Maaza Mengiste speaks to Monocle’s Georgina Godwin about her new book, The Shadow King, which casts a light on the women who went to war in the late 1930s in Ethiopia, the country of Mengiste’s birth.
‘Would you say there’s any end in sight, Charlie?’ Two fading Irish gangsters are waiting on the boat from Tangier. A lover has been lost, a daughter has gone missing… The Booker-longlisted Night Boat to Tangier by Kevin Barry is out now in paperback.
“This is a lament for a lost London, one which used to be much wilder, darker and poorer … This book will help you see it through new eyes. It is a delight.
Nicholas Lezard
Evening Standard
Dan Richards discusses preparing for unexpected meetings with bears in this audio extract from Outpost.
The first step on the road to change is to imagine possibility. In Imagine a Country, Val McDermid and Jo Sharp have asked almost 100 contributors to imagine their dream country. From comedians to economists, writers to musicians, they’ve gathered an astonishing array of Scottish voices to present their vision for the future. In the special virtual Aye Write event, Val and Jo are joined by contributors Chris Brookmyre, Jackie Kay, Phil Jupitus, Stuart Cosgrove, Bill Sweeney and Louise Welsh, who each share their vision for a hopeful future.
Stranger than Kindness, the new collection from Nick Cave traces his transformation from Aussie teenager into an international artist. This book invites the reader into the innermost core of the creative process and paves the way for an entirely new and intimate meeting with the artist, presenting Cave’s life, work and inspiration and exploring his many real and imagined universes.
The Observer
The Observer
“We discovered that hope wasn’t to be found in wishing for miracles, but more in the decision to treasure all of the moments we had left, even the sad and difficult ones.”
Janie Brown
Marie Curie Talkabout
For every ten paperbacks of Matt Haig’s Evie and the Animals sold in its first month, we’re planting a tree in the Amazon Rainforest with the help of One Tree Planted!
“Would you have done anything different, if you had the chance to undo your regrets?”
Alice Vincent’s life fell apart in her mid-twenties. Uprooted & heartbroken, living out of a suitcase in London, she sought out the nurturing power of plants to find her feet in a world spinning far too fast. Rootbound: Rewilding a Life is out on Thursday.
Night Boat to Tangier – one of the New York Times’ ten best books of the year
“A desolate ferry terminal on the Spanish coast isn’t a place where you’d expect to encounter sharp-edged lyricism or rueful philosophy, but thanks to the two Irish gangster antiheroes of Barry’s novel, there’s plenty of both on display, along with scabrously amusing tale-telling and much summoning of painful memories.”
Night Boat to Tangier by Kevin Barry has been named one of the ten best books of 2019 by the New York Times.
Being a good host is about more than just the food
“The French philosopher Alain Badiou wrote: ‘Love begins when something impossible is overcome.’ The same could be said of hospitality: the act of accepting from another, of receiving the other, only begins, only touches the rim of true hospitability, when it pushes you beyond your limits, discomfits you, allows in the unexpected, brings about what you never imagined.”
Priya Basil, author of Be My Guest, writes in the Observer about what it means to be a host – on the domestic and family level, and as a country receiving new arrivals.
Observer