These are my nine favourite books of 2015. They weren't all published this year, in fact only three of them were, but they're the books I most enjoyed reading. 1. Everything is Teeth, by Evie Wyld and Joe Sumner Evie Wyld's graphic novel is filled with shark-infested memories of a childhood in Australia and her fascination with the … [Read more...]
The Penguin Book of the British Short Story
I'm so thrilled that my story The 40-Litre Monkey has been included in The Penguin Book of the British Short Story. Editor Philip Hensher read over 6,000 short stories, going all the way back to Daniel Defoe, to make his selection for this incredibly handsome two-volume collection of British short stories. I can't quite believe that my story is … [Read more...]
What we can tell about Haruki Murakami’s new novel from its girth
On 12 August, Haruki Murakami's new novel: Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage comes out in the UK. What will it be like? Impatient to get my hands on a copy, I've made predictions about the book in the same way that sports commentators make predictions about games – I've done a statistical analysis of Murakami's novels to date … [Read more...]
Do you remember Zembla?
I was tidying up bookshelves in my attic yesterday and discovered a few old issues of Zembla magazine. It only ran for eight issues between 2003 and 2005, but it was a unique and wonderful literary mag - big and glossy with sexy cover stars – closer to GQ and Vanity Fair than most of the dry literary journals I was aware of at the … [Read more...]
i LOVE this man…
...the amazing Maurice Sendak. That's why I was so happy yesterday to find this new TateShots episode of Sendak talking about his work. I just love his integrity. Right at the start of this clip, he talks about being asked to write a sequel to Where the wild things are. 'Go to hell,' he says, 'I'm not a whore.' Where the wild things are is … [Read more...]
The moment I fell in love with the short story
As it's National Short Story Day, I've been thinking about the moment I fell in love with the short story. And there was a specific moment. It happened when I was 17. I was watching MTV, and saw one of the spots in their 'Books: feed your head' campaign. The spot featured Aidan Quinn reading the opening lines of Kafka's Metamorphosis. I fell in … [Read more...]