The Booker-winning novelist is relaunching a series of neglected novels by black British writers. She explains why they deserve a new readership In today’s culture, it’s as though black British literary history began relatively recently, and new books are published without reference to or knowledge of what has gone before. This is not the case with white writers. Publishers, critics and readers will often understand where books sit within their literary contexts and cultural ecosystem. We can trace the literary lineage of Douglas Stuart’s Booker-winning Shuggie Bain back to the works of James Kelman and Irvine Welsh. Ghosts by Dolly Alderton is in conversation with Helen Fielding’s Bridget Jones series and all the novels that were published in its wake, just as Ali Smith’s postmodern novels are descendants of Virginia Woolf’s modernist oeuvre. And we know that today’s historical novels have antecedents in their earlier counterparts.Our appreciation of literature is deepened when we understand the foundations from which each new generation creates literature anew, but because so much of the body of black British literature hasn’t been taught in schools or universities, or immortalised on television and film, or even been widely or seriously reviewed in the media and academia, it’s as if each new book is published out of a void. Continue reading... Continue reading at 'The Guardian'
[ The Guardian | 2021-01-30 11:00:07 UTC ]
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Jonathan Cape will publish the unfinished novel The Hanging Garden by Australian author Patrick... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2012-02-09 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Random House has released the first direct-to-digital fiction title by bestselling author Katie... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2012-02-02 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Orion is to publish a new novel by George Pelecanos, a writer on TV show "The Wire", as... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2012-01-25 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Jonathan Cape has acquired a steampunk novel by journalist Matt Suddain, describing it as being... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2012-01-23 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Simon & Schuster is to publish two new novels by Kishwar Desai, along with a re-release of... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2012-01-20 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Faber has acquired a third novel from Apples author Richard Milward. Publishing director Lee... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2012-01-19 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Literacy charity Quick Reads is to recruit a new project director following Kathy Gale’s... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2012-01-17 00:00:00 UTC ]
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The Daily Mirror is to run a We Love Reading campaign, backed by poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy,... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2012-01-16 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Jonathan Cape has acquired the Observer/Cape/Graphic Short Story Prize 2011-winning work, The... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2012-01-13 00:00:00 UTC ]
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The Reading Agency is to launch a Mood-boosting Books campaign, teaming up with Vintage and its... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2012-01-09 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Orbit has acquired a standalone novel by Michael Cobley, author of the space opera trilogy... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2012-01-09 00:00:00 UTC ]
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The third volume of Chris Mullin's memoirs, A Walk-On Part (Profile Books), has been named... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2011-12-22 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Bloomsbury's Bill Swainson has bought world rights in the first novel by renowned dancer and... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2011-12-13 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Good Housekeeping has launched a £25,000 competition for budding novelists in association... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2011-12-01 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Pan Macmillan has bought a novel following five couples in an antenatal class ahead of the births... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2011-11-30 00:00:00 UTC ]
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James Murdoch stepped down as director of two subsidiaries that publish Murdoch-owned newspapers, a move that could possibly presage News Corporations eventual exit from British newspapers. Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2011-11-24 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Notes in the margins of ebooks could be the next platform for social interaction. At least that's what Amsterdam-based Openmargin is hoping. Continue reading at AllThingsD
[ AllThingsD | 2011-11-19 00:00:00 UTC ]
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The top three fiction titles in Germany were all debuts in October, led by In Times of Fading Light, which recently won the 2011 German Book Prize and is set for publication in the U.S. by Graywolf Press in fall 2013. Umberto Ecos newest book, The Prague Cemetery, which debuted at #3, is newly... Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2011-11-18 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Written By: Graeme Neill Publication Date: Mon, 14/11/2011 - 17:29 Hilary Mantel will turn her attention to the downfall of Anne Boleyn, after Fourth Estate bought the follow-up to her Man Booker prizewinning Wolf Hall. Publishing director Nicholas Pearson bought rights to Bring Up the Bodies... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2011-11-14 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Notes in the margins of ebooks could be the next platform for social interaction. At least that's what Amsterdam-based *openmargin is hoping. Continue reading at AllThingsD
[ AllThingsD | 2011-11-12 00:00:00 UTC ]
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