Tag: Book Blasts

Guest Feature | Susan Curtis @Istros_books | Podgorica International Book Fair 2019, Montenegro

The Frankfurter Buchmesse which is happening this week takes place over five days every October. It is the world’s largest trade fair for books and is THE place to be for publishers, agents, authors, illustrators, film producers, translators, and representatives from trade associations to network and do business. It attracts more visitors than any other book fair.

However the smaller local, regional book fairs are less daunting to visit, and are great opportunities to bring new books to a variety of readers and local communities. They are also more likely to showcase a greater variety of independent small publishers and private presses.

Susan Curtis, founder and MD of Istros Books in London which publishes translated literature from the Balkans and South-East Europe, wrote a special report for us about her recent visit to Montenegro to attend The Podgorica International Book Fair, 1-5 October, 2019. Continue reading Guest Feature | Susan Curtis @Istros_books | Podgorica International Book Fair 2019, Montenegro

Guest Feature | Leila Sackur, Dispatches from the Intern’s Desk

Leila Sackur is a recent graduate in History from the University of Cambridge. She is interested in everyday life, gentrification and urban space. At university, Leila was involved in the student press and politics. She is a freelance writer who enjoys reading and writing narrative-non fiction. @baby_____lei

As an intern at BookBlast, part of my role includes spending some time sifting through the archives of our online journal. What content have we put up recently . . . is there anything I can change or add to . . . would this or that article we published in 2017 be interesting to new Twitter and Facebook followers now, and who might have missed out? I like this activity. It’s interesting to spend time reading over our backlog of posts; piecing together the digital footprint of the work done for BookBlast Diary since it first went live in 2016.

We’re currently in an in-between phase where it’s been exactly one year since the first BookBlast 10×10 Tour, and a year to go until our next one. ICYMI, last year we collaborated with Waterstones to bring together ten independent publishers, their authors and translators, and showcase them across the UK in ten cities. Continue reading Guest Feature | Leila Sackur, Dispatches from the Intern’s Desk

Lesley Blanch Archive | Lesley Blanch: One of a Kind | virago.co.uk

Article first published on posthumous publication of On the Wilder Shores of Love: A Bohemian Life by Lesley Blanch,15 January 2015 by virago.co.uk

As far as godmothers go, Lesley Blanch (1904-2007) was as good as it gets. She was an understanding and generous friend; listening without judging. She opened up new ways of seeing the world and was modern and free, with tremendous wit and style. Seductive and glamorous, she was a superb storyteller. A scholarly romantic, her passion was for all things Russian and Oriental. She never apologized for who she was, took risks and relished writing about her adventures. Resilient and alert to the end of her long life, she stood firm and dignified in the face of back-biting and envy.  

Lesley was ahead of her time, and prescient in the way she attempted to bridge West and East: especially the West and Islam. Although most people today associate her with the classic book which pioneered a new approach to history writing, The Wilder Shores of Love, her greatest work is The Sabres of Paradise. The way she writes about the struggle of the people of the Caucasus to remain independent of Russia is dramatic and disturbingly relevant to our world today. As Philip Marsden put it: “Like Tolstoy’s, her [Lesley Blanch’s] sense of history is ultimately convincing not because of any sweeping theses, but because of its particularities, the quirks of individuals and their personal narratives, their deluded ambitions, their vanities and passions.” Continue reading Lesley Blanch Archive | Lesley Blanch: One of a Kind | virago.co.uk

Interview | Dina Nayeri | Author of the Week

Dina Nayeri is the author of The Ungrateful Refugee, one of the most widely shared 2017 Long Reads in The Guardian. Winner of the 2018 UNESCO City of Literature Paul Engle Prize, a National Endowment for the Arts literature grant (2015), O. Henry Prize(2015), Best American Short Stories (2018), and fellowships from the McDowell Colony, Bogliasco Foundation, and Yaddo, her stories and essays have been published by The New York Times, New York Times Magazine, The Guardian, Los Angeles Times, New Yorker, Granta New Voices, Wall Street Journal, and numerous others.  www.dinanayeri.com @dinanayeri

Where were you born, and where did you grow up?
I was born in Tehran, lived in Isfahan until I was eight, then spent sixteen months as a refugee, arriving in Oklahoma when I was ten years old.

Did, or do, your family ever talk about life in Iran before the 1979 Islamic revolution?
Constantly. The nostalgia around pre-revolutionary Iran was so visceral that it became a part of my growing up. All the joys and the rituals and the arts went underground or behind closed curtains, but we still had them. And our parents talked all the time about what Iran used to be.

What sorts of books were in your family home?
You had to be careful about what books you kept. So my parents kept very few novels, history books, or anything cultural, political, or even allegorical. Of course we kept the old poets: Rumi and Hafez and Sa’adi. There was The Shahnameh, of course. And lots of medical books. Shelves and shelves of medical books.
 Continue reading Interview | Dina Nayeri | Author of the Week

Interview | Euan Cameron | Author of the Week

Euan Cameron has enjoyed a long career first as a publisher and subsequently as a translator and book reviewer. He has translated over thirty books from French including works by Simone de Beauvoir, Julien Green, Paul Morand, Pierre Péju, Jean-Paul Kauffmann, Philippe Claudel and Patrick Modiano, as well as biographies of Marcel Proust and Irène Némirovsky. He was appointed Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 2011. His first novel, Madeleine, was published in June by MacLehose Press.

