Hungarian author Laszlo Krasznahorkai has won the Man Booker International Prize. He was described by the chair of the judges, Marina Warner, as “a visionary writer of extraordinary intensity and vocal range who captures the texture of present-day existence in scenes that are terrifying, strange, appallingly comic, and often shatteringly beautiful. The…
When to Kindle and when not to Kindle, that is still the question. In a touching article in the New York Times recently, Nick Bilton wrote about how, after the death of his mother, he found he was “bound in spirit and print” to her through her love of books. “She spoke passionately about being able to smell the pages of a print book as you read, to feel the edges of a hardcover in your hands,” Bilton wrote. “And that the notes left inside by the previous reader (often my mother) could pause time.” He describes how she gathered a library of more than 3,000 books and scoffed at his embrace of the Kindle.
That was me, not all that long ago. Books were king. However, after a
Ten authors have been named on the long list for the Man Booker International Prize. It includes writers from six from countries which have never featured before. The ten authors on the list are: Cesar Aira (Argentina) Hoda Barakat (Lebanon) Maryse Conde (Guadeloupe) Mia Couto (Mozambique) Amitav Ghosh (India) Fanny Howe (USA) Ibrahim al-Koni (Libya) Laszlo Krasznahorkai (Hungary) Alain…
Whilst it seems rather undignified to bet on something like the Nobel prize for literature, as all literary prizes are a bit of a lottery I shouldn’t really be surprised. So, as we enter the final straight toward’s the announcement of the winner on Thursday (BST), latest figures put out…
I’m not sure if it was all the attention on Haruki Murakami in the lead-up to the announcement of the Nobel Prize for Literature (which in the end went to the wonderful Canadian story-teller, Alice Munro, more about that later) but I’ve been on a bit of a Japanese roll…
Another biggie literary event looms with the annoucement of the winner of the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Literature due on Monday morning (American time). There was upraor last year when it was decided, for the first time in 35 years, not to award the prize at all, a huge slap…