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Books Features

Kevin Crossley-Holland: A long road to Camelot

Published: 20 October 2006

The poet and children's writer Kevin Crossley-Holland has finally hit the big time as a best-selling historical novelist. He tells Peter Stanford about late success

Boyd Tonkin: A Week in Books

Published: 20 October 2006

What do European writers share in common? And, to hoist the stakes from the speculative to the metaphysical, does or could such a beast as a true "European literature" exist? Put baldly, the questions that prompted last weekend's "Writing Europe" conference in Amsterdam threatened a swift descent into canal-side mist and murk: half Hegelian seminar, half EU committee meeting. "I fear those big words," says Joyce's Stephen Dedalus in Ulysses, "which make us so unhappy."

Cover Stories: John Major; RNIB's Right to Read; Great Northern Books

Published: 20 October 2006

*John Major's been quiet of late, much of his time doubtless taken up with the money-making activities of the Carlyle Group. The former PM has also been busy writing a history of cricket for HarperCollins. More Than a Game will examine its origins and role, "from the days of the great patrons to the death of WG Grace". Cricket, claims Major, is "an export as potent as the English language itself". Discuss.

Carole Drinkwater: Fear begins at Marseilles

Published: 15 October 2006

Carole Drinkwater is best known for her bestselling trilogy about life on an olive farm in the south of France - and her starring role in 'All Creatures Great and Small'. But during the research for her hard-hitting new travel book, she swapped Provence for politics and found herself outstaring gun-toting Israeli soldiers. Danuta Kean meets her at her home near Cannes to hear about her quest for the world's oldest olive tree

Boyd Tonkin: A Week in Books

Published: 13 October 2006

If ever a death arrived foretold, it was hers. Anna Politkovskaya, not merely a great and brave reporter but a hugely gifted writer of non-fiction narrative, was shot at her Moscow apartment block on Saturday. The victim of a contract taken out by one of many powerful and corrupt enemies, she was killed with a service-issue pistol in what the police - superfluously - deemed "a professional job". We don't as yet know which specific set of Russian gangsters murdered her: the wild fringes of the state, the forces, the mob, or maybe a thug from the grey zones where they converge.

Daughter of the diaspora

Published: 13 October 2006

Kiran Desai took the Man Booker Prize with a novel that captures a world of people, and of cultures, forever on the move.

Cover Stories: Kiran Desai; Joan Smith; Girl in the Cellar

Published: 13 October 2006

*Kiran Desai's Man Booker win provided agent David Godwin with his second winner - the first was Arundhati Roy back in 1997 - and Hamish Hamilton publisher Simon Prosser with a hat-trick for 2006: authors of his also won the Whitbread and the Orange - Hilary Spurling and Zadie Smith respectively. And don't you wonder what kind of expertise the licence fee buys when you discover that the Newsnight interview with Desai had to be re-recorded because they forgot to put the sound on first time round?

Building Stories - the archive builds

Published: 11 October 2006

The US cartoonist Chris Ware has done more than anyone to change the modern perception of comic books. In The Independent on Sunday, The Sunday Review magazine is presenting an advance preview of his latest work, building week-by-week. Click the headline for a growing online archive.

The Book of Origins: A special extract

Published: 11 October 2006

Parking meters date back to 1932. Newspapers were read in ancient Rome. The first e-mail was sent in 1971, and coffee was enjoyed by Ethiopians more than a thousand years ago. Everything had to begin somewhere, and as Trevor Homer reveals, the truth about the origins of what surrounds us is a lot stranger than we might imagine

John Banville: Man Booker winner tries new genre

Published: 08 October 2006

Last year's Man Booker winner John Banville has made an abrupt change of direction and written a cracking crime thriller set in grimy Fifties Dublin. But is it, asks Tom Rosenthal, an attack on the Catholic Church?

The magic of what might have been

Published: 08 October 2006

Robert Lacey explains why history is vital for mental and social health - and why it should be fun

Boyd Tonkin: A Week in Books

Published: 06 October 2006

Other countries produce writers who routinely pretend to be smarter, better-read and more open-minded than they are. Britain, uniquely, does the opposite. My first bundle of evidence? The collected works of Mr Nick Hornby, with pride of place reserved for his columns about books read (and unread) in the cliqueish US magazine The Believer, now collected by Viking as The Complete Polysyllabic Spree (£16.99).

