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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
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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.
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…
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…
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.
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…
‘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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
A piece of advice often doled out to people with creative aspirations is ‘don’t give up the day job’.
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…
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13 Nov 2008
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14 Feb 2008
