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Books Features

Thomas Keneally: Lust for life and death

Published: 16 March 2007

From Auschwitz to the Pacific war, Thomas Keneally's prolific fiction has explored the meaning of courage. He tells Kathy Marks why men just want to be heroes

Boyd Tonkin: A Week in Books

Published: 16 March 2007

How much literary skill should we want, or expect, from the political class? Of course, our leaders and fixers invariably write - or put their names to - books of a sort, often perpetrating slabs of anecdote and apologia that make up in bulk (and advances) what they lack in style and sales. This summer, Alastair Campbell will start to draw down his million-pound "pension" thanks to the spinmeister's first tranche of diaries, The Blair Years. His chief's own memoirs will follow in due course. These tales will mark a terminus.

Cover Stories: young-adult fiction; Waterstone's; Foyles; Oundle festival

Published: 16 March 2007

Nick Hornby is the latest author to try his hand at young-adult fiction: he is at work on an as-yet-untitled novel for teenagers set in the world of skateboarding. Puffin says it is "at once serious and funny in true Hornby style". Meanwhile, Frank McCourt has written a novel that HarperCollins will publish in both adult and children's editions: Angela and the Baby Jesus, a Christmas title, revisits his mother's childhood in Limerick, familiar to all readers of Angela's Ashes. The publishers are positioning it as the Irish equivalent of Dylan Thomas's classic A Child's Christmas in Wales.

Best of enemies: The truth behind a 30-year literary fued

Published: 13 March 2007

Literary feuds don't come more poisonous than the 30-year stand-off that's divided those giants of Latin American letters, Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Mario Vargas Llosa. And the real reason it all began is only now emerging. Paul Vallely reports

Pulped fiction: Publishing is booming. So why are writers struggling?

Published: 11 March 2007

Peter Kay is laughing all the way to the Book Awards with two nominations. But while a few authors strike it rich, a new study shows most earn a pittance

Peter Godwin: Truth in black and white

Published: 09 March 2007

After a prize-winning memoir of childhood in Zimbabwe, Peter Godwin returns to his roots. He tells Peter Stanford about the Africa his family loved - and lost

Boyd Tonkin: A Week in Books

Published: 09 March 2007

In Henry James's 1893 story "The Private Life", a fan discovers that the literary lion he so admires has a mousy double who toils away in secret as the suave alter ego holds forth in society. James's tale turns the plight of the inner-directed artist in a culture of performance and celebrity into a haunting parable. Still, I almost fell off my sofa when I heard a flesh-and-blood author quoting it. The writer was Amit Chaudhuri - novelist and critic, and acclaimed Indian classical singer. With Blake Morrison and Jackie Kay, he was reading at an event organised by Wasafiri magazine for last month's Kitab literary festival in Mumbai.

Cover Stories: Random House; The Commonwealth Writers' prize; Independent Publishers Guild

Published: 09 March 2007

Last week, we reported on Gail Rebuck's restructuring of Random House, and her aim to seek out "exciting and profitable" new ventures. Well, she has wasted no time for, with rival CEO Tim Hely Hutchinson in Australia for a Hachette Livre sales conference, Rebuck announced that Random has acquired the Virgin empire's ailing books arm. Random seems to have paid around £3m for a 90 per cent stake in Virgin Books, which has just reported pre-tax losses of £3.17m. Rebuck's plan is to double turnover and cash in on the brand - something that Richard Branson failed to do, as have many MDs. The incumbent chief, K T Forster, remains in post, and may have a better chance of success under Random: Branson has apparently never been entirely simpatico to the book business, given that it has to pay sometimes large sums to authors well ahead of publication.

The Independent Foreign Fiction Prize: Introducing the shortlist

Published: 09 March 2007

Elias Rukla, the heroically grumpy teacher at the centre of Dag Solstad's novel Shyness and Dignity, broods about the lack of curiosity shown by his Oslo staffroom colleagues. They may moan endlessly about money but, otherwise, the bigger issues leave them cold and "they did not seem to be interested in carrying on a conversation any more". Sometimes, the UK fiction scene feels much the same: with its hype-happy publishers, fame-hungry writers, gossip-crazy media, discount-driven retailers and, at the end of the chain, passive readers expected to stump up and shut up in the face of the latest sensation. There are all sorts of reasons to relish the shortlist for this year's Independent Foreign Fiction prize. Not least among them is the way each of these remarkable novels in translation invites us to have a many-sided conversation - with ourselves, with other readers, with the authors and (in some cases) history itself. Each, in its special way, is proof that formula-free storytelling thrives in many lands, outside the fiction factories.

Boyd Tonkin: A Week in Books

Published: 02 March 2007

As Dame Helen Mirren and her flock of fans (or subjects?) know, the flawless impersonation of a female British icon can take you all the way along the route to global fame. With the Oscar carpets scarcely rolled, the whole story may soon begin again. Anne Hathaway's portrayal of the queen of English fiction reaches its heroine's homeland in a week, when Julian Jarrold's film Becoming Jane opens. The celluloid version of Miss Austen's famously eventless life will, of course, spin off from the scanty evidence of her early romantic disappointment (cue James McAvoy as a dashing Irish lawyer). Don't look to the dream factory for much interest in her painstaking literary craft, forever interrupted when the creaking of a door heralded a summons to some new family task.

