Books, Allan Radcliffe

Chris Addison - It Wasn’t Me

13 Nov 2008

One grotesquely amusing aspect of the current economic crisis has been the sight of our beloved PM desperately trying to hammer home the notion that the predicament should be blamed on ‘global’ factors and is absolutely nothing to do with him, mate. You…

Chris Priestley - Tales of Terror from the Black Ship

16 Oct 2008

GHOST STORIES The great English chiller writer MR James observed that one of the key facets of a good, nerve-shredding ghost story is ‘a pleasing terror’. Chris Priestley’s follow-up to the imaginative Uncle Montague’s Tales of Terror similarly aims…

Bibi van der Zee - Rebel Rebel

31 Jul 2008

CAMPAIGNER BIBLE (Guardian Books) ‘Write to your MP!’ used to be the battle cry of every outraged rebel with a cause, whether that was to prevent the destruction of some local beauty spot by developers, conquering smut on the telly or campaigning to…

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…

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…

Brent Ghelfi - Volk’s Game

24 Apr 2008

CRIME THRILLER (Faber) This debut novel from former US Court of Appeals clerk Brent Ghelfi introduces us to Alexei Volkovoy. ‘Volk’ (‘wolf’), a one-time sniper for the Russian Army in Chechnya, is now an unscrupulous gangster commissioned to steal a…

Joanne Proulx - Anthem of a Reluctant Prophet

10 Apr 2008

TEEN DRAMA (Picador) Hot on the heels of Academy Award-winning comedy Juno comes another enjoyable tale of a smart-mouthed North American trying to make sense of the adult world. Joanne Proulx’s debut centres around Luke Hunter who, in the opening…

The No 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency

13 Mar 2008

If there is still such a thing as ‘appointment television’ in this multi-channel age, The No 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency is it. The adaptation of Alexander McCall Smith’s much- loved novel arrives on the small screen this fortnight thanks to a wealth of…

Alan Grant & Cam Kennedy - Strange Case of Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde

13 Mar 2008

LITERARY ADAPTATION (Waverley) The second One Book – One Edinburgh graphic novel adaptation was never going to be a straightforward reprise of last year’s successful Kidnapped campaign, even based around a source novel by Robert Louis Stevenson.

Katherine Ashenburg - Clean: An Unsanitised History of Washing

13 Mar 2008

SOCIAL HISTORY (Profile) For germophobic Westerners in the 21st century, it’s customary to shower at least once a day before applying any number of perfumes and deodorants; anything less would be considered a sign of slovenliness. Yet, as Katherine…

Aye Write! - China

28 Feb 2008

What do Westerners really know about the People’s Republic of China? Our understanding of the world’s biggest nation is chiefly drawn from news reports about the country’s booming economy, her patchy human rights record and controversial intervention in…

Tony Parsons - My Favourite Wife

14 Feb 2008

RELATIONSHIP DRAMA (HarperCollins) The question of whether it’s possible to truly love more than one person is perhaps the most enduring theme in world literature. Writers as diverse as Emily Brontë, Charles Dickens, DH Lawrence and Vladimir Nabokov…

Alain Mabanckou - African Pycho

Serpent’s Tail

31 Jan 2008

With six novels and six collections of poetry under his belt, Congo-born, LA-dwelling Alain Mabanckou is one of the most fêted of contemporary Francophone writers. African Psycho, the first in a series of translations of his novels to be published by…

Erwin Mortier - review

Childhnood tale

1 Nov 2007

The latest novel from award-winning Flemish author Erwin Mortier is a typically lyrical exploration of the wonders and perplexities of childhood. Poised on the verge of adolescence, Joris reports on the inconsistencies and strange peccadilloes of the…

Nathan Englander

(Faber)

23 Aug 2007

Nathan Englander, the New York-born author of For the Relief of Unbearable Urges, makes a confident leap from critically acclaimed short story writer to novelist with the audacious The Ministry of Special Cases. It's set in 1970s Buenos Aires during…

Germaine Greer

16 Aug 2007

Writer, academic, critic and commentator Germaine Greer has been a particularly bristly thorn in establishment sides for the best part of 40 years. A native of Melbourne, she sprang fully-formed onto the global literary stage with The Female Eunuch, her…

Mohsin Hamid

16 Aug 2007

‘Write about what you know’ is perhaps the most cogent piece of advice given to aspiring authors. Pakistan-born, Harvard-educated novelist Mohsin Hamid set out to do just that with his follow-up to the critically acclaimed Moth Smoke, penning a book…

Ruth Thomas

16 Aug 2007

Things to Make and Mend is a quiet, moving, wryly amusing work which explores themes of friendship, class and betrayal. Ruth Thomas highlights her themes through the turbulent relationship between two very different women, Rowena and Sally, who first…

Alice Munro

Canadian legend in LongPen revolution

9 Aug 2007

A standard piece of advice given to budding fiction writers eager for publication is to forget airy fairy, uncommercial notions of publishing short stories and dive headfirst into the novel.

