What an odd post-pandemic year 2022 has been, deranged in so many ways, over and beyond the realities of Brexit hitting home, and the depressing normalization of exploitation by the Government and giant corporates across the board, as we enter “a different kind of recession where there are still lots of jobs but the recession is around our wages,” according to James Reed.
Continue reading 2022 in Review (part 1): Annie Ernaux, Olivier Guez, Empire Windrush & more
Anne Serre is a remarkable and unusual writer; her pen a scalpel dissecting the human condition with painful precision. The Fool & Other Moral Tales – three novellas – is lyrical and disturbing, wonderful and terrible, arousing and devastating. The hallucinatory, and at times nightmarish quality, is beautifully rendered by translator Mark Hutchinson.
All three tales adventure through the multiple guises and meanings of The Fool. Is he a fallen angel, a grotesque carrier of vice and folly bringing wisdom in his wake as a consequence of blind faith, hopeless romance and reckless desire, or is he an abortive saint, a mistaken revolutionary? The ultimate shapeshifter, he can lead you to Heaven or Hell or, if you get stuck, into the abyss.
Continue reading Review | The Fool & Other Moral Tales, Anne Serre | Les Fugitives
Michèle Roberts is the author of twelve highly-acclaimed novels, including The Looking Glass and Daughters of the House which won the W.H. Smith Literary Award and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. She has also published poetry and short stories, and is Emeritus Professor of Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and a member of PEN and of The Society of Authors.
I caught up with her by the telephone, on the eve of the Covid 19 lockdown, to talk about Negative Capability: A Diary of Surviving, her latest book out today with Sandstone Press, and much more besides.
Continue reading Podcast LIVE | In conversation with Michèle Roberts, Franco-British novelist
Is Paris burning? I arrived in the capital the day after the fourth Saturday of gilets jaunes (yellow vests) protests in the 8th, 17th and 16th arrondissements.
1848, 1968, 2005 . . . the French have a habit of getting out on to city streets to protest against the state machine and its politicians. The recently published work Une histoire populaire de la France du XIVe siècle à nos jours (A history of working-class France from the fourteenth century to the present day) by Gérard Noiriel is an essential read. Not yet available in English, perhaps a canny British publisher will pick it up.
Continue reading BookBlast® France | Paris Burning, Paris Brûle, Georgia de Chamberet
Moroccan writer Tahar Ben Jelloun, winner of the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and the Prix Goncourt among many others, and short-listed for the Nobel Prize in Literature, talks to Georgia de Chamberet about writing in French, immigration, exile, language, and fighting injustice.
An extract from the interview is reproduced below; the full interview was published in Banipal magazine No. 35 in 2009 and is available at banipal.co.uk
Banipal magazine is an independent literary magazine. It was begun in 1998 by two individuals who loved Arab literature and believed in promoting dialogue between different cultures by bringing this literature with the world through translation into English.
The Banipal Trust / Saif Ghobash Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation prize administered by the Translators Association 2018 judging panel is Pete Ayrton, Georgia de Chamberet, Fadia Faqir, Sophia Vasalou.
oOo
How many hours a day do you write?
I write in the morning, on average for three hours, although I sometimes stay at my desk all that time and just write one phrase, it depends. The principle is that it’s a discipline and whatever happens I must stay in front of the page, or computer, and not give up. It’s a practice I have followed for 30 years.
Is the actual process of writing pleasurable – or is it a need?
Both. When I write novels and poetry it’s a pleasure naturally, but also a worry as I don’t know how it will turn out. And it’s a necessity since if I don’t write, I feel useless. Continue reading Interview | TAHAR BEN JELLOUN: I am exiled in terms of language | BANIPAL magazine 2009
