surreal situation of Santa Claus and his helper elves being threatened by angry families in a run-down amusement park in the cultural wilderness of Kent.
Far more entertaining, though starting from a similar run-down amusement park premise, is George Saunders brilliant Civilwarland [...]
My new year’s resolution for 2009 is to not recommend any book until I’ve finished it. That gives me a couple of weeks to indulge my particular blogging vice, and there’s no better place to start than Abraham B. Yehoshua’s wonderful A Woman in Jerusalem, which I can’t recommend highly enough even though I’m only [...]
A short selection of our favourite lit blogs
For the full list go to our literary blog links page.
