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☆ Paul Auster, author of ‘New York Trilogy,’ dead at 77
▼ + stars: | 2024-05-01 | by ( Lianne Kolirin | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +4 min

CNN —Paul Auster, the acclaimed American author of “The New York Trilogy,” has died at age 77. A host of media outlets reported that Auster’s death was confirmed by his friend and fellow author Jacki Lyden. Auster began translating the works of French writers when he moved to France after graduating from Columbia University in 1970. Major recognition came after the publication of “The New York Trilogy” – a series of experimental detective stories – in 1987. An early experience of how life can change in an instant played a major influence on Auster and his writing.

Persons: CNN — Paul Auster, ”, Auster, Jacki Lyden, Auster’s, Siri Hustvedt, Hustvedt, “, Paul, Timothy Fadek, ” Auster, Prince, Asturias, Booker, Paul Auster Organizations: CNN, The, Columbia University, American Academy of Arts and, Ordre des Arts, des, Booker Locations: Newark , New Jersey, France, “ Cancerland, Brooklyn , New York

He was a model to me of artistic labor and discipline, even if those early paintings were painfully amateurish. The painting followed me from Amherst to my first job in New York, and on to London and Delhi. IT WASN’T MY intention to start an essay about artistic beginnings with a story of artistic death. I’m especially moved by those first moments of validation by which an artist comes out to himself, as it were. It’s this, the inexorability of the correspondence between an artist and the world, that gives those first steps their magical quality.

Persons: Naipaul, Neil Shah, James Wood —, Zack, who’d, ”, Artemisia Gentileschi, Susanna, Elders ”, I’m, ” Gustave Flaubert, “, ” Zack, it’s, Bruce Chatwin, Paul Gauguin, Salman Rushdie, Somerset Maugham, Kathryn Bigelow, Philip Glass, Arundhati Roy, Booker, Joseph Conrad, Conrad, Jacques, ” Conrad, brimming, ’, ’ ”, Clarice Lispector, Benjamin Moser, ” Lispector, Maugham, eludes, Jan van Kessel, Elder, — Pieter Bruegel, —, Rebecca West —, “ Black Lamb, J.R, Hammond, Wells, Rebecca West ”, sloughed, Henrik Ibsen’s, Rosmersholm ”, Karan Mahajan, Salman Toor, what’s, ” Hemingway, Anoushka Shankar, Ravi Shankar, Harold Bloom, Ravi, Uday, René Daumal, Rasa ”, ” Anoushka, Norah Jones, Norah, I’ve, “ Raphael, Rachel Cusk, Italy ”, Perugino, Raphael, Cusk, J.M, Samuel Beckett, Gabriel García Márquez, Thomas Pynchon’s, James Joyce, Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Marcel Proust’s, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Read, Emma Kehlbeck, Quinton Kamara Organizations: Amherst College, Elders, Fayerweather, ”, Google, Sunday Times, Somerset, Yugoslavia, The, “, . Locations: Delhi, ”, Massachusetts, Italian, Topeka, Kan, Amherst, New York, London, Patagonia, New Delhi, Torrens, Cambridge, Polish, Ukrainian, Brazil, Flemish, Victorian England, “ H.G, Fairfield, United States, “, East, Lahore, Europe, America, Texas, Side, Manhattan, India, Italy

He was a model to me of artistic labor and discipline, even if those early paintings were painfully amateurish. IT WASN’T MY intention to start an essay about artistic beginnings with a story of artistic death. No one captured the massive cultural and economic disparities of my life in Delhi (and his in Lahore) like Toor. But quite unbeknown to me, Toor’s life in New York had opened up a new vein of material. Not everyone who sees a Michelangelo can go off and paint a Michelangelo.”THERE ARE SO many ways to begin.

☆ Salman Rushdie says he had a ‘premonition’ of being attacked just days before the stabbing that left him blind in one eye
▼ + stars: | 2024-04-15 | by ( Issy Ronald | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +4 min

CNN —Renowned author Salman Rushdie has revealed more details about the knife attack that left him blind in one eye, telling CBS’ “60 Minutes” on Sunday that he had a “premonition” of the event just days beforehand. “I said to my wife, Eliza, ‘I don’t want to go’ because of the dream. And then I thought, ‘Don’t be silly, it’s a dream,’” he recalled. Hadi Matar, the man accused of stabbing Rushdie and another person on stage, pleaded not guilty to charges of second-degree attempted murder and second-degree assault. “I was watching (blood) spread and then thinking I was probably dying,” Rushdie added.

