A few weeks ago, when I was in London to present my book about Moscow, I was asked – like many a debut author – how much of the story was based on my own experience. This was just after my first public reading, I was still shaken, and I blurted out a clumsy response...
The Sunday Times EFG Short Story Award shortlist has been announced, and we’re delighted to share an extract from each of the stories. The six selected authors – three women and three men from five countries and three continents – also reflect the award’s stated aim to celebrate the best emerging writers alongside established names....
It seems to me that if you’re a critic wanting to make a name for yourself in a particular field, there’s one surefire way to accomplish that goal. Film critics, quit pouring your heart and soul into that piece that will forever alter the way we look at Citizen Kane. Music-mag columnists, forget about the...
Patrick Modiano has often said that he is writing constantly, persistently, invariably but with almost infinite variations, the same book. And at the centre of each of his novels, almost like a reverberating echo or clinging shadow, is the story of himself in search “for mystery where there was none”, for the “transparency” (of memory,...
The 2016 Wellcome Book Prize shortlist will be tricky to winnow down as the judges, led by Joan Bakewell, expressed their deep enthusiasm and passion for all six titles. “The shortlist reflects what has moved and inspired us most about books that deal with intimate and often complex matters of the human body and human...
Ayelet Gundar-Goshen’s debut novel One Night, Markovitch, published last year, is a funny, sensual and unshakably poetic reimagining of a true-life story in which an unremarkable man agrees an arranged marriage to a beautiful woman, then reneges on his promise of a quick divorce. In her second, Waking Lions, the mood darkens as she examines...
Last week I was in Itanagar, the capital of Arunachal Pradesh, a state in the northeast of India that most Indians are, much of the time, only dimly aware of. It’s nearer China than it is to Delhi. I was lucky enough to be there as a jury member for a festival of films from...
Do you know whom you work for? Are you sure? I myself had my first doubts thirty years ago, when I was attending an expensive university that my family couldn’t afford. Which meant I had to work paying jobs constantly – part-time gigs during the academic year, and full-time temporary jobs during week-long spring breaks...
If someone moves to make room for you, take up more room. If someone is looking over there, there’s something to see. If somebody sneezes, run. If someone brings a bag into your home, look inside it. If you don’t want someone to leave, sit on his suitcase. Clean between your toes. Flaunt your full...
Helen Ellis is as surprised as anyone at the success she’s having with her short story collection American Housewife. “I’m sure you know my back story,” she says politely when we meet for this interview, and yes, it’s been hard to miss since heavyweights such as The New York Times and Vogue have run recent...
I go to visit Meg Rosoff in her new loft apartment, not far from Borough station. Her husband Paul and her two dogs are there too and it feels a little like the pages of her new novel Jonathan Unleashed, in which a spaniel and sheepdog have a starring role, have been brought to life....
It was three in the morning and dark in my apartment. I stood half naked behind the front door, peering through the peephole at my vacant porch. My voice had come out small and childish and like someone else’s voice calling from the bottom of a well. “Who’s there?” I said again, louder, more forceful...
