Nineteen sixty-two was a big year for Jamaica and Chis Blackwell alike. The country gained its independence and hosted the first James Bond movie, Dr No, on which Blackwell worked as a fixer, recommending locations and recruiting his musician friends as grips, extras, even as musicians. So impressed was co-producer
Category: Books
The Escape Artist by Jonathan Freedland review – how an Auschwitz breakout alerted the world
It was around September 1942, the month when he turned 18, that Rudolf Vrba came to a momentous decision. He had been imprisoned in Auschwitz since June and was working on the ramp where most new arrivals were sent directly to their deaths. SS men would sometimes reassure them or
Dark Earth by Rebecca Stott review – magical, mythical historical fiction
Rebecca Stott’s superb third novel, Dark Earth, dramatises the parallels between archaeology and historical fiction. Stott is a renowned historian, but in this excavation of London’s deep past she has created something radically new and beautiful, a book that retells a period of our national past that straddles the line
The Bloater by Rosemary Tonks review – 1960s gem rescued from obscurity
The poet, novelist and critic Rosemary Tonks vanished from public life in the mid-1970s after publishing six novels and two acclaimed collections of poetry, leading to fevered speculation about her fate. She had converted to fundamentalist Christianity and lived as a recluse in Bournemouth until her death in 2014, visiting
Parts of John Hughes’ novel The Dogs copied from The Great Gatsby and Anna Karenina
The Australian novelist John Hughes, who last week admitted to “unintentionally” plagiarising parts of a Nobel laureate’s novel, appears to have also copied without acknowledgment parts of The Great Gatsby, Anna Karenina and other classic texts in his new book The Dogs. The revelation of new similarities follows an investigation
Ruth Ozeki’s ‘complete joy’ of a novel wins Women’s prize for fiction
Ruth Ozeki’s fourth novel, The Book of Form and Emptiness, has won the Women’s prize for fiction. The novelist, filmmaker and Zen Buddhist priest takes the £30,000 award for a book that “stood out for its sparkling writing, warmth, intelligence, humour and poignancy”, according to chair of judges Mary Ann
Top 10 forests in fiction | Zoe Gilbert
Long before Dante found himself lost in a dark wood, forests have been put to metaphorical use by storytellers. They are perhaps the “symbol of symbolism”, as Robert Pogue Harrison has it in his aptly titled book Forests: The Shadow of Civilisation. “Why,” he asks, “should forests haunt the mind
Red Sauce Brown Sauce by Felicity Cloake review – a quest for the great British breakfast
Halfway through reading Red Sauce Brown Sauce, I cycled 6km to a fishmonger’s on an industrial estate, between a Hertz car hire centre and a T-shirt printer’s, to buy a tin of laverbread. What can I say? I’m susceptible. Felicity Cloake’s description of cycling from Falmouth to Gowerton – from
George Lamming obituary
The six novels and the collections of essays by George Lamming, who has died aged 94, did much to shape Caribbean literary culture. He also contributed to it as an educator and activist intellectual, mentoring a host of young writers and scholars in the Caribbean and beyond. Intensely aware of
‘Landmark’ anthology 100 Queer Poems published for Pride month
This Pride month, a new anthology featuring the work of queer poets such as Langston Hughes, Ocean Vuong and Kae Tempest is “questioning and redefining what we mean by a ‘queer’ poem”. 100 Queer Poems, edited by Andrew McMillan and Mary Jean Chan, features work from 20th-century poets as well