Persons: Salman Rushdie, Anderson Cooper, “, Eliza, ‘, ’ ”, Rushdie, ”, Satan, Prophet Mohammed, Iran’s, Ruhollah Khomeini, Kai Pfaffenbach, ” Rushdie, couldn’t, Hadi Matar, Nathaniel Barone, Barone, Booker, it’s Organizations: CNN, CBS, Chautauqua Institution, BBC, Reuters, New York, Defense Locations: New York, Mumbai, Islamabad

☆ Heartbreak and Family Love on the International Booker Prize Shortlist
▼ + stars: | 2024-04-09 | by ( Alex Marshall | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

A novel about a woman grieving her twin and another tracing North and South Korean history through a family of railway workers are among the six titles nominated for this year’s International Booker Prize, the prestigious award for fiction translated into English. Translated from German by Michael Hofmann, Erpenbeck’s book is about a torrid affair between a student and a 50-something novelist in communist East Germany. Dwight Garner, reviewing “Kairos” for The New York Times, said it was a “beautiful bummer” of a novel, in which a reader could wallow. The other shortlisted titles include Itamar Vieira Junior’s “Crooked Plow,” translated from Portuguese by Johnny Lorenz. Anderson Tepper, in a review for The New York Times, said that “Vieira provides a compelling vision of history’s downtrodden and neglected.”

Persons: Booker, Jenny Erpenbeck, Erpenbeck, “, ”, Michael Hofmann, Dwight Garner, Kairos, Itamar Vieira Junior’s, Johnny Lorenz, Anderson Tepper, “ Vieira Organizations: Booker Prize, The New York Times Locations: East Germany

☆ How 'YouTube's resident librarian' built his business around book content, from hosting an award ceremony to a brand deal with Valentino
▼ + stars: | 2024-02-26 | by ( Marta Biino | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

download the appSign up to get the inside scoop on today’s biggest stories in markets, tech, and business — delivered daily. As the self-proclaimed "resident librarian" of YouTube, Edwards has amassed 1.3 million subscribers on his main channel and almost half a million on a second one with videos discussing books and reading. But while he's recently built a reputation as a BookTuber, Edwards didn't start his YouTube career with book videos. Between 2015 and 2020, he was more of a college YouTuber, publishing content about university life and studying tips. "The content people were generally making on BookTube was 'Books I want to read in April,' and then 'Books I read in April.'

Persons: —, Booker, Jack Edwards, Edwards, Edwards didn't, BookTok, BookTube, Harry Styles, Taylor Swift, that's, he's, I've, Valentino, It's, AdSense, — Edwards, I'm, David Nicholls, livestream, Kate Green, Universal Pictures It's, Edwards hasn't, — he's, There's, it'll Organizations: Service, BBC's, YouTube, Business, Netflix, Universal Pictures Locations: London

☆ I walked away from a successful career because it was lonely. Here's how I pivoted and found my dream job.
▼ + stars: | 2024-02-06 | by ( Ella Hopkins | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

Louise Dean wrote four novels but found writing lonely and needed to work in a team. NEW LOOK Sign up to get the inside scoop on today’s biggest stories in markets, tech, and business — delivered daily. AdvertisementThis as-told-to essay is based on a transcribed conversation with prize-winning author Louise Dean about running a business instead of writing. Before I became an author, I thought you had to be funny and clever to write a novel. Working alone at my desk was isolatingOver the next two decades, I was in a cycle of writing novels and raising kids.

Persons: Louise Dean, Dean, she's, —, I'd, Simon & Schuster, Booker, Betty Trask, Le Prince Maurice, that's, weren't, I've Organizations: Service, Bookseller, Penguin Random, Costa Locations: New York, France, Northern Ireland, Nice, Belfast

☆ Booker Prize 2023 won by Irish writer Paul Lynch’s dystopian novel ‘Prophet Song’
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-27 | by ( Story Reuters | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +1 min

London, UK Reuters —Irish writer Paul Lynch won the 2023 Booker Prize on Sunday for his novel “Prophet Song,” the story of a family and a country on the brink of catastrophe as an imaginary Irish government veers towards tyranny. “This is a triumph of emotional storytelling, bracing and brave.”A copy of "Prophet Song" pictured prior to the Booker Prize award ceremony on Sunday. He became the fifth Irish author to win the Booker Prize, after Iris Murdoch, John Banville, Roddy Doyle and Anne Enright, the organizers of the competition said. The Northern Irish writer Anna Burns won in 2018. “Prophet Song” is published in the UK by Oneworld which also won the prize in 2015 and 2016 with Marlon James’s “A Brief History of Seven Killings” and Paul Beatty’s “The Sellout.”

