Boualem_Sansal_sliider“I refuse to allow the government or anyone else to drive me out of my country. My circumstances are difficult and sometimes dangerous, but a resistant must resist, not surrender.” – Boualem Sansal: Resistance writer

 

The_Secret_History_of_Wonder_Woman_224CONTEXTS
Jill Lepore: Wonder Woman for President!

How Ms. magazine and the women’s movement co-opted Wonder Woman to their cause – only to be derailed by the Lynda Carter TV show.

Andrew Gant: Wenceslas squared
How ‘Good King Wenceslas’, like many English carols, is a mongrel hybrid of folk song and legend with only a tenuous link to Christmas.

Quality of mercy strain’d
Mika Provata-Carlone assesses the Almeida’s revival of Rupert Goold’s Las Vegas-based production of The Merchant of Venice.

 

INTERVIEWS
David_Nicholls_featureBoualem Sansal: Resistance writer
The author of An Unfinished Business and Harraga talks about personal freedoms and the importance of speaking out against dictatorship.

Tomás González: Undercurrents
The author of In the Beginning Was the Sea revisits the devastating events that destroyed his family but launched his writing career.

David Nicholls steps up
The Booker-longisted author of Us tells Alex Peake-Tomkinson about James, Hardy, Cheever, narrative structure, missing dad and pleasing mum.

 

Half_Bad_224A WRITER’S LIFE
Sally Green: The eternal rocks
The author of the Half Bad trilogy discusses coffee, ironing, conjuring up witches, a hankering for Heathcliff, and other literary heroes.

 

WRITERS’ PATHS
Sophie McCook: Head on the block
The author of Thinkless discusses hiatus, procrastination, writing discipline and the journey from serial blogger to published novelist.

 

FICTION 500
Claire Fuller: The untelling
Micro story about an untimely celebration from the author of the forthcoming Our Endless Numbered Days.

EXTRACTS
Tomás González: New beginnings
Extract from In the Beginning Was the Sea, a fictionalised account of González’ brother’s calamitous move to Colombia’s Caribbean coast.

 

Family Life_featureBOOKANISTA RECOMMENDS
Children’s books for all ages
Mika Provata-Carlone rounds up a selection of delightful children’s favourites to be cherished across the generations.

Fiction 2014–2015
Lucy Scholes looks back on the best novels and short story collections of 2014 and peeks ahead at the coming year’s big hits.

 

Watermelon_feature

DIARY
Helen Patuck: Seeds of change
How the writer and editor went to Beirut to learn Arabic, and within six months launched a bilingual children’s publishing project with her first book The Giant Watermelon.