‘As Barry follows John’s strange journey, the boundaries between fact and fiction, author and subject, past and present morph. Dark, trippy and comic, Beatlebone is a heady exploration of creativity and identity’
Francesca Wade
The Telegraph
‘If the novel loses innovation it’s f****d’: Beatlebone wins the 2015 Goldsmiths Prize.
Goldsmiths Prize
gold.ac.uk
Kevin Barry narrates this short video for his Goldsmiths-winning novel Beatlebone.
‘Al Aswany is above all a superb storyteller and creator of characters: 50 pages in, there is no turning back … A remarkable and devastating portrait of a deeply unhappy society, in the guise of a novel that is at once funny, perceptive and affectionate’
Caroline Moorehead
The Spectator
“What were they up to, and how could they know the names of the characters in my unpublished novel, which no living creature apart from me had read? Could fictional characters really come to life?”
“We hang on to our values, even if they seem at times tarnished and worn; even if, as a nation and in our own lives, we have betrayed them more often than we care to remember”
Barack Obama’s speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention on ‘The Audacity of Hope’, which would become the title of his second book.
The full text of the sermon by Jeremiah Wright – ‘The Audacity to Hope’ – from which Obama took the title of his book.
Jeremiah Wright
The Atlantic
After being sent around the world three times by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant for An Idiot Abroad, Karl Pilkington is going it alone on a journey of self-discovery.
Seth McFarlane on A Million Ways to Die in the West
From the creator of Family Guy, American Dad and Ted, a hilarious tale of the west like you’ve never read before.
“Today it’s widely regarded as a classic of American literature. But Fante’s masterpiece has not always enjoyed such prominence. In fact, its journey to its current status has been long and highly unusual…”
Rob Woodard
Guardian
Maria Konnikova at the RSA
How To Think Like Sherlock Holmes - Mastermind - Maria Konnikova. From Practical Psychology
The Lost Time Accidents is a bold and epic saga set against the greatest upheavals of the twentieth century. Here, John Wray reads an extract from his ambitious and fiercely inventive novel.
‘It is exhilarating to witness this method operating in non-fiction too. Stitching and collaging odd fragments and genres together, Laing goes beyond reparation to offer something beautifully integrated, original, compassionate. She does not pose as a professional expert; her very subjectivity, her own suffering, confer her authority because they are so enmeshed with her powerful intelligence’
Michele Roberts
The Independent
“How art helped me see the beauty in loneliness…” An edited extract of The Lonely City
Olivia Laing
The Guardian