Joyce Carol Oates

9 Aug 2007

The legendary French actress Jeanne Moreau once compared the versatility and precision of Oates’ writing to witchcraft. Oates once said of her own work, ‘I’m drawn to failure. I feel that I’m contending with it constantly in my own life’. This perhaps…

Mark McNay

9 Aug 2007

A piece of advice often doled out to people with creative aspirations is ‘don’t give up the day job’.

Loung Ung

Edinburgh International Book Festival

19 Jul 2007

Edinburgh International Book Festival Surviving the peace Author, campaigner and victim of Pol Pot’s regime in Cambodia, bestselling writer Loung Ung talks to Allan Radcliffe about how she managed to carry on after the hell of the killing fields

Lin Anderson

16 Jul 2007

Flight of fancy Edinburgh crime writer Lin Anderson tells Allan Radcliffe that living in Nigeria and feasting on the news have both influenced her latest novel Lin Anderson has tended to get lumped in with the Tartan Noir squad of Scottish…

LongPen technology brings Mailer and Munro to Edinburgh

19 Jun 2007

Words: Allan Radcliffe (Image: left to right - Ben Okri, Norman Mailer, Margaret Atwood, Alice Munro) With the announcement of its programme for August 2007 an intriguing new chapter has opened for the Edinburgh International Book Festival. The…

Burns an’ a’ That festival line-up unveiled

22 May 2007

Words: Allan Radcliffe (Picture: Deacon Blue (left) and the MacDonald Brothers (right)) The sixth Burns an’ a’ That festival, which takes place from Wednesday 23-Monday 28 May, features an enticing programme of entertainment, music, dance…

Esther Freud

21 May 2007

Esther Freud has been called ‘the best writer about childhood we have.’ Certainly, since her 1992 autobiographical debut Hideous Kinky, the tale of two young girls accompanying their free-spirited mother on a pilgrimage to 1960s Marrakech, her work has…

My French Whore

7 May 2007

ROMANCE DRAMA

The Keep

Jennifer Egan

9 Apr 2007

GOTHIC PASTICHE The slip-sliding new book from award-winning American novelist Jennifer Egan opens with a scene familiar from the 1930s Universal horror classics as Danny, a 36-year-old drifter, arrives at a castle in Eastern Europe. Summoned…

Neil Bartlett

Skin Lane (Serpent’s Tail)

13 Mar 2007

PSYCHOLOGICAL THRILLER Author and theatre director Neil Bartlett explores the link between repressed sexual desire and social envy in this disappointing follow-up novel to the Whitbread-shortlisted Mr Clive and Mr Page. London, 1967. Mr F is a…

Mohsin Hamid

The Reluctant Fundamentalist (Hamish Hamilton)

26 Feb 2007

SOCIAL DRAMA Mohsin Hamid’s spare, haunting second novel takes the form of a one-sided conversation struck up between a bearded Pakistani man and an American tourist in a restaurant in Lahore. Changez was once top of his graduating class at Princeton…

Alan Grant & Cam Kennedy - comic review

Alan Grant & Cam Kennedy

29 Jan 2007

LITERARY ADAPTATION Robert Louis Stevenson’s celebrated historical adventure doesn’t need pictures to enhance its power. But this graphic novel adaptation, produced as part of the One Book ?" One Edinburgh reading campaign, successfully captures the…

Ruth Thomas

Things to Make and Mend (Faber)

12 Jan 2007

FRIENDSHIP TALE Edinburgh-based author Ruth Thomas has garnered a reputation as a skilled, award-winning writer of short stories and makes a convincing transition to novel writing with her archetypal story of two women whose friendship is brought to…

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…

John McGahern - Creatures of the Earth

John McGahern

7 Dec 2006

SHORT STORIES In his best-known novel, 1990’s Booker shortlisted Amongst Women, John McGahern’s protagonist Michael Moran reflects: ‘The best of life is life lived quietly, where nothing happens but our calm journey through the day, where change is…

