More in Interviews
The academic and writer talks to Mark Reynolds about his latest novel The Prague Cemetery, the enduring legacy of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and other forgeries, taking offence, the search for truth, the power of the invented enemy, and about making an enemy of those in power. More...
Wednesday, 7 December, 2011
Penelope Lively has written many prize-winning novels for adults and children, including Moon Tiger which won the 1987 Booker Prize. She talks to Lucy Scholes about her new book, How It All Began, and on once being a children's writer. More...
Monday, 7 November, 2011
Charles Frazier's Nightwoods, his first novel in five years, is a taut, tragic-comic thriller with just a touch of romance. He talks to Mark Reynolds about landscape and character, isolation, peculiarity, fear, survival and passing times. More...
Tuesday, 4 October, 2011
Teju Cole's debut novel, Open City, picks up the life of a young Nigerian-German psychiatrist who has taken to pacing the streets of New York, apparently in search of meanings to the great global conundrums. But as the narrator spikes his personal journal with wide-ranging observations on socio-political and critical theory, racial and religious tensions, segregation, stifled aspirations and unequal opportunities - all amid the continuing aftermath of 9/11 - the reader slowly realises this surface confessional is tinged with a peculiarly mannered evasiveness. Mark Reynolds investigates. More...
Monday, 5 September, 2011
AL Kennedy's first novel since 2007's Costa-winning Day casts a trio of lovers in an unworkable ménage on board a cruise ship heading from Southampton to New York. Against this potentially stifling backdrop, a complex story emerges of redemptive love, unspoken regret, internal and external communication, and the arcane skills of magic-makers, mediums and other manipulators who offer comfort to the traumatised and dispossessed. Mark Reynolds thinks of a number and climbs aboard... More...
Tuesday, 2 August, 2011
Amitav Ghosh was born in Calcutta in 1956, and grew up in Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and India. He has taught at universities around the world, most recently Harvard. In his international bestseller, The Glass Palace (2000), Ghosh displayed his mastery of the literary historical novel. His latest novel, River of Smoke, is the second in the Ibis Trilogy. The first, Sea of Poppies, was shortlisted for the Man Booker in 2008. Beth Jones caught up with him in London. More...
Tuesday, 5 July, 2011
Two wild and wildly different novels have been met with huge acclaim, and now the movie of his first screenplay is on its way. Does this signal a career change? Mark Reynolds finds out what makes Patrick deWitt tick. More...
Wednesday, 25 May, 2011
The author of a provocative new addition to the Scriptures talks to Mark Reynolds about truth and fiction, courting controversy and making beautiful books. More...
Thursday, 21 April, 2011
T.C. Boyle's latest novel is a sweeping epic of family, ecology and the right to life - no matter what the fallout. He talks to Mark Reynolds. More...
Thursday, 24 March, 2011
The author of Caribou Island tells Mark Reynolds about multiple narratives, mining personal tragedies, the crassness of horror, the thrill of risk, the lure of myths and the meaning of Alaska.
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Thursday, 24 February, 2011
Not content with expanding the boundaries of fiction and bookmaking, Jonathan Safran Foer takes on the meat industry with the deeply personal exploration of the excesses of modern agriculture 'Eating Animals'. Mark Reynolds catches up with him.
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Thursday, 20 January, 2011
In a twist on the age-old tradition of broadsheets inviting celebrated writers to select their books of the year, we asked a handful of writers which well-known figure they would give a book to this Christmas, what that book would be, and why. More...
Monday, 20 December, 2010
Michael Holroyd is one of Britain's most influential biographers. His exemplary lives of Augustus John, George Bernard Shaw and Lytton Strachey are as unsparing as they are wide-ranging and comprehensive. Have his recent works struck a more whimsical note? Mark Reynolds investigates. More...
Thursday, 25 November, 2010
On a singularly eventful UK tour that saw the mass pulping of his latest bestseller, Jonathan Franzen talks to Beth Jones about disaster, dysfunction, the nature of freedom, and learning to go with the flow. More...
Friday, 29 October, 2010
After finding quiet critical success with his first two novels, the publication of C has been met with a blaze of publicity and seen Tom McCarthy hailed as the saviour of British fiction and hot contender for this year's Booker. It's nice, he tells Beth Jones, but the book's the thing. More...
Thursday, 23 September, 2010
Bret Easton Ellis is notorious for his disaffected characters and scenes of sex and violence. Controversy dogs him, fans adore him, universities teach him, and the enfant terrible shows no sign of mellowing. He's just trying to write through the pain of his childhood, he tells Viola Fort. More...
Thursday, 5 August, 2010
Miguel Syjuco's first novel, Ilustrado, won the Man Asian literary prize while still in manuscript and has been dazzling readers and reviewers ever since. He talks to Viola Fort. More...
Thursday, 24 June, 2010
Marrying shrewd observation of contemporary anxieties with a darkly funny observation of family life, Joe Meno's fifth novel has drawn comparisons with The Corrections. Written in response to the Bush election in 2004, this is the first time he has felt politically engaged, he tells James Vitus. More...
