Marcel Pagnol based his famous movies on a Provencal manor he’d known as a child. Now his legacy is at risk, says his grandson
In 1941 the French novelist, playwright and film-maker Marcel Pagnol bought a chateau in a Provençal valley outside Marseille on the advice of his solicitor without even seeing it.
He proposed to transform the property into a “cinema city”, a French Hollywood set in the hills and lavender fields of southern France where he had holidayed as a child.
Continue reading...Like any author, translators want to receive credit for their work instead of being treated as an afterthought
They have often been overlooked in the artistic and literary process, but translators have long claimed they have the power to change everything.
There are tales of myths being born, societies being forged and cities destroyed with just a slip of the pen, such as the supposed translation error that allegedly led to the US deciding to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, or the speculation about life on Mars after the mistranslation of an Italian astronomer.
Continue reading...The winner will receive £1,000, and have their story featured on the Guardian website
A short story competition run by the Guardian and publisher 4th Estate is open for entries from unpublished writers of colour living in the UK.
The winner of the 4thWrite prize will receive £1,000, a one-day publishing workshop with 4th Estate and publication of their story on the Guardian website.
Continue reading...The Ghanaian playwright and novelist, who also served as her country’s education minister, focused on the modern African woman
The Ghanaian writer and academic Ama Ata Aidoo, whose work focused on the modern African woman, has died aged 81.
Ata Aidoo, whose fans included Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, rejected the idea of what she described as a “western perception that the African female is a downtrodden wretch”, said the BBC.
Continue reading...Strand Magazine will publish Blackmail, a tale of a blind Korean war veteran, found by New York editor Andrew Gulli
A New York editor and literary detective is celebrating the discovery and release of an unpublished short story by James M Cain, one of the greats of American noir, a “poet of the tabloid murder” whose works made famous on film include The Postman Always Rings Twice, Double Indemnity and Mildred Pierce.
“For all the work that you do,” said Andrew Gulli, editor-in-chief of the Strand Magazine, “like 2% of the time you hit the jackpot. I just feel so good. It’s worth it.”
Continue reading...The celebrated author of Money and London Fields, whose works defined the 80s literary scene, died of oesophageal cancer on Friday at his home in Florida
Martin Amis, the influential author of era-defining novels including Money and London Fields, and the memoir Experience, has died at the age of 73 at his home at Lake Worth in Florida . His wife Isabel Fonseca said that the cause was cancer of the oesophagus.
Amis was among the celebrated group of novelists including Salman Rushdie, Ian McEwan and Julian Barnes, whose works defined the British literary scene in the 1980s.
Continue reading...Founded by two translators – one American, one British – the Salt initiative will provide mentorships, funding and a south Asia-focused literary translation school
A new project to help bring the “extraordinarily rich” literature of south Asia to English-speaking countries will launch this summer, it has been announced.
The cross-continental South Asian Literature in Translation (Salt) project has been set up by the University of Chicago, in partnership with the American Literary Translators Association, English PEN, Words Without Borders and the British Council. The multi-year project will try to “strengthen each part of the publishing chain across the English-speaking world”, the University of Chicago has said.
Continue reading...Late author’s estate has shared a manuscript with the bestselling novelist centered on a volcanic eruption in Hawaii
The bestselling author James Patterson is set to complete an unfinished manuscript from the late Michael Crichton.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Crichton’s estate has provided him with over 100 pages of a novel about the imminent eruption of Hawaii’s Mauna Loa volcano, which threatens a secret cache of deadly chemical weapons. Just last month, the volcano did start erupting.
Continue reading...Katrín Jakobsdóttir joins long list of fiction-writing politicians with book that came together during Covid pandemic
For 30 years, the disappearance of teenager Lára Marteinsdóttir from the windswept island of Víðey, off the coast of Iceland’s capital, tormented the nation. Until 1986, when Valur, a rookie reporter on a local newspaper, decided to investigate …
So far, so Nordic noir. But Reykjavík, published to promising reviews in Iceland this week, is a crime novel with a difference – it was written by the prime minister, albeit with the help of one of the country’s international bestselling authors.
Continue reading...Judges described the Sri Lankan author’s second novel as a ‘rollercoaster journey through life and death’ and praised its audacity and ambition
The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida by Sri Lankan author Shehan Karunatilaka has won the Booker prize for fiction. The judges praised the “ambition of its scope, and the hilarious audacity of its narrative techniques”.
Karunatilaka’s second novel, The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida comes more than a decade after his debut, Chinaman, which was published in 2011. The Booker-winning novel tells the story of the photographer of its title, who in 1990 wakes up dead in what seems like a celestial visa office. With no idea who killed him, Maali has seven moons to contact the people he loves most and lead them to a hidden cache of photos of civil war atrocities that will rock Sri Lanka.
Continue reading...Author’s method acting approach to writing terrified local people in Aberdeenshire as he perched on the rocks like a bat
In August 1894, at the end of a month-long stay to research his embryonic novel, Bram Stoker wrote in the visitors’ book at the Kilmarnock Arms on the Aberdeenshire coast that he had been “delighted with everything and everybody” and hoped to return soon.
According to new research, though, the feeling was not entirely mutual. Stoker, a genial Irishman usually known for his cheeriness, was experimenting with what would become known as “method acting” to get under the skin of his new character, one Count Dracula. Local historian Mike Shepherd, who has spent seven years researching Stoker, says the author’s links with the London theatre inspired Stoker to try inhabiting his character in a different way.