Persons: Paul Lynch, Booker, Song ’, Adrian Dennis, Lynch, “, ” Lynch, Iris Murdoch, John Banville, Roddy Doyle, Anne Enright, Anna Burns, Margaret Atwood, Salman Rushdie, Yann Martel, ”, Marlon James’s “, Paul Beatty’s “ Organizations: Reuters, Esi, Getty, Sunday Tribune, Northern, Oneworld, Seven Locations: London, Irish, Syria, Ireland, AFP, Northern Irish

☆ Paul Lynch wins Booker Prize with dystopian novel 'Prophet Song'
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-26 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +1 min

LONDON, Nov 26 (Reuters) - Irish writer Paul Lynch won the 2023 Booker Prize on Sunday for his novel 'Prophet Song', the story of a family and a country on the brink of catastrophe as an imaginary Irish government veers towards tyranny. Lynch, who was previously the chief film critic of Ireland’s Sunday Tribune newspaper, said he wanted readers to understand totalitarianism by heightening the dystopia with the intense realism of his writing. He became the fifth Irish author to win the Booker Prize, after Iris Murdoch, John Banville, Roddy Doyle and Anne Enright, the organisers of the competition said. The Northern Irish writer Anna Burns won in 2018. 'Prophet Song' is published in the UK by Oneworld which also won the prize in 2015 and 2016 with Marlon James’s 'A Brief History of Seven Killings' and Paul Beatty’s 'The Sellout.'

Persons: Paul Lynch, Booker, Lynch, Iris Murdoch, John Banville, Roddy Doyle, Anne Enright, Anna Burns, Margaret Atwood, Salman Rushdie, Yann Martel, Marlon James’s, Paul Beatty’s, William Schomberg, Giles Elgood Organizations: Sunday Tribune, Northern, Oneworld, Seven, Thomson Locations: Syria, Ireland, Irish, Northern Irish

☆ Paul Lynch Wins Booker Prize for ‘Prophet Song’
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-26 | by ( Alex Marshall | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

When Paul Lynch, the Irish writer, started work on his fifth novel, he was thinking about the long civil war in Syria and the West’s apparent indifference to the people who fled the conflict. That novel, “Prophet Song,” which imagines a near-future Ireland descending into totalitarianism, then a civil war that leads to families’ fleeing the country, has won the Booker Prize, the prestigious literary award. On Sunday, Esi Edugyan, a novelist and the chair of this year’s judging panel, said that “Prophet Song” resonated with contemporary crises including the Israel-Hamas war, but that the novel had won solely on its literary merits. “This is a triumph of emotional storytelling, bracing and brave,” Edugyan said in a news conference before the announcement. Still, she added, the panel felt that “Prophet Song” was a worthy winner that “captures the social and political anxieties of our current moment.”

Persons: Paul Lynch, ’, Booker, ”, ” Edugyan, Edugyan, “ Locations: Syria, Ireland, Israel

☆ British author A.S. Byatt, who won Booker prize for 'Possession' dies aged 87
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-17 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +3 min

The Man Booker Prize shortlisted authors Adam Foulds (L), Hilary Mantel (2nd L), A S Byatt (2nd R) and Simon Mawer pose for photographers in London October 5, 2009. REUTERS/Toby Melville/File photo Acquire Licensing RightsLONDON, Nov 17 (Reuters) - Booker-prize winning British novelist Antonia Susan Byatt, known most commonly as A.S. Byatt, has died aged 87, her publisher said in a statement on Friday. Byatt, whose career spanned nearly 60 years, was best known for her 1990 novel "Possession: A Romance". Seven years later came her breakthrough with Possession, which became a bestseller and won the coveted Booker Prize for Fiction the same year. Byatt won a number of awards and titles including a CBE (Commander of the British Empire) and DBE (Dame of the British Empire).

