The Italian Plutarch
The Renaissance is so much more than the sum of its parts. Not only because of the tremendous change that it brought, as many have argued, to history, art, knowledge, human experience and science, to the perception and very substance of our world, but especially for the even more momentous continuity which, according to color...
A new normal
Rose Tremain’s latest novel Islands of Mercy is a daring exploration of sanctuary and identity that ranges from the genteel tearooms of 19th-century Bath to the rainforests of Borneo, via the slums of Dublin and the non-conformist nightlife of Paris. She tells us what makes her tick through trying times. Where are you now? At...
Deepa Anappara: Other realities
Deepa Anappara’s debut novel Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line is an exuberant and captivating child’s-eye depiction of hand-to-mouth living in a sprawling, determinedly self-sustaining slum in an unnamed Indian city. Nine-year-old narrator Jai is a fan of reality cop shows beamed into his family’s one-room shack in a crowded basti surrounded by the high-rise...
An open Wellcome
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...
Sarah Howe: Remaking memory
On 10 December 2015, Hong Kong-born British poet Sarah Howe was awarded the revived Sunday Times/Peters, Fraser & Dunlop Young Writer of the Year award for her remarkable debut collection Loop of Jade. Also shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection and in the running for the T.S. Eliot Prize to be announced...
Up for the fight
I was strong and he was not, so it was me who went to war to defend the republic. I stepped across the border out of Indiana into Ohio. Twenty dollars, two salt-pork sandwiches, and I took beef jerky, biscuits, six old apples, fresh underthings, and a blanket too. There was heat in the air...
Deep roots, rich dirt
There is a passage in Jean Toomer’s marvelous hybrid novel Cane that describes a woman, sitting in a theater in a northern city, whose roots, likely unbeknownst to her, sink deep through the floor and travel south. The image is fraught, of course, because the woman being described is African American and Toomer, who was...
Be how it begin
The Country of Ice Cream Star began with the idea of a world in which people only live to be 18–19 years old. I don’t know where that idea came from. There are other similar themes in literature, but I wasn’t consciously thinking of them. The idea seemed rather like it was always waiting in...
Straight-talking Sadie Jones
There is no doubt that Sadie Jones is a generous-spirited woman. I get lost on my way to her house in Chiswick but when I arrive, flustered, instead of being cross that I’ve kept her waiting, she sweetly asks what kind of coffee I’d like, pointing at a complicated-looking machine. Coffee made, we settle down...
Kerry Hudson: Love and need
Kerry Hudson’s award-winning debut novel Tony Hogan Bought Me an Ice-cream Float Before He Stole My Ma drew partly on her experiences of growing up on estates and in B&Bs. Her second, Thirst, is about Alena, a woman sex-trafficked from Siberia, and Dave, a security guard who catches her shoplifting. When I meet Hudson for...
Anna Whitwham: Boxing clever
I’m late to meet Anna Whitwham, and as I rush into the appointed café, I spy a familiar-looking blonde woman tapping away at a laptop. We stare at each other. This must be Anna, I think. It’s actually Rachel Johnson who once wrote a book called Notting Hell, and Anna Whitwham is sat quietly behind...
Exemplary epistles
In Darling Monster, John Julius Norwich collects the letters his mother, the screen actress and society darling Lady Diana Cooper wrote to her only son at school and through his early adulthood. Covering the period 1939 to 1952, the letters take in the first rumblings of World War II – which Lady Diana and her...
