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Home James - Sean Connery

Edinburgh International Book Festival

22 Jul 2008

As Sean Connery returns to Edinburgh for a date in Charlotte Square Gardens, author Ewan Morrison recalls growing up in the ultimate 007’s shadow and wallowing in those iconic one-liners

No more heroes - graphic novels

Edinburgh International Book Festival

22 Jul 2008

The Book Festival is once again acknowledging the rapid expansion in graphic novels. Henry Northmore chats to a number of comic book guys (and girl) to ask what the future may hold for the superhero While graphic novels may be still be a minority…

You've been mangoed - Mohammed Hanif

Edinburgh International Book Festival

22 Jul 2008

The mysterious death of Pakistan’s dictator General Zia is still the subject of fevered speculation today. Mohammed Hanif tells Claire Sawers about a debut novel he’s based on memories, rumours and jokes Mohammed Hanif has always been a daydreamer.

Kid loves - Children's books round-up

Edinburgh International Book Festival

22 Jul 2008

Harry Potter may have played his last game of Quidditch and Lemony Snicket’s series of events have unfortunately ceased to be, but there are still plenty of iconic figures hanging around in children’s literature. Brian Donaldson finds ten of them…

Salman Rushdie

Edinburgh International Book Festival

22 Jul 2008

Salman Rushdie’s new book The Enchantress Of Florence came close to being stillborn but he believes it represents the rebirth of his talent. The writing of his 11th novel was disrupted by the exit of his fourth wife, Padma Lakshmi. Distraught, Rushdie…

Karen Campbell

Edinburgh International Book Festival

22 Jul 2008

As luck would have it, Karen Campbell could draw on her former career in Strathclyde Police for inspiration for her literary debut. Published earlier this year, The Twilight Time is an atmospheric, fast-paced novel which introduced us to Anna Cameron, a…

Best of the rest - Edinburgh Book Festival

Edinburgh International Book Festival

22 Jul 2008

Philip Gourevitch. Having reported on the genocide in Rwanda, Gourevitch is back with a journey into the heart of America’s darkness as Standard Operating Procedure analyses the hell of Abu Ghraib. Steven Berkoff In town to direct On the Waterfront…

Bound for glory - James Bond

Edinburgh International Book Festival

22 Jul 2008

With a new Bond movie on the way in the creator’s centenary year, 007 fever is rising. David Pollock flicks through an exhibition celebrating the cover designs of Ian Fleming’s pulp novels With Daniel Craig now installed as an updated, reinvigorated…

Richard Mason

Edinburgh International Book Festival

22 Jul 2008

In some forms of entertainment fame can often come extraordinarily early (music and film perhaps), but with mechanisms in place to help the ‘victims’ deal with the onset of celebrity. In the literary world, support systems are less common, especially…

Bat's Life - Dark Knight

17 Jul 2008

Leigh Rafferty traces the highs and lows of the caped crusader’s cultural career

Stranger in a strange land

17 Jul 2008

Amazingly, Strange & Stranger is the first critical retrospective of the life and work of legendary American comic book artist Steve Ditko. The shy son of Eastern European immigrants who was born in Pennsylvania in 1927 may have languished in relative…

5 Travel Books

17 Jul 2008

Ellie Nielsen Our Own Piece of Paris Subtitled ‘How We Fell in Love with the City of Light’, this follows one woman’s quest to find an apartment that oozes Parisian chic. Atlantic. Kapka Kassabova Street Without a Name Subtitled ‘Childhood and Other…

Alan Moore & Brian Bolland - Batman: The Killing Joke

17 Jul 2008

SUPER VILLAIN (DC) New blockbuster Dark Knight is all about the Joker. At first glance he’s almost a comedy character, but in the right hands he can be genuinely terrifying. As a character, The Joker represents insanity at it’s worst; a gibbering…

Barbara Ehrenreich - Going To Extremes: Notes From a Divided Nation

17 Jul 2008

POLITICAL NON-FICTION (Granta) Although any balanced reader might browse the political essays and features of left-wing American commentator Barbara Ehrenreich and get a vague sense of agitprop being deployed, perhaps that’s just the author’s bold…

Batman: Gotham Knights

17 Jul 2008

Intended to fill the gaps between Batman Begins and Dark Knight, Gotham Knights offers us six animated shorts, much in the same way as The Animatrix did for The Matrix. Each story is self-contained and created by a different writer (including Greg…

David Sedaris - When You Are Engulfed in Flames

17 Jul 2008

ESSAY COLLECTION (Little, Brown) A criticism often aimed at writers once they reach the publication of their third or fourth book, is that they forget all the things that endeared them to the book-buying public in the first place, and either…

Donald Ray Pollock - Knockemstiff

17 Jul 2008

SHORT STORIES (Harvill Secker) Knockemstiff, Ohio, is so deprived it doesn’t register on maps anymore. This debut set of interconnected shorts about its people by former resident Donald Ray Pollock is unlikely to make anyone want to find the town…

Film Books Round-up

17 Jul 2008

In terms of wealth of research and weightiness of tome Richard Brody’s biography of Jean-Luc Godard, Everything is Cinema (Faber) ••••, should be a masterpiece. Yet for all its detail Godard remains an enigma, and this seems neither for want of research…

Glen Neath - The Fat Plan

17 Jul 2008

FICTION (Portobello) The trouble with writing a novel satirising the mundanity of life and the mind numbing tedium of bureaucracy is, well, it risks being mundane and tedious. This second minimalist novel from Neath aims at the likes of Beckett…

Michael Green & Denys Cowan - Batman: Lovers and Madmen

17 Jul 2008

SUPER VILLAIN ( DC ) The main problem with Lovers and Madmen is that in many ways it is contradictory to the events in The Killing Joke (which have become accepted as the origin story to the Joker over the years). It depicts the Joker as far…

Thomas Hettche - What We Are Made Of

17 Jul 2008

CINEMATIC THRILLER (Picador) The blurb on the flyleaf of Thomas Hettche’s German Booker prize-shortlisted novel likens his page-turning thriller to the films of David Lynch and Quentin Tarantino. Certainly, Hettche’s prose style is cinematic, not…

Various - Superman: Emperor Joker

17 Jul 2008

SUPER VILLAIN (DC) Despite an impressive writing team – including Jeph Loeb, JM DeMatteis and Ed McGuinness – Emperor Joker is a mess. This time, Superman takes on the harlequin of hate in a reality-warping tale as the Joker takes on God-like…

Also Published - 5 Debut Novels

3 Jul 2008

Shona MacLean - The Redemption of Alexander Seaton Historical crime set in 1620s Banff in which a disgraced minister seeks to clear his name when a body is found in his house. Quercus . Harry Sidebottom - Warrior of Rome: Fire in the East The first…

Andrew Sean Greer - The Story of a Marriage

3 Jul 2008

HISTORICAL TALE (Faber) Can you ever, really, truly know someone? Andrew Sean Greer begs this question with his third, remarkable piece of fiction, a compelling and beautifully-penned tale of love, long-kept secrets and motherly sacrifice set against…

Antony Moore - The Swap

3 Jul 2008

COMIC NOVEL (Harvill Secker) Cartoonists have for years been creating humorous/nostalgic stories about the obsessive pastime of comic book collecting: see Joe Matt’s confessional memoir The Poor Bastard and the eccentric whimsy of Seth’s Wimbledon…