Tomás González: Undercurrents
Thirty years ago, Tomás González’ brother Juan and his wife Marie-Elena, bored by the wealthy, partying, intellectual circles of Bogotá, escaped to Colombia’s Caribbean coast and sunk their money into a run-down farm overlooking a deserted beach surrounded by jungle. Their dream of escaping the rat race ended in calamity as spiralling debts, divisive frictions,...
Boualem Sansal: Resistance writer
Boualem Sansal began writing his first novel, Le serment des barbares, in his late 40s while still working as a civil servant. When the book was published in 1999, containing criticism of the political situation in Algeria, he was asked to go on leave. In 2003, after further criticism of President Abd al-Aziz Bouteflika’s regime,...
J. Robert Lennon: Short, weird stuff
We talk to the author of Familiar about his new story collection See You in Paradise, the story ‘The Wraith’ (published here), music, adaptations, and other creative engagements. MR: ‘The Wraith’ touches on a lack of political engagement, our complex and disturbing inner lives, the disabling terror of depression, a refusal to accept the anodyne, the...
Boris Fishman: Believable lies
Boris Fishman’s engaging debut novel A Replacement Life offers a critical and affectionate portrait of the Russian-American immigrant community that clusters around South Brooklyn’s Brighton Beach. Slava Gelman is a lowly hack on a New Yorker-style magazine whose grandfather suggests an outrageous writing assignment: to forge a Holocaust restitution claim. His grandmother, an actual Holocaust...
From page to screen
The hype around the release of Gone Girl is a useful reminder that around half the top-grossing films of the last two decades have been literary adaptations. Bringing a well-loved book to the big screen is relatively risk-free, and this is reflected in the programme of the London Film Festival, the 58th edition of which...
Martin Rowson draws up a storm
Martin Rowson’s political cartoons for the Guardian, The Mirror and other papers are visually bold and acutely scathing of our MPs’ pitiful attempts to run the country. As we meet around the time of the shaky Scottish independence referendum, he is entertainingly candid about his run-ins with those in power. Mark R: Looking back over...
Jörg Tittel and John Aggs: Taking the Mickey
In May, we ran some pages from Jörg Tittel and John Aggs’ shoot-em-up theme park satire Ricky Rouse Has a Gun, then available only in a limited-run special edition hardback. As the paperback is launched, I catch up with the pair – and a stranger in a giant mouse suit. What was the initial spark...
Erwin Mortier: History is debate
Erwin Mortier’s meticulously crafted novels about memory, language and identity are acclaimed across the world and his latest, an attempt to plug a surprising gap in Belgian literature about the Great War, was immediately dubbed a modern classic. I catch up with him on the release of the English-language edition. MR: Your first three novels...
Joshua Ferris: Down in the mouth
Joshua Ferris’s To Rise Again at a Decent Hour tells the story of Paul O’Rourke, a restless and anxious dentist in love with life but with no earthly idea of how to live it. A tangle of contradictions, he’s a Luddite with an iPhone (‘me-machine’) habit, and a God-fearing atheist whose troubled past and uncertain...
Nicholson Baker’s smokes and mirrors
In Travelling Sprinkler, Nicholson Baker revisits floundering poet Paul Chowder, the protagonist of 2009’s The Anthologist, and finds him abidingly disengaged. Pining for ex-girlfriend Roz, he seeks solace in protest songs, political hand-wringing, garden implements and other passing distractions, including a desire to be taken seriously as a cigar aficionado. Through it all, he has...
Gong Ji-young: Dictators’ daughters
Gong Ji-young is at the forefront of the new wave of women writers who rose to the top of the literary tree in Korea in the 1980s and ’90s. We meet a few months after the UK publication of Our Happy Time, her invigorating tale of victimhood, love and redemption, on the eve of her...
Peter Buwalda: Expect fireworks
It’s often assumed that first-time novelists only write about what they know. Ahead of meeting Peter Buwalda I try to dismiss any notion of encountering a judo blackbelt, mathematical genius and jazz buff with paranoia and jealousy issues, a murderous streak and an internet porn habit, as might be inferred from the characters he portrays...
