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 ]
In her first novel to be published in the UK, Catherine Chung tells the story of a gifted mathematician whose studies take her deep into her family history. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2019-10-23 07:02:53 UTC ]
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Legend Press has bagged a “warm and poignant” debut novel exploring identity, race and mental illness by writer and painter Alex Morrall. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2019-10-22 16:25:02 UTC ]
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The first novel I published with a major house was about a murder I covered as a reporter when I was in my early twenties. The victim, who was my age, and lived in my neighborhood, disappeared in the winter and her body was found in the summer in a shallow grave in the woods […] Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2019-10-22 08:48:49 UTC ]
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On this warm October day in Southern California, I walk the Venice canals and think of Kate Braverman. How in her sensational first novel Lithium for Medea she captured a Venice so distant that it’s difficult to accept that this version, which is polished and expensive and filled with tourists,... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2019-10-22 08:48:36 UTC ]
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Jokha Alharthi’s inventive multigenerational tale, “Celestial Bodies,” is also the first novel by an Omani woman to be translated into English. Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2019-10-21 15:10:57 UTC ]
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LOOK, IT MUST be said: Margaret Atwood’s The Testaments is a deeply strange text. A page-turning potboiler set 15 years after the events of the first novel and published over three decades later, and co-winner this week of the 2019 Booker Prize, it tells a story only barely connected to the... Continue reading at Los Angeles Review of Books
[ Los Angeles Review of Books | 2019-10-19 15:00:57 UTC ]
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A novel featuring a 110-year-old character has won the £20,000 Daily Mail and Penguin Random House First Novel Competition, now in its fourth year. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2019-10-18 05:17:36 UTC ]
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W&N has landed the "virtuoso" debut novel from poet Sam Riviere in a multi-publisher auction. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2019-10-18 05:10:37 UTC ]
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Bloomsbury has acquired Irish children's laureate Sarah Crossan's first novel for adults in a six-figure deal at auction. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2019-10-16 04:39:48 UTC ]
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Head of Zeus imprint Zephyr has pre-empted the debut novel from Aardman Animations creative director Finbar Hawkins in a two-book deal. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2019-10-11 03:38:34 UTC ]
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Debut author Chikọdili Emelumadu has won the £3,000 Curtis Brown First Novel Prize. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2019-10-10 07:07:47 UTC ]
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The debut novel ‘A Kindness,’ which literary agent Helen Heller received a little over a week ago after responding to an unsolicited pitch letter, is gaining pre-Frankfurt Book Fair buzz after being preempted in the U.S. by Pamela Dorman for high six figures. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2019-10-10 04:00:00 UTC ]
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Transworld has scooped the debut novel from performer, writer and Faber Academy alumna Helen Paris in a two-book deal. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2019-10-09 13:58:41 UTC ]
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Indie press Louise Walters Books has signed a "very British" novel by debut author S J Norbury in a one-book deal. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2019-10-09 13:20:19 UTC ]
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AN ADOLESCENT NAMED Adam Gordon is the protagonist of Ben Lerner’s new novel, The Topeka School. He shares this name with the narrator of Leaving the Atocha Station, Lerner’s debut novel from 2011. Leaving the Atocha Station was about the quarter-life crisis of a talented misanthrope;... Continue reading at Los Angeles Review of Books
[ Los Angeles Review of Books | 2019-10-09 12:30:44 UTC ]
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Pan Mac imprint Mantle has landed the Shipping Forecast-inspired debut novel from Sue Teddern in a two-book deal. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2019-10-09 03:27:54 UTC ]
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The Older Brother in Mahir Guven’s debut novel drives for a ride-sharing service in Paris while his Syrian-born father is an old-school taxi driver. Their Uber politics conflict is further sullied by their religious divergence. Into this, Guven adds a Younger Brother, a talented nurse who could... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2019-10-08 11:00:58 UTC ]
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Translating one medium into another is tricky. Music is music and art is art and dance is dance; to try to convey the power of another art in fiction is its own sleight-of-hand. My own first novel takes on that challenge. In A Song For A New Day, musician Luce Cannon was on the cusp […] The post... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2019-10-07 11:00:15 UTC ]
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Doubleday has made a “substantial” six-figure pre-empt on a debut novel by academic and comedian Marianne Cronin about two women who meet at an art class. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2019-10-04 09:03:45 UTC ]
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When I spoke with Linnea Hartsuyker back in 2017, her epic saga was just beginning. The first novel opens with her hero, Ragnvald, seeing a vision of a golden wolf who will unite the feuding kingdoms of Norway under one rule. The vision sets the course of Ragnvald’s life, bringing him into the... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2019-10-04 08:47:45 UTC ]
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