Friday, 7 May, 2010
James Kelman has always cut a divisive figure in British literature, inspiring fierce admiration in some and angry derision in others. Now, with a new collection of short stories, Viola Fort finds his fighting spirit undimmed. More...
Tuesday, 30 March, 2010
Joshua Ferris' first book Then We Came to the End created the kind of buzz most writers would kill for, and was met with similarly enviable reviews. Three years later, he's back with The Unnamed, an unsettling take on the road novel. He talks to Viola Fort. More...
Thursday, 25 February, 2010
Neel Mukerjee's first novel, A Life Apart, is attracting widespread acclaim both here and abroad, he just wishes he'd started it sooner, he tells Beth Jones. More...
Wednesday, 27 January, 2010
The final book in Javier Marías's Your Face Tomorrow trilogy has been met with a critical cheer, and concludes an ambitious exploration of ideas that's been compared with Proust's À la recherche du temps perdu. He talks to Viola Fort. More...
Tuesday, 22 December, 2009
This week, Dave Eggers was awarded the Literarian Award for 'outstanding service to the American literary community'. After nearly a decade of sniping, his critics are finally laying down their barbs and acknowledging his far-reaching contribution to American literature and education. He talks to Eugenie Teasley about inspiring the next generation and the importance of creative collaboration. More...
Thursday, 19 November, 2009
Richard Flanagan's new book Wanting links Dickensian London with a Van Diemen's Land penal colony. Its genesis was a portrait of a young aboriginal girl, whose hidden bare feet suggested to him a tale of desire and its lack. He talks to Viola Fort about its subject Mathinna, his time at Oxford, and the corrupting influence of creative writing courses. More...
Monday, 12 October, 2009
The Irish novelist and journalist John Banville is best known for his Booker prize winning novel The Sea. His exacting prose style divides opinion; damned as heavyweight and digressive by some; hailed as lyrical, wise and flawlessly crafted by others. He talks to Beth Jones. More...
Monday, 7 September, 2009
Helen Oyeyemi wrote her first novel The Icarus Girl in seven weeks while studying for her A levels. Now still only 24, and writing her forth novel, she has already achieved what many writers might expect in a whole career. The writing doesn't get any easier though, she tells Viola Fort. More...
Monday, 20 July, 2009
Amit Chaudhuri negotiates the relationship between teacher and pupil, and the blurring of the lines between audience and artist. He talks to Viola Fort.
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Tuesday, 7 April, 2009
Rana Dasgupta's first novel Tokyo Cancelled drew immediate acclaim and was shortlisted for the 2005 John Llewellyn Rhys prize. He knew he wanted to write something particularly ambitious when he started work on his second book, Solo, a novel of brilliant complexity. He talks to Viola Fort.
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Tuesday, 10 March, 2009
Edmund White, author, playwright and biographer, was born in Ohio in 1940. His breakthrough novel, A Boy's Own Story, drew heavily on his childhood and difficult relationship with his parents, and established him as American literature's foremost gay author. His most recent book is an account of the early life of the French poet Authur Rimbaud. He talks to Beth Jones.
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Monday, 9 February, 2009
Tobias Hill's third novel,The Hidden, weaves between academic Oxford and modern Sparta in a thrilling tale of violence and fear. He explores notions of extremism and the poisoning influence and corruptive power exerted by a group over an individual. Rebecca Yolland meets him.
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Tuesday, 13 January, 2009
We asked our favorite writers to tell us what's on their Christmas wishlist, and which books they'll be giving this year.
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Monday, 8 December, 2008
Russell Hoban talks to Katie McCalmont about his forthcoming novel and why at 83 years old he's proud of what he's done.
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Thursday, 6 November, 2008
Will Self tells Katie McCalmont why he's not like other writers and explains why his new collection of short stories, Liver, is so very nasty.
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Thursday, 2 October, 2008
Aleksandar Hemon's dazzling new novel is all the more remarkable for being written in his second language. Born in Bosnia and now based in the States, questions of identity and belonging sit at the heart of his writing. He talks to Viola Fort. More...
Friday, 5 September, 2008
Kate Summerscale, winner of the prestigious Samuel Johnson prize for non-fiction, talks to Katie McCalmont about her fascinating new book, the shadowy detective who inspired the likes of Wilkie Collins and Charles Dickens, and a child murder that haunted a nation. More...
Friday, 1 August, 2008
Philip Gourevitch's new book Standard Operating Procedure is an investigation into the American human rights violations at Abu Ghraib. H etalks to James Vitus about using the interview as a means to explore a story and applying the principles of the novel to non-fiction. More...
Friday, 4 July, 2008
His reflective, moving and often very funny memoirs have brought Simon Gray a whole new readership outside theatre circles. The third volume, The Last Cigarette, is a triumph. He tells Viola Fort how memory is an act of imagination.
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Friday, 6 June, 2008
Aravind Adiga, political journalist and debut novelist, talks to Rebecca Yolland about rewriting India; forgoing the silk, saris and spices for corruption, sleaze and the rising middle classes. More...
Thursday, 24 April, 2008
