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Jane Austen and who? You may not be familiar with the eighteenth-century Chinese master, but if you are intrigued by adolescents striving to discover their emotional and sexual affinities in a society which aims to marry them off before they learn too much about themselves or one another, then I recommend you spend May and June reading Mansfield Park and Dream of the Red Chamber. Continue reading »
As an unpublished writer, one of my biggest fears was that I’d never get a novel published. Then, once I knew I was getting a novel published, one of my biggest fears was that my first novel would be published without anyone actually realising it was out there.
This is why I was so keen for Broken to be involved in Amazon’s Project Vine, a scheme where pre-publication copies of selected novels are made available to Amazon’s most consistent reviewers in the hope they’ll post positive reviews and create a word of mouth buzz. Continue reading »
Despite the scrutiny of generations of biographers and scholars, the Great Bard’s life is still a dense thicket of myths and traditions.
Even Bill Bryson - travel writer, polymath and a master of research - found the world’s most famous writer a rather slippery character: in his new biography Shakespeare: The World as a Stage he declares him at once “the best known and least known of figures”. Continue reading »
“Last December a woman entered my apartment who looked exactly like my wife…”
So begins Rivka Galchen’s funny, moving and mind-bending new book Atmospheric Disturbances. The story of Doppler radar, doppelgangers, climate manipulation and secret organisations that control the weather, the book centres around Leo, a psychiatrist who believes his wife Rema has been replaced with a identical replica. Continue reading »
Last week I rounded off my visit to the Oxford Literary Festival (more pics here) with a talk given by Richard Fortey about the story behind the work of the Natural History Museum. Continue reading »
“There aren’t many novels about people simply growing old” declares novelist, columnist and critic Philip Hensher in an upper room off Christ Church Quad. Continue reading »
Every good schoolboy knows that the indominatable British mainland has only been conquered twice - first by the noble Julius Caesar; secondly by those perfidious French. Lisa Jardine wants us to call it three.
As Tom Tower rang it’s 101 chimes, Jardine explored the conclusions of her book, Going Dutch for a curious Oxford Festival audience - making the case for 1688’s Glorious Revolution as “the invasion we’ve chosen to forget”. Continue reading »
‘Climate Xchange – Re:versing the Damage – Notes from the Climate Journey’ was described in the OLF programme guide as a ‘creative journey through climate change’. This lead me to suspect an audio/visual aspect to the event. To some extent this was true. Continue reading »
In the impressive surroundings of Christ Church’s Great Hall, bestselling historian Max Hastings admits to feeling a great sense of privilege that he’s able to “spend hours on end in the four corners of the Earth” listening to the personal testimonies of history’s survivors.
While there’s clearly enormous amounts of library work compacted into his comprehensive histories, vivid eyewitness accounts have always been central to Hasting’s books - and latest title Nemesis is no different, attempting to recreate the experiences of civilians and soldiers of all the sides entwined in World War II’s pacific battlefields. Continue reading »
I was pretty surprised to run into Dragon’s Den winner (and forthcoming Collins author) Levi Roots at an event with Dragon Peter Jones - and even more surprised to find them deep in conversation with legendary four-minute-miler Sir Roger Bannister. Things have clearly moved quickly for the musician, entrepreneur and now celebrity chef since the dragons bought into his Reggae Reggae Sauce…
While Roger disappeared (at speed) I dragged Levi into the Green Room for a chat about his million selling sauce, his new book and the forthcoming Reggae Reggae Car - click the button to listen in. Rastafari Bless!
100 books, 15 minutes and an eager Oxford crowd: today the Fifth Estate Estate rolled onto the Literary Festival Site to give away a boot-full of the finest literature - and the good people of Oxford turned out to cheer us on.
Lit fans old and young scooped up modern classics from our beautiful new Perennial Collection, leaving our alarmingly yellow vehicle considerably lighter within a speedy quarter hour. Our JG Ballard, William Burroughs, Carole Shields and quite a lot more disappeared rather swiftly into the throng outside Christ Church college, and even The Times turned up for a gander… Continue reading »
I always thought I had the measure of symmetry. Don’t get me wrong - I’ve never been a fan of algebra, and I’m regularly stumped by long division, but symmetry? Shapes and mirrors, right? I think I even know what tessellate means.
