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A Day Like Today by John Humphrys review – 'I like arguing' [10 Oct 2019|06:30am] https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/oct/10/a-day-like-today-by-john-humphrys-review The combative broadcaster’s memoir mixes engaging snapshots of his early career with some score-settling and a robust defence of his interviewing style John Humphrys is the first to admit he doesn’t deal well with authority. He inherited it from his father, who refused to use the service entrance at the grand houses where he worked as a French polisher and, as a child, once watched his aunt get a humiliating dressing-down from the vicar for missing church. Humphrys had his own brush with condescending authority figures when he was in hospital with a cyst on his spine at 13, and an “arrogant posh bastard consultant” told his retinue of trainees it was because he didn’t wash regularly. “I don’t like being defined or told what to do, whoever is in charge,” he notes, a stance that has proved useful for grilling politicians (he has interviewed eight prime ministers), though it has also landed him in hot water. His memoir mixes engaging snapshots of his early career and analysis of the evolution of broadcasting with diatribes and petty score-settling. The early chapters tell of his passage from teen lackey on the Penarth Times in Wales, where his main task was standing outside the local church taking the names of those attending weddings and funerals, to being the first journalist on the scene at the Aberfan disaster, near Merthyr Tydfil, in which 116 children and 28 adults died after a colliery tip collapsed. Later he became a BBC foreign correspondent, reporting on the 1971 war in Pakistan, the military coup in Chile in 1973, and the Rhodesian bush war, which culminated in the election of Robert Mugabe in 1980 and where, for his own safety, Humphrys was encouraged to buy a submachine gun and put it on expenses. Continue reading... post comment

The River Capture by Mary Costello review – audacious literary ventriloquism [10 Oct 2019|07:59am] https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/oct/10/the-river-capture-mary-costello-review-james-joyce This beautifully modulated novel about a Joyce obsessive whose life has stalled bends Ulysses to its own ends “Barefoot, Luke O’Brien descends the stairs of Ardboe House and stands at the window on the return landing.” From the beautifully modulated opening sentence of Mary Costello’s second novel, we know we are in Ulysses territory (first line: “Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed”). A teacher on a career break, Luke has returned from Dublin to his ancestral home in Waterford, overlooking a bend in the Sullane. The family were not quite “castle Catholics”, but the O’Briens nonetheless had money and status, and he is the last of the line. A Joyce obsessive whose plans for a book have come to nothing, Luke is so immersed in Ulysses that he thinks in its language and rhythms, and sees parallels with Leopold Bloom, Stephen Dedalus and Joyce himself in the most minor occurrences of everyday life. He is also a metaphysician, compulsive connection-maker and – perhaps – bipolar: “A touch, maybe. Occasional highs, definite lows. Restlessness. Some hubris … Certainly nothing that warrants intervention.” Luke is becalmed. Like the book on Joyce, his plans to renovate Ardboe have barely got off the ground and his four-year career break has slowly stilled to almost nothing: “Some days, sitting in the same position, he thinks he has been there for a few minutes when, in fact, hours have passed and suddenly it is noon or afternoon or four o’clock and the day outside has entirely changed.” He does very little except visit his elderly aunt Ellen, who lives nearby; her sister, his aunt Josie – “slow, they’d call her now” – died not long ago, and Luke still mourns her. His attachment to and identification with women is even more striking than Bloom’s: “Alone, he contemplated the feminine in himself and, stirred by desire at the thought of being part woman, he massaged his nipples, ran a finger along his scrotal scar, the vestigial seam of a foetal vagina … he suspected that, at certain times of the month, he still possessed traces of a rudimentary menstrual cycle that, prone to the pull of celestial bodies, affected his entire organism.” Continue reading... post comment

Two Nobel literature prizes to be awarded after sexual assault scandal [10 Oct 2019|08:32am] https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/oct/10/nobel-prize-for-literature-to-be-awarded-twice-after-sexual-assault-scandal Atwood and Murakami among favourites for prize as academy tries to rebuild its reputation The Nobel prize in literature will be awarded twice on Thursday, after the Swedish body that selects the laureates was engulfed in a sexual assault scandal that forced it to postpone the 2018 ceremony. Among the favourites are the author of The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood, and the poet Anne Carson, both from Canada, the novelist Maryse Condé, from the French Caribbean island of Guadeloupe, the Japanese author Haruki Murakami and the Kenyan writer Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o. Continue reading... post comment

Lost chapter of world's first novel found in Japanese storeroom [10 Oct 2019|10:38am] https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/oct/10/lost-chapter-the-tale-of-genji-murasaki-shikibu-found-japan A fifth part of The Tale of Genji, which was completed around 1010 by a woman later named Murasaki Shikibu, has been found in a house in Tokyo The oldest written copy of part of the 11th-century Japanese epic The Tale of Genji, has been found in the home of a Tokyo family with ancestral ties to a feudal lord. Seen as the world’s first novel, The Tale of Genji was completed around 1010 by a woman of the 11th-century Heian court of Japan, who was later given the name Murasaki Shikibu by scholars. It centres on the fortunes – amorous and political – of Genji, the son of an emperor. The original manuscript of the story no longer exists, with the oldest versions of the story believed to have been transcribed by the poet Teika, who died in 1241. Continue reading... post comment