Persons: Booker, Adam Foulds, Hilary, Simon Mawer, Toby Melville, Antonia Susan Byatt, Byatt, Margaret Drabble, Antonia, Charles, Gwyneth Paltrow, Harry Potter, JK Rowling, Mike Collett, White, Kylie MacLellan, Gareth Jones Organizations: REUTERS, Chatto & Windus, Penguin Random, Quaker, Cambridge, Oxford, Thomson Locations: London, British, English, Sheffield, York

☆ A.S. Byatt, Scholar Who Found Literary Fame With Fiction, Dies at 87
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-17 | by ( Rebecca Chace | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

A.S. Byatt, one of the most ambitious writers of her generation, whose dazzling 1990 novel, “Possession,” won the Booker Prize and brought her international fame as a novelist and unapologetic intellectual, has died. Her longtime publisher, Chatto & Windus, announced the death in a statement on Friday, saying she had died at her home. Ms. Byatt was a brilliant critic and scholar who broke the academic mold by publishing 11 novels and six collections of short stories. “I am not an academic who happens to have written a novel,” she bristled in an interview with The New York Times Magazine in 1991. The mystery is set in motion when a young scholar discovers something extraordinary at the London Library in 1985: old love letters tucked inside a rare edition of Victorian poetry.

Persons: ”, Booker, Byatt, “, Ms Organizations: Chatto & Windus, The New York Times Magazine, London Library

☆ Opinion | Taking Sides in a War Shouldn’t Mean Taking Sides on Literature
▼ + stars: | 2023-10-18 | by ( Pamela Paul | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

Last week the literary association Litprom canceled a celebration for the Palestinian author Adania Shibli’s book “Minor Detail” at the Frankfurt Book Fair, one of the publishing world’s biggest international book fairs. A panel that Shibli, who splits her time between Jerusalem and Berlin, was to be on with her German translator, Günther Orth, was likewise canceled. Others may side with Hamas or with the Palestinian people, now under fire by Israeli forces. But taking a side in a war does not require taking positions on a work of fiction — no matter the subject matter or the author’s nationality — and that is the effect of the fair organizers’ decision. Canceling a celebration of an author may not be the same thing as banning a book, but the organizers’ decision amounts to demonizing a fiction writer and stifling her viewpoint.

Persons: Litprom, Adania, International Booker, Günther Orth, “, Israel ”, Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu’s Organizations: International Locations: Frankfurt, Jerusalem, Berlin, Israel, Palestinian

CNN —Booker Prize-winning Indian author Arundhati Roy could be prosecuted for allegedly seditious comments made over a decade ago, after a top official in Delhi said there was enough evidence to lay charges. Two of the accused, Kashmiri separatist leader Sayed Ali Shah Geelani and Delhi University lecturer Syed Abdul Rahman Geelani, have died since the initial complaint was filed. Sheikh Showkat Hussain, a former international law professor at the Central University of Kashmir, is still facing charges alongside Roy. In her 2010 speech, posted online, Roy spoke about Kashmiri efforts to seek justice, in part for the mass exodus of Hindus from Muslim-majority Kashmir in the early 1990s amid increasing violence. The decision, which Pakistan condemned as “illegal,” ratcheted up tensions between the two countries and over Kashmir.

Persons: CNN — Booker, Arundhati Roy, Roy, Booker, Narendra Modi, India’s, Modi’s, V, Saxena, Governor’s, Sayed Ali Shah Geelani, Syed Abdul Rahman Geelani, Sheikh Showkat Hussain, Roy ., Modi, ” Organizations: CNN, Indian, Bharatiya Janata Party, BJP, Capitol, Police, Azadi, Delhi University, Central University of Kashmir, abetted Locations: Delhi, Kashmir, New Delhi, Mumbai, British, India, Muslim, Pakistan

NEW YORK (AP) — Salman Rushdie has a memoir coming out about the horrifying attack that left him blind in his right eye and with a damaged left hand. “This was a necessary book for me to write: a way to take charge of what happened, and to answer violence with art,” Rushdie said in a statement released Wednesday by Penguin Random House. The 256-page “Knife" will be published in the U.S. by Random House, the Penguin Random House imprint that earlier this year released his novel “Victory City,” completed before the attack. Political Cartoons View All 1206 Images“'Knife' is a searing book, and a reminder of the power of words to make sense of the unthinkable," Penguin Random House CEO Nihar Malaviya said in a statement. Rushdie wrote at length, and in the third person, about the fatwa in his 2012 memoir “Joseph Anton.”“This doesn’t feel third-person-ish to me,” Rushdie said of the 2022 attack in the magazine interview.