And yet part way through his enthralling lecture on the history (and future) of symmetry, mathmetician and author Marcus de Sautoy asks how many symmetries a Rubik’s cube has - and not only do I not have an answer, I don’t even understand the question. It’s 2.1×1024, by the way, and I couldn’t have been more confused if he’d told me the answer was brown. Continue reading »
Lionel Shriver loves snooker. Apparently she’s been a fan for fifteen or twenty years. In her new book The Post-Birthday World Shriver makes one her main characters a snooker player. For her lead character, children’s illustrator Irena, this man represents the exotic.
“I’ve come to read smut!” Shriver announced to the audience sat in the stately Upper Library of Christ Church. Eyebrows were raised. This would be exotic. Shriver began with a tally of how many people had read new book: a few. How many had read her most famous book We Need To Talk About Kevin? Almost everyone. Continue reading »
The Fifth Estate Estate is finally here - and it’s got its own page. Click over for more pictures - and find out what all those scribbles are…
We’ve loaded her up with a boot-full of books, and we’re in a generous mood. Over the next few days we’ll be cruising the mean streets of Oxford with our windows down and our system on, well, medium, blessing the city with the gift of free literature. So if you spot us around give us a wave - you might just get a book out of it.
“So you’ve come to the funny one?” said the girl taking my ticket to the talk led by the team behind TV’s trivia riot,Q.I.
While John sat through the horrors of rising tides and shrinking lakes on “a creative journey through climate change” just the other side of a creakingly timbered ceiling, I took the chance to hear QI creator John Mitchinson’s tour through the weird and wonderful of the animal kingdom, from pigs that glow in the dark to woodpeckers with ears on their tounges. I think I picked the right one. Continue reading »
Charlie Higson, still perhaps best known to adults for his comedy, has for the past three years been responsible for the Young James Bond series of novels and judging by the number of children who arrived to see him speak yesterday, it would seem Higson has found himself a whole new audience. Continue reading »
An interesting morning down here at the Oxford Literary Festival. Dreaming Spires sit gloomily beneath leaden skies, it’s grey and peaceful. The streets bustle in an orderly fashion, birds sing. Right now the only thing upsetting me is a rogue car alarm, set off at the smallest provocation. But that didn’t stop some half-decent history… Continue reading »
If you’ve had time during March to start reading Lions and Shadows by Christopher Isherwood or The Group by Mary McCarthy, you will have noticed that psychology and psychiatry feature in both.
Collective ideologies like Marxism and Fascism shaped the political understanding of Isherwood’s and McCarthy’s generation; Freud, Jung and the like shaped their understanding of the mind. In characterizing a group of people, a generation, a clique, Lions and Shadows and The Group both evoke the possibility of a norm, a type, and so they raise the question, What is normal? What is healthy?
Is it me, or has a strange thing happened to literary festivals?
Led by the relentless expansion of the legendary Hay, the last few years have seen the British lit fest leap out of its intellectual niche - and into the true mainstream of press, radio and television. Many of the country’s major music festivals now proudly boast their own literary tents; and with broadsheet sponsors, even television rights, a new audience seems to be discovering the nation’s foremost literary events.
So here I was at the Adelaide Literary Festival along with fifteen international writers, hand picked, cellophane wrapped and air-freighted half way around the world. Ready to frolic in the South Pacific Sea. Well… almost. Flying that 747 more or less single-handedly had not been easy.
“Well done,” texted the family. “Another triumph!”
Continue reading »
Lucy Lum was only a small girl when the Japanese invaded Singapore in the early forties, and already a victim of violence within her own home. Born into a matriarchal Chinese immigrant family, Lucy suffered for years at the hands of her fearsome and superstitious grandmother - a firm believer in the old ways, in stomach-churning herbalist remedies, in the dubious fortune-telling of mystics…and in mischievous little girls like Lucy knowing their place.
