It’s OK to Be Angry About Capitalism, out next year, will argue the world needs to ‘recognise that economic rights are human rights’
Former presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders is to publish a book outlining “a vision of what would be possible if the political revolution took place”.
It’s OK to Be Angry About Capitalism will be published by Penguin Random House in February 2023.
Continue reading...Pence also seems to blame anti-Trump Lincoln Project for angering former president with political ad, fueling Capitol attack
Shortly before the January 6 insurrection, Donald Trump warned Mike Pence he was “too honest” when he hesitated to pursue legalistic attempts to stop certification of Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory and would make Trump’s supporters “hate his guts”, the former vice-president writes in his memoir.
Pence also seems, bizarrely, to blame the anti-Trump Lincoln Project for enraging Trump with a political ad, thereby fueling the anger that incited the Capitol attack.
Continue reading...Survey shows more than 60% of UK parents will be spending less this year on gifts for children, as charity begins #JustOneBook drive to give disadvantaged youngsters book parcels
More than 60% of parents in the UK will be spending less this year on Christmas presents for their children, a survey by BookTrust has found, as it launches its Christmas appeal to provide young people with books.
The survey found that 59% of parents who celebrate Christmas have cut back on spending ahead of the festive season so they can afford to buy gifts for their children, but 62% still say they’ll be spending less than they usually do.
Continue reading...Alaa Abd El-Fattah has been on hunger strike for six months and will refuse water from 6 November, the first day of the climate summit
The majority of living Nobel prize for literature laureates have called on world leaders attending the Cop27 climate conference in Egypt this week to help free thousands of political prisoners in the country, including the writer Alaa Abd El-Fattah who is six months into a hunger strike and “at risk of death”.
The letter, organised by Abd El-Fattah’s UK publishers Fitzcarraldo Editions and Seven Stories Press, has been signed by 13 Nobel prize for literature winners: Svetlana Alexievich, JM Coetzee, Annie Ernaux, Louise Glück, Abdulrazak Gurnah, Kazuo Ishiguro, Elfriede Jelinek, Mario Vargas Llosa, Patrick Modiano, Herta Müller, Orhan Pamuk, Wole Soyinka and Olga Tokarczuk.
Continue reading...Food blogger was played by Amy Adams in the film inspired by her memoir, about attempting to cook more than 500 Julia Child recipes in a year
Julie Powell, the food blogger best known for her cooking memoir, Julie & Julia, which inspired a film starring Meryl Streep, has died at the age of 49.
Her husband, Eric Powell, confirmed to the New York Times that she died of cardiac arrest caused by heart arrhythmia at their home in Olivebridge in upstate New York on 26 October.
Continue reading...Former vice-president says meeting at which advisers led by Giuliani urged Trump to not accept election defeat was ‘a new low’
A post-election meeting at which advisers led by Rudy Giuliani attacked campaign lawyers and urged Donald Trump not to accept his election defeat was “a new low” for a president “well acquainted with rough-and-tumble debates”, Mike Pence writes in a forthcoming memoir.
Of the meeting in November 2020, the former vice-president writes: “In the end, that day the president made the fateful decision to put Giuliani and [attorney] Sidney Powell in charge of the legal strategy … The seeds were being sown for a tragic day in January.”
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...New book by Arkansas senator, a Republican presidential hopeful, also suggests president did not understand military procedures
In January 2020, the rightwing Arkansas Republican Tom Cotton said he would vote to acquit Donald Trump in his first impeachment trial because despite senators having “heard from 17 witnesses … and received more than 28,000 pages of documents”, Democrats had not presented their case correctly.
According to Cotton, the senators who sat through so much evidence would “perform the role intended for us by the founders, of providing the ‘cool and deliberate sense of the community’, as it says in Federalist 63”.
Continue reading...More than 250 literary figures rail against acquisition by Penguin Random House of book by conservative US supreme court justice
Nearly 250 figures from the US literary world have signed an open letter protesting the acquisition by Penguin Random House of a book by the conservative supreme court justice Amy Coney Barrett.
The hardline Catholic conservative was Donald Trump’s third appointee, her nomination rushed through by Senate Republicans after the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a liberal lion, shortly before the 2020 election.
Continue reading...Service says the move is aimed at encourage the return of borrowers who stopped using the library during the Covid pandemic
Libraries in Peterborough are holding a fine amnesty to try to recover 22,000 missing books.
The service, which runs 10 libraries across the area, will not fine anyone for returning overdue books and will clear accounts of debt.