Cover Stories: Random House; Lord Weidenfeld

Published: 02 March 2007

As Penguin revealed impressive results for 2006, the timing of Gail Rebuck's announcement that its arch-rival Random House is to become a federation cannot but raise an eyebrow. It is widely assumed that if Pearson's chief exec Dame Marjorie Scardino ever decides to put Penguin on the sales block, Random would be the purchaser. Rebuck said Random's two-division structure - Century, Hutchinson, Heinemann and Arrow in one part; and Chatto, Cape, Harvill Secker and Vintage in the other - was no longer conducive to growth. So the group will become five separate companies, with the two divisions as self-governing entities headed by an MD: Susan Sandon for Century et al, Richard Cable for the Cape half. They will stand alongside Ebury Press, which now includes BBC Books, RH Children's Books, and Transworld (Bantam and Doubleday). Cable will also seek out "exciting and profitable" new enterprises. It's all a clear signal that Rebuck intends to wrest back her place as head of Britain's largest publisher from Hachette Livre's CEO, Tim Hely Hutchinson.

Richard Zimler: In search of the silenced

Published: 02 March 2007

Richard Zimler has won global acclaim for his novels about the Portuguese Jewish diaspora. He talks to Boyd Tonkin about fundamentalism and forgetting

Chuck Klosterman: I am the music man

Published: 25 February 2007

Chuck Klosterman is considered one of America's top music journalists. Feted by Stephen King, Douglas Coupland and Bret Easton Ellis, he has published four collections: 'Fargo Rock City' (2001), on his boyhood love of hair metal; 'Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs' (2003); 'Killing Yourself to Live' (2005), about rock'n'roll death sites; and his new book, 'Chuck Klosterman IV: A Decade of Curious People and Dangerous Ideas'. Although he is widely celebrated, Klosterman has irritated some critics by his reclamation of the uncool. Matt Thorne challenges him to defend his arguments in a frequently heated email exchange

Judge Dredd: Dishing out rough justice

Published: 25 February 2007

The great British sci-fi comic celebrates its 30th birthday on Wednesday - and Judge Dredd has been dishing out rough justice since issue two. Life-long subscriber Nicholas Lezard salutes a home-grown anti-hero who is ageing disgracefully

Bestselling author on her new muse

Published: 23 February 2007

Vermeer brought her into the spotlight, but now Blake and his visionary London offers a new canvas for Tracy Chevalier's fiction. Marianne Brace talks to her

Cover Stories: Michael Palin; fossilizing hamsters

Published: 23 February 2007

Just over 300 shopping days to Christmas, and so far as booksellers are concerned, things are already sorted. Weidenfeld has announced that Michael Palin is finishing another travelogue, taking him across what we once thought of as Eastern Europe. Palin's New Europe will be out in September, tying in with a BBC TV series, and it will begin in Slovenia, with Palin travelling on through the Balkans, the former East Germany, Poland and the old Soviet Republics. Another top seller, surely.

Christina Patterson: A Week in Books

Published: 23 February 2007

Two hundred years after the parliamentary abolition of the slave trade, its legacy lives on. It lives on in Downing Street, in encounters like the recent clash between Tony Blair and Lee Jasper, the GLA's feisty director of equalities, who demanded a "formal apology"for Britain's role. And it lives on in the violence that continues to bedevil great swathes of our poorest communities - which just happen to be black.

Censorship: Still a burning issue

Published: 22 February 2007

If you want to know what defines an era, look no further than the authors, artists and activists who fell foul if it. Censorship is as old as civilisation itself - and the drive to suppress as strong today as ever. As 'The Independent' launches a major series of the greatest banned books in history, Boyd Tonkin asks whether the thought police will ever learn

Preview: Shot From The Lip, Various Venues, London

Published: 20 February 2007

There's life in the old doggerel yet

Rushdie at the Jaipur Heritage Festival: Machine guns not required

Published: 18 February 2007

The recent Jaipur Literary Festival was a runaway success, largely due to the presence of the Man Booker winner Kiran Desai and the superstar Salman Rushdie. Just don't call him a security risk, warns Suzi Feay

The legacy of John La Rose: Respect for the dubfather

Published: 18 February 2007

The pioneering publisher and activist John La Rose died last year, but his legacy to black British writing lives on. Kevin LeGendre celebrates a life devoted to political struggle and the arts

Dito Montiel: The story of my life

Published: 17 February 2007

Dito Montiel grew up on New York's roughest streets - and still has the scars to prove it. Now he's turned his teen experiences into a remarkable new film. John Walsh meets him

WH Auden: The scourge of a sick England

Published: 16 February 2007

WH Auden, born 100 years ago, was far from the effete intellectual he might have seemed. Behind the mask is a revolutionary poet of caustic wit and memorable soundbites, writes Boyd Tonkin

Cover Stories: Quercus; Alice Sebold; Lord Snowdon

Published: 16 February 2007

Quercus, the new house founded by Anthony Cheetham powers on. Last year it took on Sue Freestone and Christopher MacLehose, two equally distinguished editors. Last week, it collected its first accolade, when Stef Penney's debut The Tenderness of Wolves took the Costa Book of the Year Award. And this week came news that it is to launch a children's list. The company's has lured Suzy Jenvey from Faber, where she has added such names as Paul McCartney and Ricky Gervais (above) to its list. Cheetham believes she is "a genuine entrepreneur who relishes the idea of starting with a blank sheet of paper". It takes one to know one.

Darian Leader: Mysteries of the mind

Published: 16 February 2007

The psychoanalyst Darian Leader has won acclaim for elegantly playful books about dreams and desire. Now he tells Christina Patterson why we're all sick
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