African's writers are in popular booklists
09 May 2012 17:30:47
Five stories which avoid the "stereotypical narratives" of African fiction have been shortlisted for the Caine prize for African writing, from a noir tale involving a disembodied leg to a story of homosexuality in Malawi.
The £10,000 Caine award, known as the African Booker, is for a short story by an African writer published in English and is backed by the African Nobel prize winners Nadine Gordimer, Wole Soyinke, Chinua Achebe and JM Coetzee, with Booker winner Ben Okri as its new vice presid... Read Full Story
Short story about James Dawson
09 May 2012 17:28:39
Given to "the feistiest, frothiest and most fantastic writers for the tween and teen market", the 10 nominated authors for this year's prize were voted for by thousands of teenagers across the country. Dawson, whose supernatural thriller Hollow Pike was published in February, is the first male author ever to be shortlisted, and is up against former Queen Cathy Cassidy, with Maureen Johnson, Sarah Webb, Joanna Nadin, Cathy Hopkins, Samantha Mackintosh, Chris Higgins, Hayley Long and SC Ransom als... Read Full Story
A culture develops by the Nobel prize winner Orhan Pamuk
09 May 2012 17:22:25
Pamuk set out "not to do a spectacular or monumental museum but something in the backstreets, something that represents the daily life of the city," he told a news conference after a press preview.Situated in a bright, wine-red building in the district of Cukurcuma, the Museum of Innocence houses real and fabricated artifacts from everyday Turkish life between 1950 and 2000, in an homage both to the novel and to Pamuk's Istanbul."Our daily lives are honorable, and their objects should be preserv... Read Full Story
Popular Egyptian writers are going to take parts in Palestine festival of literature
05 May 2012 01:32:37
Although PalFest, a travelling festival established in 2008, has tried to reach Gaza in the past, it has never been successful. This year it applied to the Egyptian ministry of foreign affairs on 18 April for 43 travel permits for writers and artists to enter through the Rafah crossing from Egypt. Organisers say they were told it could take up to 10 days to process the permits, but they have yet to be issued. A press conference scheduled for this afternoon in Cairo, at which the Egyptian authors... Read Full Story
Jane Roger The Testament of Jessie Lamb
05 May 2012 01:29:29
Published by tiny Scottish independent press Sandstone, Rogers' novel – narrated by a teenager – was longlisted for last year's Man Booker prize but missed out on a shortlist place. Now it has beaten some of the biggest names in science fiction, including China Miéville, Charles Stross, Greg Bear and Sheri S Tepper, to take the 2012 Arthur C Clarke award. Rogers has previously won the Somerset Maugham award and been a runner-up for the Guardian fiction prize, but The Testament of Jessie Lamb is ... Read Full Story
Discovery! New pages from Le Petit Prince
05 May 2012 01:27:24
Rare unpublished pages from Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's Le Petit Prince, which shed new light on the beloved story, have been discovered and are set to be auctioned later this month.
The pages were part of a collection of Saint-Exupéry's writing passed to French auction house Artcurial by a private collector earlier this year. Reading through the material, experts were astonished to discover that it included two unpublished pages from The Little Prince, one of which features entirely original ma... Read Full Story
E-books in a battle with hard cover book
03 May 2012 16:30:01
Drawing its data from information provided by 250 publishers, the Publishers Association's Statistics Yearbook put the value of consumer ebook sales – fiction, non-fiction and children's digital titles – at £92m in 2011. This is a 366% increase on the previous year, the Publishers Association said, and consumer ebooks are now equivalent to 6% of consumer physical book sales by value.
But the strong digital sales come at the expense of print, the yearbook reveals: consumer print sales were down ... Read Full Story
There is no place for Christopher Hitchens?
03 May 2012 12:31:25
Hitchens, who died last December, was one of 18 authors longlisted for the £3,000 Orwell book prize, chosen for a title described by its publisher as "the most comprehensive collection of the work of the finest English essayist since Orwell". But judges plumped instead for books covering topics including murder, urban gangs and opium, from Richard Lloyd Parry's investigation into the disappearance of Lucie Blackman in Japan, People Who Eat Darkness, to Misha Glenny's exploration of cyber crime, ... Read Full Story
The Barnes & Noble and Microsoft business tandem
03 May 2012 12:26:52
Microsoft is challenging Amazon's dominance of the ebook industry with a $300m (£185m) investment in Barnes & Noble's Nook reader and college textbook businesses.
News of the deal sent shares in Barnes & Noble up 76% from $13.68 to $24.09 in US morning trading on Monday, boosting the bookseller's value by almost $900m, from $823m on Friday close to $1.7bn by midday. Microsoft's stock rose 2 cents to $32.
The pair have teamed up to create a subsidiary, provisionally named Newco, which could eve... Read Full Story
Famous UK authors
27 Apr 2012 12:37:03
A female bagpiper in an electric-blue miniskirt summoned the disparate tribe of dames, geezers, toffs and other transplanted Brits to proclaim their success, or mere survival, at a red-carpet gala in west Hollywood on Tuesday night.
It was the launch of BritWeek, an annual series of events co-founded six years ago by Nigel Lythgoe, the Wirral-born producer of American Idol, Pop Idol and So You Think You Can Dance.
"The Brits that weren't very good at what they did went home and complained abou... Read Full Story
The legendary book Mein Kampf become re-released
27 Apr 2012 12:35:08
Mein Kampf, one of the most notorious polemics of all time, will enjoy mass distribution in Germany for the first time since the second world war following a decision by authorities to publish an annotated version of it, as well as bringing it out in ebook and audio formats.
The copyright on Adolf Hitler's autobiographical work, which is currently owned by the Bavarian state finance ministry, expires in 2015. Authorities in the southern state, which have long struggled with how to deal with it,... Read Full Story
A lot of authors prefer ebooks
27 Apr 2012 12:33:44
Tor, the world's biggest science fiction publisher and home to authors including Orson Scott Card, China Miéville and Cory Doctorow, has shaken publishing with the news that its entire list of ebooks is to be made digital rights management-free.
Tor, whose parent company Macmillan is currently fighting a lawsuit over accusations of ebook price fixing, is the first major publisher to drop digital rights management (DRM) from its ebooks, and the move prompted predictions that others would soon fo... Read Full Story