Originally self-published by her family, Lucy’s memoir The Thorn of Lion City, is out in paperback next month - we asked her a few questions about her incredible experiences…
Daniel’s debut novel, Broken, chronicles the havoc wrought on one British housing estate by a single uncontrollable family. Narrated by eleven year old Skunk Cunningham - trapped deep inside a coma - Daniel’s tragic comedy follows one community’s reaction to the neighbours from hell…
But how exactly can you pull off a novel that dares to cross the humour of Shameless with the emotion of To Kill a Mockingbird? Daniel’s been posting regularly on Fifth Estate in the run up to Broken’s release this month - last week I dragged him into the Filing Cupboard for a rather cramped discussion about the book, and about his own decade-long path to publication…
Apparently there’s a bit of Climate Change going around - so say our friends at Provokateur.
As an editor, you can shout your passion for a book from the rooftops and sometimes it just gets caught up in the cacophony of the hundreds of thousands of other wonderful books out there waiting to be read.
We try to come up with new ideas to make sure that each new book reaches a reader who’ll love it and so, when The Last Days of the Lacuna Cabal landed on desks at HC HQ, we were inspired to launch it as creatively as we could in the hope of making it stand out from the crowd.
The governor of New York state closed down at least two escort agencies during his former incarnation
as Attorney General - yet he chose to shop for sex on the Internet. Was he trying to get caught? Or
was he really that arrogant?
I talk about it here on the NY Times opinion page.
How do you want to get your financial advice? If you are remotely like much of the population the answer is “for free.” And you’ll like the sound of Otto Thorsen.
Thorsen has spent the last 14 months working on a Treasury sponsored review into financial advice for the general public. His conclusion? That £49m a year be spent on establishing a nationwide service offering free generic financial advice – on matters ranging from mortgages to simple household budgeting - to all UK citizens. It would be called Money Guidance. Continue reading »
Over the weekend a Guardian article on the 50 most powerful blogs pointed me back once again to www.pepysdiary.com - one of the most rewarding, insightful and fun literary blogs around.
Since September 2003 web designer Phil Gyford has posted the daily entries from Samuel Pepys famous diaries in ‘real time’ - now nearly five years into the experiment (and passing swiftly through Spring 1665) the site includes an impressive bank of articles, comments, annotations and maps, all linked into the great man’s idiosyncratic scribbles…
Rudolph Delson’s debut novel, Maynard and Jennica, has provoked strong reactions since it was released late last year - just check out the fimo if you need any convincing.
Packed with a cast of eccentric characters, not to mention the peculiar voices of more than thirty different narrators, Maynard and Jennica is a very modern New York love story. Rudy’s been a regular contributor to Fifth Estate: when he passed through London last week I dragged him into the filing cupboard for a conversation, and for what must be one of our most unusual readings…
The Easter Holidays are approaching - and unless you can lay hands on a flying nanny with a suitcase full of wholesome activities, the kids will need to be entertained. So now - while you still can - might be the best time to get stuck into Cristina Odone’s The Dilemmas of Harriet Carew.
Better yet, of course, would be the chance to pack the ‘little darlings’ off to grandma’s house and retreat to a spa with a good book in hand. So just to be extra specially nice this cold and windy March, here at Fifth Estate we’re giving you the chance to win a one-night break at a Champney’s Health Spa.
Back when I was six years old, the teacher of the class I was in made us produce our own novel. We had to write a story, illustrate it, come up with a title, write a blurb for the back and, of course, produce a front cover. The winner got five stars.
While everyone else rushed to get scissors and glue and crayons, I got on with writing my novel, a multi-layered psychological thriller about a dinosaur eating all the kids in the playground. Continue reading »
To celebrate the release of Miracles of Life we’ve been showcasing lots of Ballardian work, from our Times Online competition to design a cover for Crash and Waterstones.com’s video interview. Now we can now add to that list the First Ballardian Home Movies Festival.
