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 ]
Interviews Emilio Fraia’s Sevastopol, out this summer from New Directions, is the sort of book that beguiles and dazzles in equal measure. Consisting of three disparate stories—of a mountain climber attempting to scale Mt. Everest, a mysterious loner... Continue reading at World Literature Today
[ World Literature Today | 2021-08-09 20:31:30 UTC ]
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She represented Desmond Tutu and Deepak Chopra, but the book closest to her was the one she wrote about giving up her baby and then reuniting with him. Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2021-08-02 22:55:48 UTC ]
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Simon Akam says Penguin Random House cancelled his book about the British army, The Changing of the Guard, and demanded back his advance after he refused to let the MoD vet itIn the summer of 2015, journalist Simon Akam was thrilled when Penguin Random House (PRH) imprint William Heinemann won a... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2021-07-23 13:00:54 UTC ]
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‘The Dead’ is the most critically acclaimed and widely studied story in James Joyce’s Dubliners, a collection of 15 short stories written by James Joyce and published in 1914. As we’ve remarked before, Dubliners is now regarded as one of the landmark texts of modernist literature, but initially... Continue reading at Interesting Literature
[ Interesting Literature | 2021-05-29 14:00:07 UTC ]
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Fundraiser running until 21 May also includes chances to consult with star agent Jonny Geller and have a character named after you in a Sarah Pinborough novelA literary auction raising money to help vaccinate the world against coronavirus has made more than £23,000 so far, as book lovers bid to... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2021-05-18 12:13:19 UTC ]
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Independent publisher Joffe Books is partnering with author Dorothy Koomson and literary agent Susan Yearwood to launch a writing prize for unagented crime writers of colour. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2021-04-30 23:20:48 UTC ]
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Dubliners is a collection of 15 short stories written by James Joyce and published in 1914. As we’ve remarked before, Dubliners is now regarded as one of the landmark texts of modernist literature, but initially sales were poor, with just 379 copies being sold in the first year (famously, 120 […] Continue reading at Interesting Literature
[ Interesting Literature | 2021-03-27 15:50:27 UTC ]
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Carol Blue-Hitchens and her late husband’s literary agent are discouraging friends from participating in a book tentatively titled “Pamphleteer: The Life and Times of Christopher Hitchens.” Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2021-02-04 10:00:17 UTC ]
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On February 2, 1922, Sylvia Beach, through her legendary bookstore and occasional imprint Shakespeare and Company, published the entirety of James Joyce’s modernist novel, Ulysses. (It was also Joyce’s 40th birthday.) Two years later, she sought to have at least some of it recorded in Joyce’s... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2021-02-02 15:29:36 UTC ]
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As a struggling literary agent in London, he took a chance on J.K. Rowling and Harry Potter, turning her books into the most lucrative literary franchise in history. Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2021-01-27 22:39:44 UTC ]
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JK Rowling is. John le Carré isn’t. Albert Camus and F. Scott Fitzgerald are. George Orwell might or might not be. I’m talking about registered trade marks. Authors make copyright works, and their agents’ job is to maximise revenues from those intangibles. End of story, right? Kind of. A... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2021-01-26 12:24:33 UTC ]
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At the London Review of Books, Colin Burrow reflects on how Ursula K. Le Guin‘s narrative prowess flourished within the constraints of science fiction and children’s literature. “Fiction needs the unruly energies of indeterminacy,” Burrow writes, “of being partly inside the mind of the reader,... Continue reading at The Millions
[ The Millions | 2021-01-20 21:30:12 UTC ]
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Nick Walters at David Luxton Associates has been promoted to senior literary agent and rights manager in recognition of his "outstanding contribution" to the agency over the years. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2021-01-18 12:55:15 UTC ]
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Renard Press is launching a new series of the essays of George Orwell, focusing on politics, literature and language. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2021-01-08 14:27:21 UTC ]
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George Orwell will have his words brought to life in new audiobooks from Penguin Random House, including his two best-known works: Nineteen Eighty-Four and Animal Farm. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2021-01-05 03:37:49 UTC ]
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Much of the author’s work may have fallen into public ownership in the UK, but there are more restrictions on its use remaining than you might expect, explains his biographerGeorge Orwell died at University College Hospital, London, on 21 January 1950 at the early age of 46. This means that... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2021-01-01 11:00:08 UTC ]
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Interviews Since 2003, Jessica Cohen has published over twenty books translated from Hebrew to English. Among other honors, she shared the 2017 Man Booker International Prize with author David Grossman for her translation of Grossman’s A Horse Walks... Continue reading at World Literature Today
[ World Literature Today | 2020-11-20 16:36:29 UTC ]
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The very first text Chris Mould illustrated as a student was George Orwell’s allegorical novel Animal Farm. The young Mould was given Orwell’s text at art school and told to come up with 10 or so drawings. It seems fitting, then, that 30-odd years later Mould was commissioned by Faber to come up... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2020-11-18 08:57:55 UTC ]
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Sci-fi anthology stalled since 1974 will be produced by executor, screenwriter J Michael Straczynski, adding stories by today’s big-name SF writersIt is the great white whale of science fiction: an anthology of stories by some of the genre’s greatest names, collected in the early 1970s by Harlan... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2020-11-16 14:38:59 UTC ]
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Booker prize founder and publisher of some of the greats of 20th-century fictionTom Maschler, publisher and managing director of Jonathan Cape and the architect of the Booker prize for fiction, has died aged 87. A glamorous, perma-tanned figure with aquiline features and unruly hair, who dressed... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2020-10-16 17:49:02 UTC ]
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