Continue reading...Sotheby’s describes 17th-century Cervantes editions as a ‘once in a lifetime’ opportunity for collectors
One day in the early 1930s, a young Bolivian diplomat named Jorge Ortiz Linares walked into the illustrious Maggs Bros bookshop in London to ask if they might have a particularly fine edition of Don Quixote for sale.
But even for Ortiz Linares – a dedicated bibliophile who also happened to be the son-in-law of Simón Patiño, the Bolivian tin magnate nicknamed the Andean Rockefeller – the answer was a polite no.
Continue reading...The bestselling author fears she too could be a target but says terrorists cannot be allowed to win
The bestselling author Leïla Slimani says the knife attack on Salman Rushdie has left her and other writers afraid, but that they have a “duty” to keep making public appearances and resist censoring themselves, despite the dangers.
The French-Moroccan writer, whose novels include Adèle, Lullaby and The Country of Others and is Emmanuel Macron’s personal representative for the promotion of French language and culture, said defending her freedom as a writer “feels even more important than before” and was an act of resistance.
Continue reading...Book prize judges have praised ‘ethical precision’ of Melburnian’s second novel, a poised unpacking of the horrors of institutional failure
Jennifer Down missed the call telling her she’d won the Miles Franklin. She was in a hotel room on a Zoom call for work, and rang back later with no idea of the news waiting for her. “I was quite speechless,” she tells Guardian Australia. “I was so shocked.” We get that a lot, the chair told her dryly.
Bodies of Light is the Melbourne writer’s second novel. Her debut and subsequent short story collection saw her named best young Australian novelist by the Sydney Morning Herald in 2017 and 2018, and she’s been awarded several fellowships. But the 31-year-old is still processing the “immeasurable impact” of the $60,000 prize – the country’s richest literary award, alongside the Stella – on her writing life. It goes deeper than book sales and overseas readers, though both are now likely.
Continue reading...Contestants will enter a writers’ retreat and be given 30 days to write a novel while completing ‘live-wire’ challenges
Reality TV producers have exhausted singers, dancers, drag artists, potters, tailors, and beautiful young people hoping to find love. Now, it seems, the spotlight has fallen on writers. This week, a call has appeared on social media for contestants to apply to be on the pilot of a new show called America’s Next Great Author (ANGA).
Billed as “the groundbreaking reality TV show for writers”, ANGA will give its contestants one minute to pitch their novels to a panel of judges that includes New York Times bestselling author Jason Reynolds, Fox5 TV presenter Angie Goff, and stage writer and comedian Marga Gomez.
Continue reading...Author of Manon Bradshaw detective series was diagnosed with a brain tumour three years ago
The novelist and former Guardian journalist Susie Steiner, known for the Manon Bradshaw detective series, has died aged 51.
A tweet posted from her account on Sunday said: “Susie died yesterday after being diagnosed with a brain tumour three years ago. She lived with her illness with courage and good humour. She was much loved and will be much missed.”
Continue reading...Australian author denies he is a plagiarist and says he has been ‘influenced by the greats’ of literature
The Australian novelist John Hughes, who last week admitted to “unintentionally” plagiarising parts of a Nobel laureate’s novel, appears to have also copied without acknowledgment parts of The Great Gatsby, Anna Karenina and other classic texts in his new book The Dogs.
The revelation of new similarities follows an investigation by Guardian Australia which resulted in Hughes’ 2021 novel being withdrawn from the longlist of the $60,000 Miles Franklin literary award.
Continue reading...Exclusive: The Dogs by John Hughes withdrawn from $60,000 prize after novelist admits he used parts of nonfiction work of Nobel laureate Svetlana Alexievich ‘without realising’
Australia’s most prestigious books prize, the Miles Franklin literary award, has pulled The Dogs by John Hughes from its 2022 longlist, a day after Hughes apologised for plagiarising parts of the work of a Nobel laureate “without realising” in his acclaimed novel.
Following a Guardian Australia investigation that uncovered 58 similarities and instances of identical text between parts of Hughes’ 2021 novel The Dogs and the 2017 English translation of Svetlana Alexievich’s nonfiction The Unwomanly Face of War, Hughes apologised to Alexievich and her translators Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky “for using their words without acknowledgment”.
Continue reading...Two previously unseen short stories by Jackson, rated by Stephen King as one of the great horror fiction writers, are to appear in US magazine the Strand
Two previously unpublished short stories by Shirley Jackson, the queen of gothic fiction, have been released.
Charlie Roberts and Only Stand and Wait were both published on 9 June in Strand magazine, a US-based print magazine that publishes short fiction and interviews.
Continue reading...Diana Reid’s Love & Virtue wins book of the year and literary fiction category at Australian Book Industry Association’s annual awards in Sydney
First Nations writers and female authors have dominated the 2022 Australian Book Industry Association’s (Abia) annual awards, with a debut novel by one of the nation’s most promising young writers taking out top honours.
Diana Reid’s Love & Virtue won the Abia book of the year and literary fiction book of the year at a ceremony in Sydney on Thursday night. Judges praised the novel as “a darkly funny yet unflinching glimpse of early adulthood”. In her review for Guardian Australia, Zoya Patel praised Love & Virtue as “a multilayered page-turner on power, unrequited love and campus rape culture, wrapped in a coming-of-age narrative”.
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