At the start of this year, I suggested you read Willa Cather’s The Song of the Lark and James Joyce’s The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, two novels which trace the development of artists in opposition to the provincial communities in which they grow up. During March and April, try two very different accounts of the artistic sensibility: Lions and Shadows by Christopher Isherwood and The Group by Mary McCarthy. These novels are about circles of friends who discover themselves through one another.
I’m a big fan of J.G. Ballard’s atmospheric and unsettling novels. His first book The Drowned World, describes a London transformed into tropical swampland - in later works like Crash and Kingdom Come, the transformation is more subtle, featuring quiet British surburbs that seethe with hidden violence.
It’s always tempting to pin a writer’s themes on their own personal histories - but critics have long assumed that Ballard’s curious themes would have found their beginning in his childhood in occupied Shanghai, and subsequent internment in the Lunghua Concentration Camp.
What do Nick Cohen, Max Hastings, Robert Fisk, Merryn Somerset Webb and approximately eighty other Press Books authors all have in common?
Quite simply, they’re all journalists: and a new site has just made it easier than ever to discover the work they do away from HarperCollins. Journalisted is an initiative of the Media Standards Trust – it’s a new, not-for-profit website that “makes it easier to find out more about journalists and what they write about.”
Continue reading »
“Stripper power! Go Diablo!”
That’s how my friend Susan, a stripper for 15 years, responds to the news of Diablo Cody’s Oscar for best screenplay. At Desedo.com, a blogger known to me as MHB cites Diablo’s tattoo — “a bikini-clad + rope bound lass” — as a reminder that the screenwriter Continue reading »
I was at a talk the other night given by a writer who’s currently flying high in the bestseller charts, and he had a frightening story to tell.
Several years ago he was in London discussing the novel he’d just finished over lunch with his editor, getting feedback and agreeing what work still needed to be done. The writer had the feeling his editor wasn’t entirely enthused with this particular novel but felt nothing had been raised that couldn’t be put right. Continue reading »
I’m delighted to learn that former sex worker Diablo Cody (Candy Girl: A Year in the Life of an Unlikely Stripper) won the Oscar last night for best screenplay. And very touched that Diablo thanked her family “for loving me exactly the way I am.”
Go here to read my take on Juno, a film I enjoyed without reservation or apology. I’ve no idea why some feel the need to apologize for Continue reading »
I recently met up with a personal finance expert who asked me if I had yet set up a stakeholder pension for my small child. I haven’t. And what’s more, I don’t intend to.
I know that in theory it’s a good idea. Put the annual allowable amount of £3,600 gross into a pension every year for ten years for a child who is two now and it’s hard to see how they can’t have a happy retirement. So why aren’t I doing it for mine? Simple. She won’t be hitting retirement age for many decades to come and I just don’t trust the Goverment not to change the rules between now and then. Continue reading »
Tonight from 18:30 GMT author and mathematician Marcus Du Soutoy is going to be speaking at the Royal Academy - and you can watch his talk live on the internet over on their site.
Marcus’ book, Finding Moonshine, explores the weird world of symmetry - from the pyramid to the football, from insect life to architecture, Marcus uncovers an elusive concept that lies at the very heart of daily life.
This speech is the first in a series of Fourth Estate lectures, which will give a platform to some of the very best writers of non-fiction. Please log in and join us over at the Royal Society’s website in a few hours - and do let us know what you thought. And if you can’t be with us this evening, keep an eye on their site for an ‘on demand’ version in the next few days.
Our Fifth Estate filing cupboard may not hold quite the same influence as a seat on Judy’s sofa, but when Patrick was up from Cornwall last week we could hardly miss the opportunity for a chat.
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Patrick’s thirteen novels have long enjoyed critical acclaim, and since Notes from an Exhibition was featured on Channel 4’s TV book club this tale of the life and death of a prodigiously talented artist has become a regular sight on the nation’s tubes, trains and buses.
Publishing Director Paul Baggaley talked to Patrick about the book, discussing some of its strongest themes: family, art, depression and the vivid Cornish setting. Patrick also reads two extracts from Notes, including a fictional encounter with the famous Cornish sculptor Barbara Hepworth.