Continue reading...Full extent of injuries from ‘brutal attack’ on Satanic Verses author in New York state in August revealed
Salman Rushdie has lost sight in one eye and the use of one hand after the attack he suffered while preparing to deliver a lecture in New York state two months ago, his agent has confirmed.
The 75-year-old author, whose received death threats from Iran in the 1980s after his novel The Satanic Verses was published, was stabbed in the neck and torso as he came on stage to give a talk on artistic freedom at the Chautauqua Institution on 12 August.
Continue reading...The final episode of the first season of the hit Game of Thrones prequel has landed online days early
The season finale of House of the Dragon has leaked online just two days before it was set to premiere on HBO.
According to an HBO spokesperson, the much-anticipated episode of the hit Game of Thrones prequel appears to have come from a distribution partner in Europe, the Middle East or Africa.
Continue reading...Publisher who founded Virago Press began as a campaigning outsider who introduced UK readers to authors including Angela Carter and Margaret Atwood
Carmen Callil, the publisher and writer who championed female writers and transformed the canon of English literature, has died of leukemia in London on Monday aged 84. The news was confirmed by her agent.
Callil began as a campaigning outsider, founding the feminist imprint Virago Press, where she published contemporary bestsellers including Margaret Atwood, Maya Angelou and Angela Carter. She challenged the male-dominated canon of English literature by bringing back into print a list of modern classics by authors including Antonia White, Willa Cather and Rebecca West, eventually becoming a pillar of the literary establishment. She was made a dame in 2017, served as a member of the Booker prize committee and was a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
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...A Message from Ukraine includes 16 speeches selected by the president as well as an introduction setting out what he has learned since the start of the war with Russia
Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskiy is to publish a collection of his war speeches, which his publisher has described as “a battle cry for the world to speak out and fight for liberty”.
A Message from Ukraine will include 16 speeches personally selected by Zelenskiy, which will “explore Ukraine’s journey since 2019”, said publisher Penguin Random House.
Continue reading...In new memoir, former Israeli PM describes efforts to turn US president against Palestinian leader Abbas
Benjamin Netanyahu used maps of Hezbollah missile sites and intelligence gained from a Mossad raid in Tehran to make sure Donald Trump backed Israel in Middle East peace talks and pulled out of the Iran nuclear deal, the former Israeli prime minister writes in a new memoir.
But in unconventional scenes similar to those in countless books of reportage and Trump tell-alls, Netanyahu also says that to sway Trump from his desire to pursue peace between Israel and the Palestinians and to scotch his positive first impression of Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian leader, the Israelis deployed golfing metaphors and maps of New York City.
Continue reading...Delia Falconer and Nikki Gemmell latest writers to find out their works were selected for the HSC – after the exams
When roughly 60,000 year 12 students sit down to do their final English exam in New South Wales each year, they have no idea what texts they’ll be asked to analyse.
Likewise, the authors of those texts are neither asked nor warned by the NSW Education Standards Authority (NESA) – an increasingly controversial policy as students sometimes take to social media to vent their post-exam frustration directly at them.
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Continue reading...The Bahraini activist who is serving a life sentence in prison for his role in anti-government protests was chosen to share the PEN Pinter prize by Malorie Blackman
The academic, activist and blogger Abduljalil al-Singace from Bahrain has been named this year’s international writer of courage by Malorie Blackman. Al-Singace is serving a life sentence in prison for his role in Bahrain’s 2011 anti-government protests.
The award is part of the PEN Pinter prize, which goes to an author deemed to have fulfilled Harold Pinter’s aspiration to “define the real truth of our lives and our societies”. This year’s PEN Pinter winner was Blackman, the first children’s writer to be awarded the prize. She chose al-Singace as the international writer of courage, an award for an author who has been persecuted for speaking out about their beliefs, with whom she will share her prize.
Continue reading...‘What I have lived, the youth is living now,’ says Marjane Satrapi, whose graphic novel depicted girl’s life in 1979 Islamic revolution
The creator of Persepolis, the acclaimed graphic novel depicting the childhood of an Iranian girl during and after the 1979 Islamic revolution that was made into an Oscar-nominated movie, has said today’s protesters are “beautiful and inspiring”.
History was repeating itself in the protests sweeping across the country, Marjane Satrapi told the Guardian. “What I have lived, the youth is living now. My hope is that the situation will go towards something beautiful that is called freedom and democracy.
Persepolis book art will be auctioned on 19-25 October as part of Sotheby’s online 20th century art/Middle East sale. The works will be exhibited in Sotheby’s London galleries from 21 October
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.
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