He starred in Peep Show, Green Wing and Wonka – and his first novel won an award. Now the star is making operas with 64 homeless people. Not bad going for someone who was written off by his teachersPaterson Joseph is, by his own admission, an unlikely opera librettist. He had turned 50 by the time he got round to going to one, and only went because he was in it, as the “crazy” voice of God in Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht’s Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny. “It’s not my world,” says the actor. But therein lies part of his mission: as a black Londoner written off by the school system, his life was transformed by the goldmine he discovered while truanting down at his local library.One of his discoveries, as “a melancholy teen”, was Pushkin’s verse novel Eugene Onegin. “I remember getting it out of the library,” he says, “just because it was a small book. And I started reading this poem out loud, at night in my bedroom. And I laughed – but I was also frightened and frustrated, weeping at the tragedy of it. When I closed the book, it was dawn.” Continue reading... Continue reading at 'The Guardian'
[ The Guardian | 2024-05-27 04:00:13 UTC ]
The National Medal of Arts recipient reflects on the immigration crisis in Afterlife, her first novel for adults in almost 15 years. The post Julia Alvarez and the Female Book of Job appeared first on The Millions. Continue reading at The Millions
[ The Millions | 2020-02-20 11:00:47 UTC ]
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Canongate is publishing an "astonishing" debut novel of “extraordinary suspense” from award-winning writer and US Marine Corps veteran Phil Klay. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2020-02-19 20:45:41 UTC ]
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When Jokha al-Harthi and Marilyn Booth won the Man Booker International Prize last year, for Booth’s translation of Sayyidat al-Qamr (Celestial Bodies), many hurried to note that al-Harthi was the “first Omani woman writer” to have a book in English translation.While true, this may give the... Continue reading at British Council global
[ British Council global | 2020-02-19 10:26:57 UTC ]
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Every week, the TBR pile grows a little bit more. It’s getting precarious. It’s taking up your whole nightstand. It’s threatening to crush you in your sleep. Well, what are you waiting for? Get cracking. What are you reading this week? FICTION Brandon Taylor, Real Life (Riverhead) Brandon... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2020-02-18 16:20:28 UTC ]
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In the debut novel “Real Life,” a biochemistry Ph.D. candidate confronts the harder lessons of how to be a gay black man in a white world. Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2020-02-18 10:00:07 UTC ]
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In the debut novel “Real Life,” a biochemistry Ph.D. candidate confronts the harder lessons of how to be a gay black man in a white world. Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2020-02-18 10:00:07 UTC ]
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The debut novel follows a child detective bent on tracking down a missing classmate. Continue reading at The Washington Post
[ The Washington Post | 2020-02-06 17:56:05 UTC ]
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'The Resisters,' Gish Jen's first novel in nine years, imagines a class-based dystopian United States. Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2020-02-06 15:00:56 UTC ]
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Emily Nemens' debut novel about a fictional baseball team takes on the social swirl of spring training. Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2020-02-02 15:00:12 UTC ]
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Shannon Pufahl’s remarkable debut novel “On Swift Horses” tells a searing story about a forgotten side of 1950s America. Continue reading at The Christian Science Monitor
[ The Christian Science Monitor | 2020-01-28 20:36:21 UTC ]
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The debut novel examines the lives of people who are more interested in how they appear online than who they are in real life. Continue reading at The Washington Post
[ The Washington Post | 2020-01-21 17:44:04 UTC ]
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In this delightful debut novel Katherine Kayne sweeps us back to a Hawaii still mourning its lost kingdom, where ladies—their ballgowns covered in yards of protective fabric—gallop across the mountains and down the city streets on their way to polo matches and parties, men dance the hula as well... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2020-01-17 09:46:07 UTC ]
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Heidi Sopinka’s debut novel The Dictionary of Animal Languages is the deceptively gentle tale of the aging artist Ivory Frame, whose character and life are based, both loosely and closely, in alternation, on Leonora Carrington. In fact, Sopinka was struggling to write the book—struggling to get... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2020-01-13 09:48:01 UTC ]
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He didn’t publish his first novel (which he illustrated himself) until he was 46. But his impact, as both a writer and an artist, has lasted. Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2020-01-11 01:15:42 UTC ]
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Kiley Reid’s debut novel is a funny, fast-paced, empathetic examination of privilege in America. Continue reading at The Atlantic
[ The Atlantic | 2020-01-08 13:00:00 UTC ]
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Such a Fun Age is Franzenesque in its interest in how we live now—but in a quieter register. Continue reading at Slate
[ Slate | 2020-01-07 12:30:00 UTC ]
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Sara Collins has won the Costa First Novel Award for her gothic romance, The Confessions of Frannie Langton (Viking), in a stellar year for début authors after three out of the five award categories were won by first-time writers. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2020-01-06 21:35:49 UTC ]
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Delia Owens’s debut novel has sold more than four million copies — an astonishing trajectory for any new writer, much less for a 70-year-old wildlife scientist. Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2019-12-21 10:00:08 UTC ]
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This week, Lauretta Charlton reviews Darryl Pinckney’s collection of essays “Busted in New York.” In 1992, Edmund White wrote for the Book Review about “High Cotton,” Pinckney’s debut novel about a young black man coming of age. Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2019-12-20 10:00:00 UTC ]
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Find a new author to follow or the first book your fave wrote with this list of debut novels by queer authors for the 2020 Read Harder Challenge. Continue reading at Book Riot
[ Book Riot | 2019-12-18 11:31:50 UTC ]
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