Xiaolu Guo warns that English-language mainstream has warped a broader 'reading habit', on panel with Jhumpa Lahiri and Jonathan FranzenAmerican literature is "massively overrated", the award-winning author and film-maker Xiaolu Guo told the Jaipur literature festival – and fellow panellist and US novelist Jonathan Franzen – this weekend.A session on the global novel in Jaipur on Saturday saw the Chinese/British writer Guo, one of Granta's best of young British novelists who has also been shortlisted for the Orange prize, attack the way "our reading habit has totally been transformed by the mainstream"."Our reading habit has been stolen and changed" said Guo. "For example I think Asian literature is much less narrative … but our reading habit is more Anglo-Saxon, more American … Nowadays all this narrative [literature is] very similar, it's so realism, so story-telling driven … so all the poetry, all the alternative things, have been pushed away by mainstream society.""I love your work, Jonathan," she told Franzen, "but in a way you are smeared by English American literature … I think certain American literature is overrated, massively overrated, and I really hate to read them," she said.The Pulitzer-winning Indian/American Jhumpa Lahiri also laid into America's literary culture, saying that it was "shameful the lack of translation, the lack of energy put into translation in the American market". "It is embarrassing, to me, and I think just getting out of America for a... Continue reading at 'The Guardian'
[ The Guardian | 2014-01-20 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Publication Date: Mon, 16/05/2011 - 08:50 A team of volunteers has set up the UK's first festival devoted to Animal Farm author George Orwell. Taking place from 9th-18th September in Letchworth, Hertfordshire, the George Orwell Festival is being run by volunteers including representatives from... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2011-05-16 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Publication Date: Mon, 09/05/2011 - 13:07 Quadrille has scored four nominations for this year's Guild of Food Writers awards. Titles from Stevie Parle, Josceline Dimbleby, Mark Hix and Mark Diacono were shortlisted, with the latter's A Taste of the Unexpected squaring up against two Jacqui... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2011-05-09 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Publication Date: Wed, 04/05/2011 - 08:50 Michael Morpurgo, Robyn Young and Simon Scarrow are to take part in the inaugural Festival of Historical Writing, launched by the Historical Writers' Association. As reported in March, Transworld novelist M C Scott formed the association as a forum for... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2011-05-04 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Written By: Graeme Neill Publication Date: Mon, 18/04/2011 - 09:19 Authors including Iain M Banks and Michael Moorcock have written to the BBC's director general Mark Thompson, attacking the treatment of genre fiction in its recent World Book Night coverage. In total 85 authors, across the... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2011-04-18 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Written By: Bookseller Staff Publication Date: Tue, 12/04/2011 - 09:10 Optimism from across the Atlantic was evident during the opening day of the fair, as UK publishers fret over the effect of digital on physical sales. Agent Luigi Bonomi said the more advanced ebook market in the US was... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2011-04-12 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Written By: Charlotte Williams Publication Date: Thu, 07/04/2011 - 08:59 Tindal Street Press has acquired a debut novel after discovering the author at a writing festival. Editor Luke Brown bought world rights to Robyn directly from author Deborah Morgan. He discovered her work when judging a... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2011-04-07 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Written By: Charlotte Williams Publication Date: Thu, 07/04/2011 - 09:04 Authors including Philip Pullman have warned the "biodiversity of poetry publishing in England" is in "jeopardy", following Arts Council England's funding cuts to poetry presses Arc, Flambard and Enitharmon. In a letter... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2011-04-07 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Written By: Charlotte Williams Publication Date: Thu, 31/03/2011 - 09:10 Arts Council England (ACE) portfolio funding for literature organisations will rise 9.9% in real terms compared to the previous funding period, the government claims, as ACE revealed its new national portfolio of arts... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2011-03-31 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Written By: Charlotte Williams Publication Date: Wed, 16/03/2011 - 09:04 Hodder thriller imprint Mulholland Books has acquired a fiction debut by "Saw" writers Patrick Melton and Marcus Dunstan, and author, screenwriter and illustrator Stephen Romano. Editor Ruth Tross bought British... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2011-03-16 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Written By: Katie Allen Publication Date: Fri, 11/03/2011 - 15:47 Transworld/Bantam novelist Manda Scott has formed the Historical Writers Association as a forum for writers and to promote the genre. The internet-based group, which already boasts around 100 members including authors Simon... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2011-03-11 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Written By: Lisa Campbell Publication Date: Fri, 11/03/2011 - 08:50 Changing copyright laws in the UK could strike a blow to investment in literature, a report has found. PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP (PwC) has produced the document for the Copyright Licensing Agency (CLA), which reveals that out... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2011-03-11 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Written By: Bookseller Staff Publication Date: Thu, 10/03/2011 - 09:13 Barnes & Noble chairman Len Riggio has said the American book trade is on the cusp of "transformational growth" led by digital sales, in a bullish keynote address to the annual meeting of the Association of American... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2011-03-10 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Written By: Gayle Feldman Publication Date: Thu, 10/03/2011 - 09:13 Barnes & Noble chairman Len Riggio has said the American book trade is on the cusp of "transformational growth" led by digital sales, in a bullish keynote address to the annual meeting of the Association of American... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2011-03-10 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Written By: Lisa Campbell Publication Date: Tue, 01/03/2011 - 15:50 The Orange New Writers Book of the Month promotion launches today [1st March] featuring Emma Henderson as the first writer to receive a month-long promotion in Waterstone's. read more Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2011-03-01 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Written By: Graeme Neill Publication Date: Wed, 16/02/2011 - 06:35 Independent publisher Myrmidon has bought world English language rights (excluding South Africa) to a novel shortlisted for the 2010 Commonwealth Writers Prize. Ed Handyside, publisher and founder, bought the rights to Trespass... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2011-02-15 00:00:00 UTC ]
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As Meghan O'Rourke reported here last week, VIDA, an organization for women writers, has released a tally of male and female bylines for the 2010 run of 14 high-end, literary-oriented magazines. Despite a couple of relatively bright spots (the New York Times Book Review surprisingly being one),... Continue reading at Slate
[ Slate | 2011-02-12 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Written By: Lisa Campbell The vice-president of the International Publishing Association's offices came under heavy attack from government forces in Egypt this afternoon. A reporter at the Al Shorouk newspaper, owned by IPA vice-president Ibrahim El Moallem, said she and her colleagues,... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2011-02-02 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Simon & Schuster requested that journalists and other writers not comment if asked whether they were responsible for the novel O, about a fictional 2012 presidential campaign. Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2011-01-19 00:00:00 UTC ]
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