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Fracture by Andrés Neuman review – truth bombs [09 Jun 2020|06:00am] https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/jun/09/fracture-by-andres-neuman-review-truth-bombs A Hiroshima survivor seizes a chance to confront his past in this timely novel about how nations and individuals deal with trauma and recovery Kintsugi is a Japanese art form that celebrates imperfection. Artisans repair and renew broken ceramics using a gold lacquer to accentuate the breaks. Or, as Andrés Neuman describes it his latest novel: “The art of mending cracks without secret. Of repairing while exposing the point of fracture.”  Fracture begins in Japan during the 2011 earthquake and subsequent tsunami, which devastated the nuclear reactor at Fukushima. Yoshie Watanabe, a retired business executive, lives alone. News of the catastrophe takes him back to the end of the second world war. As a boy, Yoshie miraculously survived the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombs, but has spent his life trying to escape his memories of the horror and the shame of his double hibakusha status. Yoshie lost his closest family and was brought up by his aunt and uncle. As soon as possible, he moved abroad to study economics in Paris.  Continue reading... post comment

Publishing has ignored and pigeonholed black authors for too long [09 Jun 2020|07:00am] https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2020/jun/09/publishing-has-ignored-and-pigeonholed-black-authors-for-too-long Year after year, the industry has failed to reflect the society around it, and correcting that will require concerted effort Over the past two weeks, people around the globe have gathered in protest against the terrible deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery. In the UK, within just a few days, it was revealed that the case of Belly Mujinga, who died of coronavirus after being spat at in Victoria station, had been closed while the government’s report on race and Covid-19 showed that, as suspected, black people are disproportionately dying from the virus.  Amid all the fury, corporations have been quick to express solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement, and publishers have been among them. As readers around the world have flocked to buy more anti-racist books by black authors, each day editors, agents and authors have taken to social media to call for more action. Mainstream publishers have made donations to Black Lives Matter causes, while the #InclusiveIndies fundraiser has raised more than £150,000. Over the weekend, authors also shared how much they were paid to write their books via the hashtag #publishingpaidme, which, among other things, exposed racial disparities in the advances paid by the big publishers. Agents and editors have been more vocal in asking black authors to submit their work in the future. Continue reading... post comment

Publishing has ignored and pigeonholed black authors for too long | Magdalene Abraha [09 Jun 2020|07:00am] https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2020/jun/09/publishing-has-ignored-and-pigeonholed-black-authors-for-too-long Year after year, the industry has failed to reflect the society around it, and correcting that will require concerted effort Over the past two weeks, people around the globe have gathered in protest against the terrible deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery. In the UK, within just a few days, it was revealed that the case of Belly Mujinga, who died of coronavirus after being spat at in Victoria station, had been closed while the government’s report on race and Covid-19 showed that, as suspected, black people are disproportionately dying from the virus.  Amid all the fury, corporations have been quick to express solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement, and publishers have been among them. As readers around the world have flocked to buy more anti-racist books by black authors, each day editors, agents and authors have taken to social media to call for more action. Mainstream publishers have made donations to Black Lives Matter causes, while the #InclusiveIndies fundraiser has raised more than £150,000. Over the weekend, authors also shared how much they were paid to write their books via the hashtag #publishingpaidme, which, among other things, exposed racial disparities in the advances paid by the big publishers. Agents and editors have been more vocal in asking black authors to submit their work in the future. Continue reading... post comment

Don't like Dickens? No one can dispute how entertaining he is [09 Jun 2020|01:28pm] https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2020/jun/09/critics-dickens-entertaining-our-mutual-friend This month’s Reading group choice Our Mutual Friend shows off the novelist’s prodigious gifts for fond characterisation – a lovable miracle in days like these It may seem like a banal observation to say that Our Mutual Friend is a lot of fun. Perhaps in the normal course of things, but in these times it feels like a kind of miracle. Reading Dickens over the past week has been positively medicinal. Take this description of a cherubic man called Wilfer: “So boyish was he in his curves and proportions, that his old schoolmaster meeting him in Cheapside, might have been unable to withstand the temptation of caning him on the spot.” Or this beautifully awkward exchange: Continue reading... post comment

Neil Gaiman and Chris Riddell announce new 'piratical adventure' [09 Jun 2020|02:00pm] https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/jun/09/neil-gaiman-chris-riddell-new-piratical-adventure-pirate-stew Pirate Stew will reunite the novelist and the illustrator in a rhyming tale for children due out this autumn Neil Gaiman has dug out a story he first wrote on a scrap of paper more than a decade ago and turned it into a new book for “anyone of any age who likes pirates, cooking, swashbuckling and/or doughnuts”. The American Gods and Good Omens author’s rhyming Pirate Stew, out in October, will be illustrated by the former UK children’s laureate Chris Riddell. Gaiman has previously collaborated with Riddell on titles including The Graveyard Book, Coraline and Fortunately, the Milk, with characters from the latter set to appear in the forthcoming book. Continue reading... post comment

Police violence, heritage and love: Forward poetry prizes reveal shortlists 'made to last' [09 Jun 2020|11:01pm] https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/jun/10/forward-poetry-prizes-shortlists-natalie-diaz Native American poet Natalie Diaz among contenders for best collection award with Postcolonial Love Poem, alongside Pascale Petit and Caroline Bird A poetic exploration of the wounds the US has inflicted on its indigenous people, written by one of the few remaining speakers of the Mojave language, has made the shortlist for the prestigious Forward prize for best collection. As Black Lives Matter protests sweep the world in the wake of the police killing of George Floyd, Natalie Diaz – a MacArthur “Genius” grant recipient and former professional basketball player – writes in her collection, Postcolonial Love Poem, of police violence against Native Americans. In her poem American Arithmetic, she notes that “Native Americans make up less than / 1 percent of the population of America”, but “Police kill Native Americans more / than any other race”. Continue reading... post comment

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