Persons: — Salman Rushdie, ” Rushdie, Rushdie, Hadi Matar, Ruhollah Khomeini, ”, Booker, Nihar Malaviya, David Remnick, “ Joseph Anton, “, that’s Organizations: Penguin Random, Chautauqua Institution, Random House, Penguin, PEN America, Random, Yorker Locations: New York, U.S

☆ In J.M. Coetzee’s New Novel, Love Awakens an Austere Soul
▼ + stars: | 2023-09-11 | by ( Dwight Garner | More About Dwight Garner | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

THE POLE, by J.M. Coetzee’s novels are slim, and so, by and large, are his characters — they’re Modiglianis, not Boteros. The most wraithlike, a saintly hunger artist, is the protagonist of his novel “The Life and Times of Michael K,” which won the Booker Prize in 1983. When an ample person does show up in Coetzee’s work, moral stigma is often attached. Lurie takes her fleshiness as a sign she’s fled the strictures of civilized intellectual life.

Persons: J.M . Coetzee, J.M, — they’re, Michael K, John Lurie, ”, Lurie, she’s, Coetzee isn’t, Witold Walczykiewicz, I’ve, It’s, Witold, Hulked, Max von Sydow, “, Beatriz, Dante, She’s Organizations: South, Deutsche Grammophon Locations: She’s, Warsaw, Barcelona

☆ At Edinburgh Fringe, Small Shows With Big Ambitions
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-17 | by ( Houman Barekat | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

In a smart revival of Cyriel Buysse’s Flemish classic, “The Van Paemel Family” by the Antwerp troupe SKaGeN, the actor Valentijn Dhaenens sidesteps this difficulty by playing all the play’s roles. Mr. van Paemel is slavishly loyal to the landowner for whom they all work, and believes organized labor is a scourge. This eerie visual texture, neatly complemented by the doleful tones of an accordion, made for a memorably unique aesthetic. The standout Fringe show was Lara Foot’s stylish adaptation of “The Life and Times of Michael K.,” J.M. Coetzee’s Booker Prize-winning 1983 novel about the struggles of a poor man during a fictional civil war in South Africa.

Persons: Van, Valentijn Dhaenens, van Paemel, Lara Foot’s, Michael K, ”, Coetzee’s Booker Organizations: SKaGeN, Handspring, Company Locations: Antwerp, South Africa

☆ Why Booker Prize-winning author Bernardine Evaristo is mentoring Ghanaian writer Ayesha Harruna Attah
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-09 | by ( Rochelle Beighton | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +4 min

Attah said that being selected personally by Evaristo “is an honor of a lifetime.”“I was overjoyed because I love Bernardine’s boldness as a writer. In 2012, she launched the Brunel International African Poetry Prize, now renamed the Evaristo African Poetry Prize, with the aim of providing a platform for emerging poets from Africa and the diaspora. For Evaristo, mentorship is about more than just refining writing skills. Both Evaristo and Attah share a commitment to challenging misconceptions and stereotypes surrounding Africa and its people through their work. “People have said to me, “Isn’t writing about Africa or Black people limiting?” Evaristo said.

Persons: Bernardine Evaristo, Evaristo, Booker, Ayesha Harruna Attah, “, ” Evaristo, Attah, Evaristo “, ”, ” Attah, Don’t, ’, ‘, ” MARTIN BOURKE, “ We’ve Organizations: CNN, Protégé Arts Initiative, Arts, Brunel University London, Brunel International Locations: Africa, Europe, America, Athens, Greece, Senegal, Nigerian, London, New York, Trinidad, Ghana, England, White

☆ After Walking Offstage, a Concert Pianist Changes Her Tune
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-04 | by ( Corinna Da Fonseca-Wollheim | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

AUGUST BLUE, by Deborah LevyIn the work of Deborah Levy, certain elements recur in ever new arrangements: swimming, seafood, bees and silence; brokenness and recovery; the patriarchy. In Levy’s latest novel, “August Blue,” it is musical recomposition that becomes the overt, and sometimes overly self-conscious, metaphor for female revolt and reinvention. For a little over two minutes, she went off script, playing music that came to her unbidden, before walking offstage. At a flea market in Athens, this other woman snapped up two mechanical dancing horses that the pianist also wanted. While she chases what may be hallucinatory glimpses of the doppelgänger across Europe, she takes to wearing the trilby hat the mystery woman dropped at the market.

