Wiener Library

Wiener Library, London

I spent yesterday evening at the Wiener Library in London, the world’s oldest Holocaust memorial museum, where I delivered a lecture on ‘Writing Wrongs: The Nazi Era in Fiction’. It was an interesting evening, with a robust Q&A session with the audience afterwards. I’ve given talks at many Holocaust museums over the last few years, most memorably a joint talk with my friend Markus Zusak (“The Book Thief”) in Sydney a few years back, and it’s always a rewarding evening as I get an opportunity to meet with survivors of the Holocaust and hear their stories first hand. I also visited the Holocaust exhibition at the Imperial War Museum, where I was researching something else entirely for a new novel I’m writing.

The series continues over the next couple of months at the library and you can see the schedule of other speakers here.

The Adventures of Robin Hood

I’ve written an introduction for a new Puffin Classics edition of Roger Lancelyn Green’s classic THE ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD, one of my favourite books from childhood. It’s published this week.

It starts like this: “Before I ever dreamt of writing a novel, before I even thought of writing a short story, I wrote a play. It was an adaptation of the story of Robin Hood and was heavily – very heavily – influenced by the book you’re holding in your hands right now: Roger Lancelyn Green’s classic re-telling of the adventures of Robin Hood. I was twelve years old at the time. Our drama class in school had been given the task of putting on a fifteen minute production for an end of year performance and somehow I ended up as writer-director of the show (I think I wore a special hat during rehearsals). I chose the outlaw of Sherwood Forest because a year or two earlier I had been given a copy of Green’s book and, along with an abridged edition of Mutiny On The Bounty and RL Stevenson’s Treasure Island, it was rarely out of my hands.“

You can read the rest by buying the book!

January 2010 Books

The year got off to a great start when I read THE GOLDEN MEAN, a debut novel by Canadian writer Annabel Lyon. Narrated by Aristotle, it’s the story of his arrival at the court of Philip of Macedonia and his relationship with his young student, Alexander (the Great). In the most thoughtful and evocative prose, Lyon recreates this extraordinary world with care and detail. It put me in mind of John William’s extraordinary AUGUSTUS, and is that classic novel’s equal. It will be published in the UK later in 2010 and if there is any justice in the world, it will attract a lot of attention.

Simon Lelic’s excellent debut RUPTURE is a taut and uncompromising piece of work, following the aftermath of a school shooting as a police inspector looks into the circumstances that led to a teacher shooting a group of students and a colleague. This is a story about bullying: students bullying teachers, colleagues bullying colleagues, and features a cast of characters so reprehensible at times that they are infuriating. Lelic’s trick is to use a group of different voices to tell the story in monologue and it works extremely well.

Nigel Farndale’s novel THE BLASPHEMER is an intriguing book which splits in time between a man who has made a disastrous choice during a plane crash and the World War I experiences of his great-grandfather. It’s a fascinating story with some highly intriguing characters, notably a malevolent music professor who is a great creation.

I thoroughly enjoyed EL Doctorow’s HOMER & LANGLEY, which tells the story of the Collyer brothers of Fifth Avenue, a pair of eccentrics who filled their house with useless rubbish and lived among the detritus. Homer’s voice is a triumph of snobbery and humour and every episode of the novel is brilliantly related, particularly the section where a notorious gangster comes to stay. It contains one of the best last sentences (or best last 2 sentences) I’ve ever read.

I also read Rebecca Stott’s THE CORAL THIEF, which contains some interesting sections on Paris after the fall of Napoleon, Jonathan Lethem’s CHRONIC CITY, Rachel Cusk’s family drama THE BRADSHAW VARIATIONS, Alan Monaghan’s THE SOLDIER’S SONG, M Glenn Taylor’s THE BALLAD OF TRENCHMOUTH TAGGART and William Trevor’s first collection of stories, THE DAY WE GOT DRUNK ON CAKES, each of which is like a masterclass in writing.

Readings

I will be appearing at a range of international festivals over the course of 2010 and I’ve listed the first two scheduled readings on my website.

On Thursday February 4th, I’ll be in London at the Wiener Library on Devonshire Street, the world’s oldest Holocaust Memorial Institution, to take part in a lecture series entitled Writing Wrongs: The Nazi Era in Fiction. Tickets are available from 0044-207-6367247 or from their website.

A month later I’ll be in Paris on Thursday March 4th for a reading at the Centre Culturel Irlandais, in the Latin Quarter of Paris in the 5th Arrondissement. Tickets are available from their website.

There’ll be many more readings during the year, including appearances at festivals in Canada, Italy and Scotland, so check back on the webstite soon for more details of these.

Zac, 15 weeks

As everything is quiet and nothing is worth putting on the blog, here’s a picture of our dog Zac, who’s 15 weeks old today, looking distinctly grumpy.

And one where he doesn’t look quite so grumpy.

December Reading

In order to get into the spirit of the season I read Paul Auster’s AUGGIE WREN’S CHRISTMAS STORY, a short and beautifully illustrated story about a writer commissioned to write a Christmas story and John Mortimer’s RUMPOLE AT CHRISTMAS, a collection of tales about one of my absolute favourite characters in fiction, the barrister Horace Rumpole.

A few new Canadian novels arrived courtesy of my Canadian publisher and I began with  THE BISHOP’S MAN by Linden MacIntyre, which recently won the Giller Prize, Canada’s equivalent of the Booker. It’s a thoughtful, powerful novel about a priest and his involvement in cleaning up the mess created by so many of his colleagues in Canada. Living in a country where child abuse scandals related to the church are constantly in the news, I found this novel particularly relevant. The narrative voice is well judged in that the priest himself is often conflicted by the choices he has made in his life while still believing in his original vocation. It will be published in the UK during 2010 and I expect it will receive a lot of attention.

I also read JosephineTey’s classic Richard III crime novel THE DAUGHTER OF TIME, Sonya Hartnett’s moving story of childhood loneliness OF A BOY, Vladimir Nabokov’s THE ENCHANTER, a short novel that was a pre-cursor (of sorts) to Lolita, Michael Turner’s collected of related stories 8×10, and re-read Charles Dickens’ HARD TIMES for the first time in many years.

A Dead Thing

A new short story, entitled A DEAD THING, is published in today’s Irish Times Christmas edition newspaper.

I’m pretty sure it’s the first time I’ve written about writers and their peculiarities, and it’s definitely the first time I’ve written something to coincide with Christmas. There’s a nice illustration to complement it too (above).

You can also read the story in the Irish Times online edition.

Happy Christmas!

Grist

A new short story of mine entitled THE END OF THE PIER is published in THE GRIST ANTHOLOGY OF NEW WRITING, published by Grist Books in association with the University of Huddersfield. The anthology features work by creative writing students at Huddersfield, alongside established writers including Helen Simpson, Simon Armitage and myself. You can buy it from Amazon or Waterstone’s or other booksellers. I’ll publish the story on the fiction page of my website in a couple of months time.

Nielsen Book Award

At the Random House Authors’ Christmas party last week I was presented with this very nice award by Nielsen, who tabulate UK book sales – the Gold Book Award to mark the first 500,000 sales of THE BOY IN THE STRIPED PYJAMAS in the UK. Pictured with me here are David Fickling and Bella Pearson who published/edited the novel.

The Best Books of 2009

In no particular order these are the books of 2009 that made the deepest impression on me.

And my favourite novel of the year, THE SLAP by Australian writer Christos Tsiolkas.