Books

Preview of the year 2007

2007 is about the future. And about the past. It’

3 Jan 2007

THE FUTURE Cyberspace invaders We may not be flying around in hover cars or wearing spangly all-silver outfits, but thanks to the internet the future has truly arrived. And the revolution will continue apace in 2007, argues Suzanne Black. A…

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…

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…

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.

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

Jason - I Killed Adolf Hitler

29 Nov 2007

IDIOSYNCRATIC SCI-FI I Killed Adolf Hitler (Fantagraphics) Having re-imagined heavyweight modernist writing icons Hemingway, Fitzgerald and Ezra Pound as criminals involved in a heist in The Left Bank Gang, and plundered George Romeo’s zombie…

Scottish crime writing

1 Nov 2007

‘Ah, well. If you’re Scottish, and you’re writing crime fiction, at some point someone is going to hail you as “the new Ian Rankin” until they remember, no, actually Ian Rankin is still there. Alex Gray has been described as the Glaswegian Ian Rankin.

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…

American Literature

Born fighting

24 Apr 2007

At the exact moment Chuck Palahniuk greets me with a hushed ‘Hello?’ his home in south-western Washington State is being invaded by a group of unfamiliar men who are chanting in unison at the author: ‘His name is Robert Paulson!’

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…

Bat's Life - Dark Knight

17 Jul 2008

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

Allan Guthrie - Savage Night

14 Feb 2008

CRIME THRILLER (Polygon) As the winner of last year’s Theakston’s Old Peculiar Crime Novel of the Year, Edinburgh’s Allan Guthrie is right at the forefront of the expanding sub-genre known as Tartan Noir. That Ian Rankin, the godfather of the style…

No Mean City: A Story of the Glasgow Slums - Alexander McArthur and H. Kingsley Long (1935)

1 Jan 2005

This cutting edge portrait of working-class life in the worst laid scheme in Scotland sticks out like a sore face. Rarely referred to by its subtitle or complimented for its subtlety, when it was first published Glasgow libraries refused to stock it…

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…

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…

Festival frenzy as Edinburgh gears up for August

3 Jul 2008

With just three weeks until Edinburgh officially takes its place in the spotlight as one of the world's greatest cultural playgrounds, festival news and views have been coming in thick and fast. Perhaps most contentious is the news that after capturing…

Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde - interview with Alan Grant and Cam Kennedy

14 Feb 2008

Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde has spawned countless adaptations since its publication in 1885. The stage play ran for 20 years and there have been numerous film versions, with stars as diverse as Fredric March, Spencer Tracy and…

AA Gill

Previous Convictions (Weidenfeld & Nicolson)

23 Nov 2006

COMIC TRAVELOGUE Enthusiastic wildlife-slayer, owner of a canary yellow Bentley, close friend of Jeremy Clarkson: AA Gill is enough to give the more mung bean-minded a coronary. Indeed, after a foreword encomium to criticism, he begins Previous…

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…

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…

Bob Levin - Most Outrageous

3 Jul 2008

NON-FICTION/BIOG (Fantagraphics) Looking for a suitable subject for the follow-up to his book The Pirates and the Mouse – a wickedly funny account of a gang of comic book creators who satirised themselves into court with the Disney Corporation, Bob…

Jim Cartwright - Supermarket Supermodel

3 Jul 2008

‘I’ve got something to tell you,’ confides Jim Cartwright, in a rascally, Lancashire drawl. ‘I used to be called Maureen.’ But, as it turns out, that wasn’t where he drew the inspiration for his novel, Supermarket Supermodel. A chat with the Northern…

Mark Everett interview

Family plot

31 Jan 2008

When Mark Oliver Everett was nine years old and home alone, a plane crashed in his neighbourhood. Stumbling outside, he wandered through the carnage of burning wreckage and body parts before returning to his house. ‘Just another day in my weird life,…

Bernhard Schlink - Homecoming

Weidenfeld & Nicolson

31 Jan 2008

A scrap of pulp fiction marks the beginning of a life-long journey for Peter Debauer in this personal account of a fatherless boy in postwar Germany. The fiction, which describes a soldier’s return, has mysterious parallels with Debauer’s own life and…

Helen Mirren - In the Frame: My Life in Words and Pictures

Memoir

4 Oct 2007

‘I have a blissfully forgetful brain,’ Helen Mirren informs us in the opening paragraph of her autobiography, which hardly bodes well for a book which demands total recall. But Mirren has dredged the past up from somewhere, or someone, because In the…