Paul Dirac: The Strangest Man
Graham Farmelo’s The Strangest Man is the first full biography of Paul Dirac, the greatest British physicist since Newton – and one of the strangest geniuses of the twentieth century. It’s very rare...
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Keeping Up with Mario by John King
John King, Lecturer at the University of Warwick, translator, friend and colleague of Mario Vargas Llosa reflects on the Nobel Laureate’s prolific career, and looks forward to what’s to come. ‘When you...
View ArticleIn Rude Health
On Sunday, at a ceremony in the Gresham Metropole Hotel in Cork, a resplendent Edna O’Brien won the 7th Frank O’Connor Short Story Prize. It is a prestigious award, not only for its association with...
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Biography is Dead …
Or so goes the conventional wisdom in publishing. It wasn’t always like this. Twenty-five years ago, big literary biographies were, along with potential Booker-prize winning novels, the goal of every...
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Is ‘Regional Writing’ Pejorative?
A year ago I wrote a piece for The Thought Fox in praise of the short story, as Faber published Sarah Hall’s arresting first collection, The Beautiful Indifference. Described by Helen Simpson (herself...
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Vote for Chris Ewan!
As public voting opens for 2013’s Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year – the shortlist of six includes Faber authors Chris Ewan and Stav Sherez – we asked two people who know the authors...
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Vote for Stav Sherez!
Who will get your vote? Chris Ewan? Stav Sherez? Or one of the four other strong contenders for the 2013 Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year award? In her post Faber’s Katherine Armstrong...
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On Competition: ‘Who’s Number One?’
Gore Vidal, who died almost exactly a year ago (31st July 2012), said: “It is not enough to succeed, others must fail.” When I read this, aged 17, I hadn’t succeeded at anything so I had no way of...
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A Modernist Experiment: The Great Bagpiping Novel
Earlier this week, at the ceremony held at Auckland’s War Memorial Museum, Kirsty Gunn’s novel The Big Music won the top prize at the NZ Post Book Awards. Her previous novella The Boy and the Sea, a...
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