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National Book Awards: Susan Choi wins fiction prize for Trust Exercise [21 Nov 2019|03:41am] https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/nov/20/national-book-awards-susan-choi-wins-fiction-award-for-trust-exercise Queer writer Edmund White was also honored with a medal for distinguished contribution to American letters Susan Choi has won the fiction prize at the National Book Awards in New York on Wednesday night. The celebrated author won for her fifth novel, Trust Exercise, about teens attending an elite drama school in the south during the 80s which was praised for its bold experimentations with narrative and form. Trust Exercise beat out Sabrina & Corina: Stories by Kali Fajarado-Anstine; Black Leopard, Red Wolf by Marlon James; The Other Americans by Laila Lalami; and Disappearing Earth by Julie Phillips for the top prize. Continue reading... post comment

Simon Armitage: ‘Nature has come back to the centre of poetry’ [21 Nov 2019|06:00am] https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/nov/21/simon-armitage-nature-has-come-back-to-the-centre-of-poetry The poet laureate’s new prize for a collection that focuses on the environment highlights a crisis that can no longer be ignored, plus an exclusive new poem Poet laureate Simon Armitage is to use his laureate’s honorarium to create a new poetry prize for environmentally themed poetry, describing the climate crisis as a “background hum that won’t go away” when he is writing. The Laurel prize, which will be run by Poetry School, will go to the best collection of poems “with nature and the environment at their heart”, with the aim of highlighting “the challenges facing our planet”. The first prize, which will be awarded on 23 May 2020 at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, will be judged by Armitage, nature writer Robert Macfarlane and the poet Moniza Alvi. “It’s come about because of the obvious environmental concerns, and in recognition of this growing body of work in poetry addressing climate change and the climate crisis, sometimes directly and sometimes more indirectly,” says Armitage. “It needs more awareness around it. I also think that offering a prize might encourage more of this sort of writing.” Continue reading... post comment

Dominion by Tom Holland review – the legacy of Christianity [21 Nov 2019|07:30am] https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/nov/21/dominion-making-western-mind-tom-holland-review An absorbing survey of Christianity’s subversive origins and enduring influence is filled with vivid portraits, gruesome deaths and moral debates Tom Holland’s Dominion recounts the history and impact of Christianity from the crucifixion of Jesus to the Beatles’ “All You Need Is Love”. He describes crucifixion as one of the most terrible deaths one can suffer, which must be true in general but if Jesus really did only spend six hours on the cross, as the New Testament reports, he was luckier than most victims, who thrashed around for days. If you really have to be nailed to a cross, the best thing to do is lose a lot of blood beforehand, so by scourging Jesus the Romans unwittingly helped him on his way. Holland might also have pointed out that the ancient Romans reserved crucifixion mostly for political rebels. Jesus may not have been a Lenin, but it might have suited the Jewish leaders to persuade Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor, that he was. He would certainly have knocked around with Zealots, the anticolonial revolutionaries of the day. A few of his disciples were probably paid-up members of the group, as (probably) were the two so-called thieves between whom he hung on the cross. Pilate wouldn’t have needed much convincing to reach for the hammer and nails. Contrary to the gospels’ portrait of him as a kind of Guardian-reading liberal, reluctant to use his power and bemusedly in search of truth, the historical Pilate was a moral monster who would have crucified his own grandmother, and who was finally dismissed from the imperial service for corruption. Continue reading... post comment

That Reminds Me by Derek Owusu review – a fresh and powerful debut [21 Nov 2019|09:00am] https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/nov/21/that-reminds-me-derek-owusu-review The first novel by Stormzy’s imprint, a coming-of-age story about a young black Londoner, is bleak yet tender Early on in Derek Owusu’s coming-of-age debut, the first novel to be published by Stormzy’s publishing imprint, Merky Books, the protagonist recalls the difficulties he faced as a child learning the art of handwriting. “Cursive presents as the RP of pen to paper; I envy that dexterity denied me, the first difference of ability I noticed between myself and others. My foster mum finds pages of failed attempts, notes of a voice failing speech therapy […] straining imprinting on paper. She forces me to look at my writing, pointing at sentence after sentence, her finger finally resting on a tear absorbed, covering my shame.” Here, some of Owusu’s primary interests are made plain: the determined struggle for self-expression, the presentation of a nascent yet powerful self-loathing, a sense of the self being shaped by adversity. Notwithstanding the brilliant recent efforts of Inua Ellams, Kayo Chingonyi and Guy Gunaratne, within contemporary British literature it is still uncommon to find these ideas about the brittleness of identity considered from the perspective of young black male characters. It is equally rare to find these concerns handled so unflinchingly. Continue reading... post comment