Cover Stories: Frankfurt Book Fair; Norman Kember; Lettre Ulysses Award

Published: 06 October 2006

* Publishers and agents bound for this week's Frankfurt Book Fair scrambled to conclude deals before they packed their bags, the better to trumpet the news over a bottle in the Hessicherhof Hotel bar. Dan Brown's editor, Bill Scott-Kerr of Transworld, was pleased to have won the auction for the memoirs of former services chief General Sir Mike Jackson, who may hurl an incendiary or two at Iraq. Headline signed up the Bachelor Boy himself for an illustrated autobiography to mark his 50th anniversary in showbiz in 2008. Sir Cliff Richard, whom many a publisher has tried to tempt, will be working with ever-busy Penny Junor. At the other end of the literary galaxy, Transworld will also publish Stephen Hawking's new study of why our universe exists at all. The Grand Design, co-written with Leonard Mlodinow, will materialise from Bantam in 2008.

Fiona MacCarthy: The last debutante

Published: 06 October 2006

The award-winning biographer Fiona MacCarthy has turned her gilded youth into a slice of social history. She tells Matthew J Reisz about her great escape

How café culture influenced writers and artists

Published: 05 October 2006

Ibsen, Satre and Dali worked best with a glass in front of them. A new book explores the contribution made by café culture to their greatest creations. Alice Jones reports

Girls' guide to a one-night stand

Published: 02 October 2006

Debrett's traditional readers may choke on their marmalade, for the firm's new publication is pitched at young ladies and deals with the etiquette of casual sex

Marjane Satrapi: Princess of darkness

Published: 01 October 2006

Marjane Satrapi is an Iranian exile and a former punk and drug dealer. She's also becoming the world's most important graphic novelist, whose blackly comic autobiographical work is changing our view of everyday life in Iran. Portrait by Charles Burns

Alan Moore: Three go mad in...

Published: 01 October 2006

What would happen if Alice, Wendy and Dorothy met as adults? Alan Moore, Britain's greatest graphic novelist, reveals the story behind his most controversial work yet.

Peake performance

Published: 01 October 2006

The fantastic, baroque imagination of Mervyn Peake expressed itself in prose and painting, in poetry and illustration. Michael Moorcock introduces a new book and exhibition of his work

Douglas Kennedy: Escape from LA

Published: 01 October 2006

Douglas Kennedy knew that he was going to get fired from Hollywood when the coffee boy started telling him how to write. He may have received million-dollar advances for his novels, but he knows what it's like to fall from grace - and, he tells Danuta Kean, it's not that bad

History: Let's party like it's 1066

Published: 01 October 2006

Forget the Victorian age, says Tom Hodgkinson: those in the medieval age had it sussed. They were never in debt - and were way ahead of us with their eco-friendly habits

2006 Forward Prize: Love, death and Sugar Puffs

Published: 01 October 2006

The 2006 Forward Prize shortlist is a mixed bag. Stephen Knight assesses the finalists

Building Stories - the introduction

Published: 01 October 2006

The US cartoonist Chris Ware has done more than anyone to change the modern perception of comic books. His semi-autobiographical 'Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth' won literary prizes and acclaim far beyond the medium's usual circles. Over the next 24 weeks in The Independent on Sunday, The Sunday Review magazine will present an advance preview of his latest work, but first, allow him to apologise for inflicting it on us

Edna O'Brien: The mother of invention

Published: 29 September 2006

Edna O'Brien's new novel explores the bonds of blood, landscape and memory. She tells Julie Wheelwright why writing is about beauty - and terror

Boyd Tonkin: A Week in Books

Published: 29 September 2006

Forgive me a little bout of déjà vu. The thriving market in "misery memoirs", with its monstrous mums, uncaring siblings and plucky, tormented survivors, has run into a rather rocky patch. Barrister and Crown Court recorder Constance Briscoe faces a libel suit from her own mother, Carmen, whose lawyers dispute the accounts of childhood violence in the bestselling Ugly. Over the Irish Sea, Kathy O'Beirne's self-reported history of victimisation both at home and in Dublin's Magdalene laundries (in Don't Ever Tell) has spawned both a concerted denial from her family and a spirited fightback from the author.

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