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...
Nikesh Shukla: Superhumour
Meatspace is the second novel from Costa First Novel Award shortlisted author Nikesh Shukla. It follows Kitab Balasubramanyam (‘Kit’ for short) as he deals with heartbreak, unemployment and an online namesake-turned-stalker. When Aziz, Kit’s brother and flatmate, leaves him to track down his doppelgänger in America, Kit finds it harder and harder to maintain his...
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...
Mr Cunningham’s feelings for snow
Michael Cunningham’s best-known work is the Pulitzer Prize-winning sensation The Hours, about three women whose lives intersect across the 20th century. His latest novel features another trio of characters, but this time their lives are more directly entwined. The Snow Queen opens in 2004 on a wintry New York day as Barratt Meeks, a 30-something...
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...
Siri Hustvedt unmasked
Siri Hustvedt’s The Blazing World is a sparkling tour de force examining ideas about perception and identity. Harriet ‘Harry’ Burden, an artist railing against the New York art establishment that she believes has overlooked her work, undertakes a unique and complicated experiment: hiding behind the fronts of three male artists who exhibit her work as...
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...
Jerry Pinto in full voice
In Em and the Big Hoom, Jerry Pinto invites the reader to inhabit the complicated lives of a family trying to deal with the manic-depressive episodes of its matriarch. The dialogue is often wild and quick and yet betrays the subtle aches of a family whose collective heart is breaking. FM: Jerry, thank you for...
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...
Akhil Sharma: Let it bleed
Akhil Sharma’s long-awaited second novel Family Life tells the story of an Indian immigrant family’s arrival in America – a mother, father and two sons: 8-year-old Ajay and the older Birju – and the terrible tragedy that befalls them when Birju hits his head on the bottom of a swimming pool, where he lies unconscious...
Laline Paull’s hive society
The literary world is buzzing over a remarkable debut novel featuring Flora 717, an unlikely heroine born into the lowest ranks of society and breaking free to achieve like no one of her kind before her. Flora happens to be a bee. Described in some quarters as Animal Farm meets The Handmaid’s Tale, Laline Paull’s...
