Every author wants to write a book like David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas. Two decades after it first hit the shelves, the author of Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow celebrates its daring, dazzling appealPity the writer who believes they have written the next Cloud Atlas! A literary agent once told me that when a fledgling writer compares their novel to David Mitchell’s, he invariably knows it will be awful. Once you have written a book like Cloud Atlas, you have not written Cloud Atlas because Cloud Atlas is not like anything.When the novel was published in 2004, critics compared it to everything. AS Byatt in the Guardian invokes Herman Melville, Raymond Chandler, Martin Amis, George Orwell and Ursula K Le Guin among others. Tom Bissell in the New York Times adds to the mix Cervantes, Defoe, Isherwood, William S Burroughs, and, in a last paragraph twist, James Joyce’s Ulysses. Theo Tait of the Telegraph writes in a rare negative review that “Cloud Atlas spends half its time wanting to be The Simpsons and the other half the Bible.” This line is funny more than apt, but had I read it at the time, it would have sold the book to me. Continue reading... Continue reading at 'The Guardian'
[ The Guardian | 2024-04-06 10:00:31 UTC ]
Raymond Chandler is the latest classic author to have a current writer take on his mantle, with... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2012-08-08 00:00:00 UTC ]
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So you're an admirer of James Joyce's "Ulysses"? Well, thank Trieste for that book. So you're an admirer of James Joyce's "Ulysses"? Well, thank Trieste for that book. Why? Gordon Bowker's "James Joyce: A New Biography" (Farrar, Straus & Giroux: 608 pp., $35) shows readers how living in that... Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2012-07-15 00:00:00 UTC ]
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When Noel Young launched Santa Barbara–based Capra Press in 1969 and began to publish a literary who’s who of writers that included Anaïs Nin, Henry Miller, Raymond Carver, Lawrence Durrell, and Ursula K. Le Guin it was a vibrant time for independent bookstores and small presses, the beginning... Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2012-03-09 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Written By: Philip Jones Publication Date: Thu, 29/09/2011 - 15:18 Julian Assange's literary agent and PFD m.d. Caroline Michel accused publisher Canongate of going "to war" with her client and "feeding the media myth" in releasing information to the Independent newspaper ahead of publication... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2011-09-29 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Written By: Graeme Neill Publication Date: Wed, 10/08/2011 - 08:43 Polygon has bought a novel by the Private Eye writer and cartoonist Barry Fantoni. Publishing director Neville Moir bought UK & Commonwealth rights to Harry Lipkin through David Riding of MBA Literary Agents. The book,... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2011-08-10 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Written By: Graeme Neill Publication Date: Mon, 08/08/2011 - 16:08 Literary agent Andrew Wylie has said publishers need to "stand firm" in the face of digital companies like Amazon and Apple or risk being locked into an insupportable business model that is unable to reward writers. In an... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2011-08-08 00:00:00 UTC ]
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