Where were you born, and where did you grow up? 
Born in London, but I grew up in Dorset and in Buenos Aires.

Were the members of your family big readers?
My mother was a serious reader. She was always reading a recently published novel or a literary biography. When we lived in Argentina, she ordered books she had read about in her weekly New Statesman from the Librería Mackern in Buenos Aires.
 Continue reading Interview | Euan Cameron | Author of the Week

Podcast LIVE | In conversation with Philip Mansel, author | A Life of Louis XIV

“Louis XIV was both King of France and a global ruler with global ambitions. He founded colonies in America, Africa and India, tried to seize Siam (as Thailand was then known), sent missionaries and mathematicians to the Emperor of China and launched the struggle for France’s global markets which continues to this day . . . Louis was a man in pursuit of glory, a king devoted to dynastic aggrandisement and a leader bent on national expansion. He is also an argument . . .” from the introduction by Philip Mansel.

King of the World is the most comprehensive and up-to-date historical biography in English of Europe’s longest-reigning monarch: Louis XIV. Taking seven years to complete, it draws on all the latest research in France, Britain and America and pays special attention to the culture of the court, on which Philip Mansel is an acknowledged expert.

How is it that great leaders can delude themselves that they are working for the greater good, but engage in behavior that is morally wrong? This conundrum lies at the heart of King of the World which is a rich and rewarding read.

Continue reading Podcast LIVE | In conversation with Philip Mansel, author | A Life of Louis XIV

Review | A Country to Call Home (ed.) Lucy Popescu | Book of the Week

So refugee week is over. The fact that the UK is the only country in Europe where refugees who arrive looking for a safe haven are detained indefinitely, and are often sent back home to face persecution, torture or death, will be kicked into the long grass once again. Certain politicians continue to use the language of disaster and provoke fear by swelling numbers of arrivals, backed by box-ticking Home Office officials.

Refugees are individuals seeking asylum for humanitarian reasons and suffer trauma, broken dreams, love and loss as a consequence. They are not amorphous groups to be rendered and processed and imprisoned in detention centres like criminals. Such a hostile environment is anything but a welcoming new home, and some go crazy with grief.   Continue reading Review | A Country to Call Home (ed.) Lucy Popescu | Book of the Week

Spotlight | Jonathan Coe, Olivia Rosenthal, Claudia Durastanti & Others | Beyond Words French Literature Festival 2019

I was delighted to be invited along to some of the key talks held at this year’s Beyond Words French Literature Festival at the French Institute in South Kensington. Beyond Words has become ‘The Big Event’ in London for the promotion of French books translated into English. The festival features bilingual live literature events, writers’ talks, musical performances, screenings of recent literary adaptations, staged readings and books galore – both classic and contemporary.

This is the first of two posts about just some of what was up for discussion at the #BeyondWordsFest

Translation: a success story

Since I researched and wrote Boom not Bust: A new chapter in the story of translation in the UK in March 2015, translated fiction has become an ongoing success story. Brexit fatigue has led to a surge in the sale of translated fiction in the UK – an unexpected boon. Reading writing from elsewhere is ever more crucial as Little Englanders tighten their grip on this offshore island which looks set to sink beneath delusions of grandeur, short of a miracle . . .
 Continue reading Spotlight | Jonathan Coe, Olivia Rosenthal, Claudia Durastanti & Others | Beyond Words French Literature Festival 2019

Interview | Judith Uyterlinde & Lydia Unsworth, World Editions | Indie Publisher of the Week

Are (were) your parents great readers? Tell us a bit about yourself.
JUDITH (Publishing Director): My father loves reading newspapers and history books. My mother loves reading novels. If I publish a book I usually ask myself if my mother would like reading it too―meaning that it shouldn’t be pretentious or unnecessarily complicated. My aunt was the person who stimulated me most though―she was a great storyteller herself, as well as a librarian, and somehow she always seemed to know exactly which books to give me to read.

LYDIA (Editor-in-Chief): Not while I was growing up, although I’m not sure how much free time they had. It was very much noted that I was a reader though, and was encouraged. I also quickly worked out that reading in bed meant I could stay up late by turning the light back on after my parents went downstairs. Continue reading Interview | Judith Uyterlinde & Lydia Unsworth, World Editions | Indie Publisher of the Week

Review | Unspoken Legacy, Claudia Black | Central Recovery Press

Human beings are violent creatures so exposure to traumatic events which leave an unspoken legacy is nothing new. What is new is 24/7 web browsing, social media, TV and online streaming creating multiple exposure and repetition, and endless cyber avenues of escape from a painful reality.

According to Nicholas Carr in The Shallows, not since Gutenberg invented printing has humanity been exposed to such mind-altering technology.

Different people react in different ways to similar events – not all people who experience the same traumatic event will be severely disrupted. It is estimated that 80% of those in rehab for addiction in the UK and US have been traumatised at some point.

If what happened has been forgotten or silenced, memory and feelings can live on, and be passed on down the generations. These emotional legacies are generally hidden, encoded in myriad ways, from gene expression to everyday language, playing a far greater role in emotional and physical health than has been realised until now, since discoveries have been made thanks to the revolution in neuroscience research. Continue reading Review | Unspoken Legacy, Claudia Black | Central Recovery Press