Its UK publisher risked ruin at an obscenity trial in 1954, but this tale of an ad-man adulterer has contemporary resonance Police turned up at the Soho offices of the publishers Martin Secker and Warburg shortly after new year, 1954.
Like all writers, Charlotte Raven overestimates the role of ideas ( Strike a pose , Review, 6 March). The regrettable setbacks for feminism that she charts so well were boosted by the hyperbolic fantasies of Madonna, Julie Burchill and their ilk, but that wasn’t the main problem. The avalanche of cleavage and underwear overwhelmed us because women like Charlotte wanted to rebel against the “dull” feminists who clearly did not understand the new world that youth thought it was creating
Booker prize winning author rejects offer to become go-between but urges Maoists and India to call a ceasefire Booker-prize winning novelist and activist Arundhati Roy was personally invited today to “mediate” by the leader of the guerrillas fighting a violent insurgency against the Indian state.
Recipe includes celebrities and reality-style contests – but some warn of ‘food colonialism’ He is the face of cooking to tens of millions of people across India who buy his books and watch his cult weekly TV show. His signature dish – shaam savera, or spinach and cheese dumplings in tomato gravy – has become a national classic. Now subcontinental superchef Sanjeev Kapoor is planning India’s first 24-hour satellite TV cooking channel
Abdo Khal’s satirical Saudi Arabian novel Spewing Sparks as Big as Castles wins $60,000 ‘Arabic Booker’ A satirical Saudi Arabian novel exploring the devastating effects of limitless wealth has won the International prize for Arabic fiction . Saudi Arabian writer Abdo Khal ’s Spewing Sparks as Big as Castles – the title is a Qu’ranic reference to hell – is set in Jeddah, where the author lives
Long after Hemingway and the Beats, the Shakespeare and Company bookshop is still encouraging Paris to read and write I’ve been to Paris many times. But, while I invariably wind up at La Belle Hortense for a browse over a glass of red, I’d yet to sample the charms of legendary English bookshop Shakespeare and Company . The first Shakespeare and Company, run by Sylvia Beach at rue de l’Odéon, was the base for Hemingway, Fitzgerald and the gang, but closed in the second world war.
New book claims journalist repeatedly crossed boundary between reportage and fiction-writing He has been voted the greatest journalist of the 20th century. In an unparalleled career, Ryszard Kapuscinski transformed the humble job of reporting into a literary art, chronicling the wars, coups and bloody revolutions that shook Africa and Latin America in the 1960s and 70s. But a new book claims that the legendary Polish journalist, who died three years ago aged 74, repeatedly crossed the boundary between reportage and fiction-writing – or, to put it less politely, made stuff up.
The loss of young people to other countries is rarely mentioned in political life, but is one of the dominant themes of Irish culture When Mary Robinson became president of Ireland in 1990, one of her first, and most symbolic, actions was to light a lamp in the kitchen window of her official residence to acknowledge the many millions of Irish people overseas. Until then, Irish emigration had been one of the great unspokens of political life, while simultaneously being one of the great themes of Irish drama, fiction and poetry.
‘A soldier would strike them so that their individual yells formed a musical prhase’ In September 2003, Baha Mousa, an Iraqi civilian, died in British army custody.
William Leith looks at the world through rose-tinted glasses Here are two books vying for attention in what you might call the Gladwell market. They are books about how the world works
