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,...
Dear Katherine
My father was a great reader. He often sat in his blue armchair in the corner of the living room, legs crossed at the knee, sipping a glass of ginger ale, reading a book. One evening when I was fifteen, I looked in on him and asked if he had something he might recommend for...
After the euphoria, the finances
Recently I went to the launch night of a literary journal here in Dublin. As is the way with these things, as soon as the readings and speech were done, we all sighed with relief and headed next door to the pub. I was introduced to the author of a novel I had read and...
Smoke and mirrors
Mira Jacob’s sumptuous debut novel The Sleepwalker’s Guide to Dancing is a heartbreaking and hilarious story of a family in flux in the heat of a New Mexico summer. Basking in positive reviews and attention, she reveals that life as an overnight literary sensation is not always as it seems. 28 August 2014 Today is...
Here be sea monsters
In the year 1560, near the island of Mannar on the west coast of what was then Ceylon, a group of Dutch fishermen caught seven mermaids and seven tritons. By some marvellous chance, the personal physician to the Viceroy of Goa was on board the vessel at the time of their capture, and he dissected...
Medusa myths
When I was a child, my biology textbooks consigned hair to the erotic Little League: “A secondary sexual characteristic” was the dry definition. Now I’ve written a novel that rehabilitates hair to the sexual A-List. It started with the question “What if there were seven sisters with hair flowing to the ground?” This question is...
Crossing bridges
When I first migrated to New York, a wide-eyed student with a frugal scholarship, I felt no fear, for Manhattan was connected to other land-masses by half a dozen bridges. That calmed an inner part of my soul. Given my family history, I do not know how it could be otherwise. Until that point, rivers...
Month-to-month loyalties
I cannot recall a specific moment in which I told myself that I would become a writer. But I know I was twenty, taking a bath in a crappy apartment in Columbus, Ohio, the first time I read something that made me feel the author was writing for me alone. I was reading Joan Didion’s...
My own private love club
Robert Glancy’s debut novel Terms & Conditions tells the story of a lawyer specialising in jargon-filled small print and footnotes no one ever reads, whose life unravels after an apparent road accident. He looks back with fond imagination on a book tour that turned out nothing like a car crash. 1 February The launch of...
Parker Bilal and me
I don’t recall the exact moment when I made up my mind to create a new persona for myself. It was an idea that grew over a period of several years. It emerged, I think, from the frustration of dealing with all the obstacles in the writing game. As most writers will tell you, the...
This dog’s life
It happened like this: after a walk in the park, Karl and I saw a young woman sitting in a car talking to a dog. Even from a distance, through the hard glass of the windshield, we could tell this was an exceptional animal. Karl, never shy, tapped on the window to ask her what...
A little bird…
At the height of his powers, Chairman Mao launched a war on sparrows. On a mission to turbocharge China’s productivity, the Communist leader decided that the birds were eating too much grain. One winter day in 1958, he mobilised the population of China to kill them off. The campaign was ruthlessly coordinated. At dawn on...