John McGahern - Creatures of the Earth

John McGahern

6 Dec 2006

SHORT STORIES In his best-known novel, 1990’s Booker shortlisted Amongst Women, John McGahern’s protagonist Michael Moran reflects: ‘The best of life is life lived quietly, where nothing happens but our calm journey through the day, where change is…

Kate Mosse

Labyrinth: Illustrated Edition (Orion)

21 Nov 2006

HISTORICAL THRILLER Just in case Kate Mosse’s phenomenally successful thriller, set in medieval and contemporary France, has passed you by, her helpful publishers have rushed out a hefty, hardback illustrated version to put a dent in your Christmas…

Angus Dunn

Writing in the Sand (Luath)

11 Nov 2006

SUPERNATURAL TALE The image of the sleepy insular community rocked by some sinister supernatural force has been a cultural staple, from Daphne Du Maurier’s The Birds through to the surreal chills of Twin Peaks. In his debut novel, erstwhile joiner…

JG Ballard - Kingdom Come

JG Ballard

18 Sep 2006

DYSTOPIAN TALE Septuagenarian novelist JG Ballard belongs to that rare cabal of authors to have had an adjective named after them. ‘Ballardian’ evokes the bleak, urban landscapes and lyrical insight into the dark human effects of technological and…

Guy Grieve

Call of the Wild (Hodder & Stoughton)

1 Sep 2006

WILDERNESS ADVENTURE For five years, Guy Grieve worked in The Scotsman’s commercial department, climbing to be Head of Strategic Marketing. Driving home every night, his head buzzing with readers’ incentives, Grieve dreamed of escaping to the Alaskan…

Black and Blue - Ian Rankin (1997)

1 Jan 2005

Ian Rankin is one of this country’s most prolific and commercially successful authors. No writer has chronicled the changing face of Edinburgh so vividly nor in such minute detail. Since 1987’s Knots and Crosses, the investigations of his celebrated…

Electric Brae - Andrew Greig (1997)

1 Jan 2005

Throughout the 1990s, when the majority of the emerging Scottish novelists seemed fixated with gritty urban realism, a handful of authors were taking their inspiration from the dramatic landscape of the country's remoter climes. Notable among these was…

For the Love of Willie - Agnes Owens (1998)

1 Jan 2005

It is often remarked that Scottish scribes have a particular proclivity for mining the dark and devilish in their fiction. Agnes Owens' For the Love of Willie displays all the pitch-black humour and acute observation that have characterised her work…

Garnethill - Denise Mina (1998)

1 Jan 2005

There was a time when the Glasgow-set detective story meant little more than the adventures of one craggy-faced chief inspector, handy with his fists, the originator of that oft-recited catchphrase: 'There's been a murrrder . . . ' From the late 90s…

Joseph Knight - James Robertson (2003)

1 Jan 2005

Scots writers often mine the country's tumultuous history to make sense of contemporary concerns. With his bestselling debut novel The Fanatic, James Robertson became immediately established as a creator of gripping and innovative historical fiction…

The Citadel - AJ Cronin (1937)

1 Jan 2005

In recent years, Jed Mercurio’s novel Bodies and its subsequent television adaptation have provided shocking insight into the mental and physical strain suffered by overworked medical staff, including consequent fatal lapses in judgement. Rewind some 70…

The Guns of Navarone - Alistair MacLean (1957)

1 Jan 2005

It will doubtless surprise many to find this most pulp of World War II action-adventures included in a compendium of Scotland's most accomplished fiction. But cast out Gregory Peck and J Lee Thompson's plodding, waterlogged film adaptation from your…

The Lantern Bearers - Ronald Frame (1999)

1 Jan 2005

Until five years ago, had you scanned the Scottish Fiction section of any popular bookseller, chances are your eyes wouldn't have alighted on any work by Ronald Frame. Despite having published 13 books as well as groundbreaking plays and screenplays…

The Magic Flute - Alan Spence (1990)

1 Jan 2005

For over 25 years, Alan Spence's uncanny talent for cosmically transforming the seemingly everyday in city life has been showcased in poetry, drama, short stories and novels. In just three deceptively simple lines in the poem 'ah', Spence perfectly…

The New Road - Neil Munro (1914)

1 Jan 2005

The image of writers struggling unrecognised in their own lifetime only to be canonised long after their remains have been consigned to paupers' graves is a familiar one. Perhaps we should pity poor Neil Munro (born 1863) whose literary career took the…