Take fifteen minutes with Patrick and Paul - and find out what the fuss is all about…
When I first heard of the invitation to fly to the Adelaide Literary Festival I was sitting in a café in northern Italy drinking a cappuccino.
“Shit!” I said.
You must understand; I have a phobia of flying.
“Language!” the sixteen-year-old said, disapprovingly.
A plane droned overhead in the bluest of skies. It was August. A difficult moment for someone who could hardly manage the short trip to Genova let alone the thought of twenty-four hours in the air. Continue reading »
Over the years I’ve been trying to get a novel published I’ve been fascinated with how other writers got their first deal, and have probably spent as many hours day-dreaming about how it might finally happen for me as I have actually writing my novels.
For some reason, I always dreamed it would happen with a phone call out of the blue. Something like this happened to a friend of mine who was a member of the writer’s group I’m involved with. Her name was Virginia Warbey and the novel in question was The Ropemaker’s Daughter. Continue reading »
Jeffrey Eugenides collection of love stories, My Mistress’s Sparrow is Dead takes it’s title from Roman poet Catullus. In this excerpt from his introduction, Jeffrey introduces one of history’s finest love poets…
The Latin poet Catullus was the first poet in the ancient world to write about a personal love affair in an extended way. Other poets treated the subject of “love,” allowing the flushed cheeks or alabaster limbs of this or that inamorata to enter the frame of their poems, but it was Catullus who built his nugae, or trifles, around a single, near-obsessional passion for a woman whose entire presence, body and mind, fills the lines of his poetry. Continue reading »
Yesterday some of our favourite book-bloggers picked their top love stories - today our authors have their say.
We asked our willing contributors to recommend one love story for Valentines week, in any medium - whether a film, book, play, poem, or song - and the response was magnificent.
There’s something for everyone in the suggestions that follow - read on for some valentines inspiration… Continue reading »
Who doesn’t love a challenge?
Last week author Jeffrey Eugenides posted about the pleasures (and difficulties) of picking favourite love stories for his recent anthology. He had a whole book to fill - but what if you could only choose one?
With Valentines approaching, we asked our favourite bloggers and some of our top authors to name their own favourite love story - in any medium. Nearly twenty responded, citing romances from books, poems, songs, films - and more besides.
Read on today for personal tips from some of the best writers in the blogosphere… Continue reading »
Or at least we’re living vicariously through our author Mark Lynas, who’s found his way into the (web) pages of the hallowed digi-culture monthly to talk about his book Six Degrees. I’m jealous.
Six Degrees, subtitled ‘Our Future on a Hotter Planet’ imagines how life on Earth might change with each single degree of global warming - chapter by chapter, the practical effects of rises between one and the much feared six degrees are spelled out with alarming precision.
Hop over to Wired News to find out what it’s all about.
If the property boom isn’t over, then why can’t interior designer Kelly Hoppen sell her much hyped flat in Battersea? It’s been written about endlessly – it turned up in The Sun in November last year, and in both The Sunday Times and The Times earlier this month – and all in a style that appears to suggests that £5m is no big deal of a price for a two bedroom flat on the wrong side of the river. Continue reading »
Since we first blogged about Ishmael Beah some twelve months ago, A Long Way Gone - his shocking memoir of his years as a child soldier - has stunned readers far outside his native Sierra Leone.
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Over the last year Ishmael’s story has taken him around Europe and around the world. Last week we were lucky enough to host him in London - Editor and Publicity Manager Robin Harvie invited him into the filing cupboard for a short reading, and asked him about his remarkable experiences.
We’ll all be downing tools early this afternoon to watch Richard and Judy debate Patrick Gale’s Notes from an Exhibition on Channel 4. This prime time recognition is hard won - Notes is Patrick’s thirteenth novel. In preparation for the paperback, Bron Sibree met Patrick to talk about the book and his prolific career…
It is difficult to decipher which comes first for Patrick Gale, his love of music or his compulsion to write. Or for that matter, his passion for Cornwall where he lives, writes and helps out on his hubby’s farm, along with putting his musical and organisational talents to use as chairman of the annual St Endellion Summer Festival.