The Brothers York by Thomas Penn review – a thrilling history that resonates today [10 Oct 2019|11:00am] https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/oct/10/the-brothers-york-thomas-benn-review England desperately divided, the continent viewed with distrust: a pacy 15th-century tale of betrayal, backstabbing and paranoia Some people run marathons. Others scramble up mountains before the break of dawn. For me, the peak of physical endurance came when I stood in the yard of the Globe theatre on a late summer Sunday for the guts of 10 hours, watching all three of the plays in Shakespeare’s Henry VI cycle. I’d been training for this day, rocking on my heels through Richard III or both parts of Henry IV, but this took everything I had. From mid-morning until sunset, I followed the tangled politics of the Wars of the Roses, with only the infusion of a pork pie and two medically necessary pints of bitter getting me across the finish line. On my feet in the theatre yard, I was reminded that the political history of later 15th-century England is thick with blood and betrayal. Thomas Penn’s The Brothers York begins with the attempt in 1460 by Richard, Duke of York to seize the crown from the Lancastrian king Henry VI, and follows Richard’s three sons – Edward, Richard and George – through the tumultuous years that followed. Two of them would become king, two would die violently, and after a quarter of a century all three would be dead and a new dynasty would hold the throne. Penn’s first book, a biography of Henry VII – arguably the Tudor monarch with the lowest public profile – showed that he could craft pacy and convincing accounts out of 15th-century source materials. In The Brothers York, he succeeds again, smoothing the period’s interlocking alliances and multigenerational feuds into a narrative that is always readable and even thrilling. Continue reading... post comment

Olga Tokarczuk and Peter Handke win Nobel prizes in literature [10 Oct 2019|11:03am] https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/oct/10/nobel-prizes-in-literature-olga-tokarczuk-peter-handke-2019-2018 The Swedish Academy announced laureates for 2018 and 2019, after scandal forced last year’s award to be postponed Olga Tokarczuk: the dreadlocked feminist winner the Nobel needed ‘A troubling choice’: authors criticise Handke’s controversial Nobel win The Polish novelist and activist Olga Tokarczuk and the controversial Austrian author Peter Handke have both won the Nobel prize in literature. The choice of Tokarczuk and Handke comes after the Swedish Academy promised to move away from the award’s “male-oriented” and “Eurocentric” past. Continue reading... post comment

Nobel prize in literature: Olga Tokarczuk and Peter Handke win – live [10 Oct 2019|12:24pm] https://www.theguardian.com/books/live/2019/oct/10/nobel-prize-in-literature-2019-two-laureates-to-be-named-live After the prize was postponed last year due to a sexual harassment scandal, two Nobel medals have been awarded today 1.19pm BST Handke also called for the Nobel to be abolished in 2014, saying it was a “false canonisation” of literature. “The Nobel prize should finally be abolished,” he told Austrian newspaper Die Presse, adding that though it delivered “a moment of attention, six pages in the newspaper”, he did not admire the choices. Was he just a sore loser? “Of course it’s [a prize] that bothers you, then you’re annoying yourself because you think about it. It’s so unworthy, and at the same time you’re just so unworthy of it.” 1.18pm BST The choice of Peter Handke seems incredibly strange, given the Nobel committee had shown so many indications of moving away from incendiary laureates. The Nobel committee decides to dig itself out of scandal by awarding this year's Nobel prize in literature to an Austrian defender of Milosevic who denies that the Srebrenica massacre happened. Way to read the times, Nobel committee https://t.co/laYvRWUt0w Continue reading... post comment

Olga Tokarczuk: the dreadlocked feminist winner the Nobel needed [10 Oct 2019|04:06pm] https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/oct/10/olga-tokarczuk-the-dreadlocked-feminist-winner-the-nobel-needed From her Man Booker International winning novel Flights to her William Blake-infused eco-thriller, you can’t go wrong reading this great Polish author Peter Handke: an adversarial talent and controversial Nobel laureate ‘A troubling choice’: authors criticise Handke’s win The Swedish Academy has made many mistakes in recent years and, in the light of all its hand-wringing rhetoric about diversifying its remit, this week’s award of two Nobel prizes in literature to European writers might seem like another. But in the Polish writer Olga Tokarczuk, it has found not only a fine winner but a culturally important one. Tokarczuk has won the 2018 medal, which was postponed after the jury was engulfed in scandal. The year is significant since, although she has been a star in her own country for the best part of three decades, and has had two previous novels translated into English, it was in 2018 that she made her international breakthrough by winning the Man Booker International prize. She won it with a novel, Flights, which was originally published in Polish in 2007. Continue reading... post comment

Peter Handke: an adversarial talent and controversial Nobel laureate [10 Oct 2019|05:36pm] https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/oct/10/peter-handke-an-adversarial-talent-and-controversial-nobel-laureate Since his 1966 debut The Hornets, the Austrian playwright and author has tested, inspired and shocked audiences ‘A troubling choice’: authors criticise Handke’s win Olga Tokarczuk: the dreadlocked feminist winner the Nobel needed It was, undoubtedly, Peter Handke’s years as a law student in Graz that made him such an adversarial talent. Instead of pursuing those petty courtroom battles, he broke off his legal studies and began a literary career full of confrontation. His generation had so much to argue with. Unlike German language authors before him, such as Günther Grass and Heinrich Böll – the latter Handke vehemently spoke out against when he burst onto the scene with his 1966 debut novel The Hornets – Handke seemed to pick a fight with language itself. For him, and his contemporaries Elfriede Jelinek and Thomas Bernhard, the entire German language bore the stain of Nazi abuse and needed to be recovered, word by word. Related: Olga Tokarczuk and Peter Handke win Nobel prizes in literature Continue reading... post comment

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