Neil Gaiman fans will be excited by the news that his hugely succesful and much-loved 2001 novel American Gods has been greenlighted for a TV adaptation by the American network Starz (makers of both Spartacus and Outlander). The show is being cast now (there’s already a twitter campaign by fans #castingshadow ), and will be […]
Elena Ferrante’s novel The Story of the Lost Child, the fourth and final novel in her Neopolitan series, has made the final five shortlist for Italy’s Premio Strega prize – and not without controversy. Ferrante was first nominated for Italy’s biggest prize 23 years ago, with her first novel L’amore molesto (Troubling Love). It didn’t […]
Jim Crace’s novel Harvest has won the 2015 IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, the world’s largest prize for a single novel. Previous winning novelists have included Juan Gabriel Vásquez, Kevin Barry, Michel Houellebecq and Herta Müller. Explaining their decision, the Prize judges commented: “At times, Harvest reads like a long prose poem; it plays on the ear like […]
Bologna has a thriving cultural life, and one of its centerpieces is Mambo (Museo Art Moderna di Bologna), a wonderful art museum with temporary and permanent exhbitions, situated in Via Don Giovanni Minzoni 14, between the city centre and the train station. A lot of thought has gone in to the Museum, which was formerly […]
Bologna’s Museum for the Memory Of Ustica sounds like a mouthful, but in actual fact it’s a stunning museum, tucked away in a park in the city’s Bolognina zone (a 10-15 minute walk from the main train station). Ustica is an island off the coast of Sicily – near where, on the 27th of June […]
A poem by John Doyle, as part of TMO’s Original Fiction and Poetry section.
Crossing Europe by train last summer, it was only on arrival in Romania that I realised we had unwittingly followed the very route (Paris-Munich-Budapest) taken by Jonathan Harker, the young solicitor at the start of Dracula (1897). Returning home to Bridport – in excellent health, I should probably add – I mentioned this to a […]
The County of Rain Lush and glistening, strands of rubies used to spill from the thrush’s throat; but now the dew will dry before the sun rises, and we endure a thirsty cinder, and then a choking, broken moon. And so I’ll drive through the night, past the pine barren’s wind-thrawn forms to your county […]
The Last Toy That small, wooden train engine remains on your dresser, crowded by crumpled bills, covered by a black dress sock; the rest lies packed, entangled in its tracks beneath the snapped, abiding lid of a plastic box, buried in the attic’s still vault. Why did you decide to set that toy aside, a […]