It’s the story that refuses to die: last year Japan’s top three bestsellers were originally composed and read on mobile phones. If you’ve somehow not read enough about this you can still check out The Telegraph the Wall Street Journal and last week’s New York Times.
It could never happen here is the inevitable cry, and yet there are more than a few western companies banking that we’ll soon be reading from mobile screens too. While Sony and Amazon grab headlines with their dedicated (and expensive) e-readers, here’s five top start-ups who reckon the ‘ipod’ for ‘ebooks’ might already be in your home - and some simple instructions for those brave enough to have a go… Continue reading »
I married a San Diegan and live now in the city. It’s a wondrous spot. From our roof on New Year’s Eve, the city spreads out in a sparkling cold wash of light, punctuated with tiny bursts of fireworks, seen from a great distance as if they were messages from miniature kingdoms.
I love the end of the year, and thinking about the next. When I was a kid, I spent a lot of time alone, and even now, living in the city, I still carry with me the stillness of the mountains, and its solitude. Continue reading »
Last month, I suggested you read a pair of novels about the development of artists, The Song of the Lark by Willa Cather and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce. I’m hoping you’ve read enough to start thinking about why a bird is so important in both of them.
As a lonely music student in Chicago, Thea Kronberg falls in love with a painting in the Art Institute. “She imagined that nobody cared for it but herself, and that it waited for her….She liked even the name of it, `The Song of the Lark.’ The flat country, the early morning light, the wet fields, the look in the girl’s heavy face—”
Hidden in the depths of the HarperCollins archive, I’ve just come across this most incredible book.
London’s enormous Natural History Museum is one of the city’s most famous attractions - and one of it’s most impressive sights. Yet more than half of its mammoth floor space remains permanently closed to the public. So what really goes on behind the bones, birds and beetles?
One of the many pleasures of this job is getting to work with authors whose writing I have admired for years.
Over the the past twelve months we’ve published more than twenty articles from Merryn Somerset Webb, financial journalist and editor of MoneyWeek magazine (and you can find them all collected here).
Britain’s big banks have rarely been less popular than they are today. They’ve been bashed by pretty much every paper and even the Chancellor himself this week for attempting to keep the proceeds of December’s rate rise to themselves. Continue reading »
Already struggling with your New Year’s Resolutions? Stickk.com is a new website that helps you achieve your personal goals by making a contractual commitment with your family, friends or colleagues at work.
I’m talking to one of my sisters and trying to figure out what to blog about and she says, “I think you should blog about firsts. You know, the first time you. . .went ice skating or kissed somebody or had a music lesson.”
She paused. She’s driving through Boulder traffic in the snow, trying to merge, so I give her a minute and wait for it. She adds, “And how the first time isn’t always that great.” Continue reading »
Since Laura Spinney posted about Locked-in Syndrome last year we’ve received comments from more than a few visitors with family and friends suffering from the condition.
Now over the weekend I spotted this trailer for The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, confirming that this most famous, first hand account of a life ‘locked in’ is hitting the big screen in only a matter of weeks.
Continue reading »
The earliest indication that my slush-pile submission to Jonny Geller at Curtis Brown was going to be any different from the countless other slush-pile submissions I’d made in the past was an e-mail from Jonny’s assistant, Alice.
Dear Daniel,
I work with Jonny and have just picked this out of a pile of reading and really enjoyed it. Jonny’s away on holiday but just to let you know we’ll be in touch as soon as possible on our decision.
The money sections of the papers have been full of news of the horrors of the nation’s personal finances for the last few weeks. We’ve heard about the rising difficulties of taking out new loans, be they from the bank or on a credit card.
We’ve heard that 41% of people paid for some part of Christmas on their credit cards; that more people than ever before will go bankrupt this year; that repossessions are likely to keep rising all year; that mortgage rates going to keep going up even as base rates fall;