Nino Haratischvili: 'I never understood how Georgians could be proud of Stalin' [21 Nov 2019|11:00am] https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/nov/21/nino-haratischvili-georgians-proud-of-stalin-the-eighth-life At 936 pages, The Eighth Life is the novelist’s first book to address her nation’s history. She explains why ‘the Georgian War and Peace’ is not yet complete “People are starting to realise that in return for the sovereignty they so desperately wanted, they’ll have to change their lifestyle,” says one character in Nino Haratischvili’s third and latest novel, The Eighth Life. You could be forgiven for believing this is a dig at Britain’s present moment. In fact, the year is 1991, the country, Georgia, and the scene, the turbulent aftermath of the dissolution of the Soviet Union. It was a time of civil war: Soviet loyalists and Georgian nationalists were at loggerheads over the direction of the country; uprisings in the Georgian territories of South Ossetia and Abkhazia were being backed by Russia; the first leader of the newly independent Georgia was forced to flee. The rule of law had been all but abandoned: shootings in broad daylight and overnight queues for bread were everyday events. When Haratischvili set out to describe the Tbilisi of the 90s that she remembered from her childhood, she quickly discovered that she needed to address everything that had led the country to that point. “I didn’t plan to write such a huge story,” says Haratischvili, who moved to Germany in 2003 and has been living there since. But the resulting 936-page novel, so hefty that her English publishers gave all staff a day off to read it, goes much further back. It chronicles the story of one Georgian family from 1917 to the present day, time-stamped by the Russian Revolution, the second world war and the Prague Spring, and is full of Soviet trappings: white Ladas, Mishka Na Severe chocolates and Red Moscow perfume. Though it is narrated by Niza, a Georgian émigré living in Germany in 2006, it is not autobiographical; Haratischvili describes the novel as personal, an extension of a reality she experienced. The Eighth Life, taking a numerical figure that resembles an infinity sign for its title, is largely about the inescapable patterns of history. Continue reading... post comment

Mutual Admiration Society by Mo Moulton review – the pioneering club of Dorothy L Sayers [21 Nov 2019|12:00pm] https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/nov/21/mutual-admiration-society-dorothy-l-sayers-mo-moulton-review A famous crime novelist, an am-dram star and ‘the Moss Side tigress’ in a tribute to female friendship In Dorothy L Sayers’s marvellous crime novel Gaudy Night, published in 1935, Harriet Vane – the sometime murder suspect beloved by the amateur sleuth Lord Peter Wimsey – returns to her old Oxford college, a place very like Sayers’s own alma mater, Somerville. There, a series of poison pen letters begin to arrive, notes composed in language so obscene that the English don, the unworldly Miss Lydgate, can’t understand it – “the worst she knows comes from Restoration drama”. Perhaps, the modern reader might think, it’s the 30s version of internet trolls threatening clever women who speak their minds. Or perhaps the culprit is one of the dons herself, “the outcome of repressions sometimes accompanying the celibate life”. Or maybe it’s one of the students. Or one of the servants … Suspicions abound. Lord Peter, who is being kept firmly at arm’s length, is horribly alarmed; he thinks real violence isn’t far away. Lying beneath the crime story is a whole ocean of seething anxieties. Can one be both an independent woman and a wife? Is a life of scholarship somehow unnatural for women? What is female education for? As one of the characters asks: “Some of these clever ladies are a bit queer don’t you think, madam?” For the educated, middle-class women born in the 1890s, such questions loomed large. Formed to a great extent by the first world war, benefiting from the enlargement of the franchise in 1918 and 1928, given more opportunities than their foremothers in the workplace, they were nevertheless carving out their places in territory that was not only undiscovered, but often hostile. Mutual Admiration Society is a group biography of a circle of such women who became pals at Oxford, including Sayers; the cheekily named society of the title was a real club, whose members composed poetry and prose for each other’s delight. Continue reading... post comment

Alan Moore drops anarchism to champion Labour against Tory 'parasites' [21 Nov 2019|12:40pm] https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/nov/21/alan-moore-drops-anarchism-to-champion-labour-against-tory-parasites Comics legend, who has voted only once in his life, makes passionate appeal to help defeat ‘rapacious’ rightwing party in general election He may be an anarchist who has voted only once in his life, but the comics legend Alan Moore is calling on his fans to oppose the “rapacious, smirking rightwing parasites” currently in government and join him in voting Labour. UK voters may find choosing between Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn unappealing, but the comics legend is in no doubt, declaring “some leaders are so unbelievably malevolent and catastrophic that they must be strenuously opposed by any means available”. Continue reading... post comment

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