The AKO Caine Prize for African Writing—a charity whose aim is to bring African writing to a wider audience through, among other programming, an annual £10,000 literary award for an exemplary published short story by an African writer—has named Meron Hadero their 2021 winner. Hadero won for her short story “The Street Sweep,” published in ZYZZYVA in 2018. Read more
Author: GR
Mel Brooks announces his first memoir at the age of 95
All About Me!, to be published on 30 November, will cover everything from the film director’s military service to his long comedic partnership with Carl Reiner. Read more
If this isn’t the Great American Novel, it’s a mighty attempt at achieving one
A sprawling, ambitious debut novel that is as impassioned in promoting Black women’s autonomy as it is insistent on acknowledging our common humanity. Read more
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A Brief History of Summer Reading
We rarely talk about spring books or winter reading. What is it about summer that inspired a whole genre of its own? Read more
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The Noosphere Gazette: On Peter B. Kaufman’s “The New Enlightenment and the Fight to Free Knowledge”
Peter B. Kaufman’s rigorous and eloquent new book, The New Enlightenment and the Fight to Free Knowledge, traces the history of this dream of open access to knowledge. It “begins with torture and ends with a vision of another violent civil war. There’s some gun violence, some beheadings, tanks rolling over people, something for everyone.” A recurring problem is the concentration of power. “Archive,” as Kaufman points out, derives from “rule” or “govern,” in the “archon,” the seat of power. Governance and trading require knowledge, so in that sense all economies have been information economies, with all the associated pitfalls. Thus, release of closely guarded information into the public commons is a source of mortal danger to those in power. Read more
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Ethel Carnie Holdsworth: campaigners push to revive fame of working-class novelist
Ethel Carnie Holdsworth wrote in 1914 that “literature up till now has been lopsided, dealing with life only from the standpoint of one class”. Now the Lancashire mill worker and author, a forgotten name who is believed to be the first working-class woman in Britain to publish a novel, and who in her heyday outsold HG Wells, is set to be celebrated with an alternative blue plaque and a return to print. Read more
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Hemingway ‘wannabes’ celebrate author with lookalike contest
Fans in Nobel prizewinner’s favourite haunt of Key West hold their 40th competition on his birthday. Read more
Court Battle Begins Over Putin Book
Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich is not President Vladimir Putin’s “cashier” nor did he buy Chelsea FC as a vehicle to corrupt the West, his lawyer told England’s High Court in a defamation hearing over a book about Putin’s Russia. Read more
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The 2021 Booker Prize longlist announced
- A Passage North, Anuk Arudpragasam (Granta Books, Granta Publications)
- Second Place, Rachel Cusk, (Faber)
- The Promise, Damon Galgut, (Chatto & Windus, Vintage, PRH)
- The Sweetness of Water, Nathan Harris (Tinder Press, Headline, Hachette Book Group)
- Klara and the Sun, Kazuo Ishiguro (Faber)
- An Island, Karen Jennings (Holland House Books)
- A Town Called Solace, Mary Lawson (Chatto & Windus, Vintage, PRH)
- No One is Talking About This, Patricia Lockwood (Bloomsbury Circus, Bloomsbury Publishing)
- The Fortune Men, Nadifa Mohamed (Viking, Penguin General, PRH)
- Bewilderment, Richard Powers (Hutchinson Heinemann, PRH)
- China Room, Sunjeev Sahota (Harvill Secker, Vintage, PRH)
- Great Circle, Maggie Shipstead (Doubleday, Transworld Publishers, PRH)
- Light Perpetual, Francis Spufford (Faber)
Reese Witherspoon picks ‘The Paper Palace’ by Miranda Cowley Heller for July’s book club
Witherspoon’s take: “I was totally immersed in the fast-paced narrative that seamlessly wove together past and present. And all the beautiful details in this book are enough to pull at your heartstrings… every sentence is so vivid and luxurious you feel like you’re transported to a lakeside retreat in Cape Cod with a family you have known forever. I think you will love this one!” Read more
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