Persons: Deborah Levy, Booker, “, Levy’s, unemployable Locations: British, Vienna, Athens, London, Paris, Sardinia, Greece, Europe

☆ Martin Amis, Acclaimed Author of Bleakly Comic Novels, Dies at 73
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-20 | by ( Dwight Garner | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

As he aged, he stopped playing tennis, a sport he once played daily and wrote about often. He mostly stopped writing criticism, too. “Insulting people in print is a vice of youth,” he said in an interview with The Independent. Mr. Amis was shortlisted for the award in 1991 for “Time’s Arrow,” and longlisted in 2003 for “Yellow Dog.”His final novel, “Inside Story,” published in 2020, was a “novelized autobiography” that considered his friendship with Mr. Hitchens and his relationship with his father. In “The Information,” he wrote: “Every morning we leave more in the bed: certainty, vigor, past loves.

☆ Martin Amis, British writer of dark comedic novels, dies at 73
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-20 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

[1/2] Novelist Martin Amis (L) talks to Tina Brown at the launch of Brown's book "The Diana Chronicles" at a party hosted by Reuters in the Serpentine Gallery in central London, June 18, 2007.... Read moreWASHINGTON, May 20 (Reuters) - Martin Amis, a British writer of dark comedic novels, has died at the age of 73, his publisher said Saturday on Twitter. Penguin Books said Amis "leaves a towering legacy and an indelible mark on the British cultural landscape, and will be missed enormously." Amis died Friday at his home in Lake Worth, Florida, the New York Times reported earlier, quoting his wife, Isabel Fonseca, as saying the cause was esophageal cancer. He worked as an editor at The Times Literary Supplement and later the literary editor of The New Statesman. In a 2020 interview with the New York Times, Amis said "we read literature to have a good time.

CNN —British author Martin Amis, best known for the 1984 novel, “Money,” and 1989’s “London Fields,” has died, his publisher Penguin Books UK announced Saturday. “(Amis) leaves a towering legacy and an indelible mark on the British cultural landscape, and will be missed enormously,” the British publishing house said on Twitter. LONDON - APRIL 5: Writer Martin Amis at home in London on April 5, 1995. His 1991 novel, “Time’s Arrow,” and 2014’s “The Zone of Interest,” explored the Holocaust. “It’s hard to imagine a world without Martin Amis in it,” his UK editor, Michal Shavit, said in Penguin’s statement.

☆ Eleanor Catton on ‘Birnam Wood’
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-28 | by ( ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

On this week’s podcast, Catton tells the host Gilbert Cruz how that early success affected her writing life (not much) as well as her life outside of writing (her marriage made local headlines, for one thing). She also discusses her aims for the new book and grapples with the slippery nature of New Zealand’s national identity. “You very often hear New Zealanders defining their country in the negative rather than in the positive,” she says. … I think that that’s solidified over time into this kind of very odd sense of supremacy, actually. So if you’re a reader who prefers to be taken by surprise, you may want to finish “Birnam Wood” before you finish this episode.

☆ Sri Lankan author Shehan Karunatilaka wins 2022 Booker Prize
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-17 | by ( Marie-Louise Gumuchian | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

LONDON, Oct 17 (Reuters) - Sri Lankan writer Shehan Karunatilaka won the Booker Prize on Monday for his second novel "The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida," about a dead war photographer on a mission in the afterlife. Set in 1990 Sri Lanka during the country's civil war, Karunatilaka's story follows gay war photographer and gambler Maali Almeida, who wakes up dead. This year's shortlist of Booker Prize contenders included British author Alan Garner's "Treacle Walker", Zimbabwean author NoViolet Bulawayo's "Glory", "Small Things Like These" by Irish writer Claire Keegan, U.S. author Percival Everett's "The Trees" and "Oh William!" "It is an entirely serious philosophical romp that takes the reader to 'the world's dark heart' - the murderous horrors of civil war Sri Lanka," MacGregor added. Past winners of the Booker Prize, which was first awarded in 1969, include Margaret Atwood, Salman Rushdie and Yann Martel.

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