From new voices like NoViolet Bulawayo to rediscovered old voices like James Salter, from Dave Eggers's satire to David Thomson's history of film, writers, Observer critics and others pick their favourite reads of 2013. And they tell us what they hope to find under the tree …
Curtis Sittenfeld
Novelist
My favourite books of 2013 are Drama High (Riverhead) by Michael Sokolove, Sea Creatures (Turnaround) by Susanna Daniel, and & Sons (Harper Collins) by David Gilbert. Drama High is incredibly smart, moving non-fiction about an American drama teacher who for four decades coaxed sophisticated and nuanced theatrical performances out of teenage students who weren't privileged or otherwise remarkable and in so doing, changed their conceptions of what they could do with their lives. Sea Creatures is a gripping, beautifully written novel about the mother of a selectively mute three-year-old boy; when she takes a job ferrying supplies to a hermit off the coast of Florida,...
Curtis Sittenfeld
Novelist
My favourite books of 2013 are Drama High (Riverhead) by Michael Sokolove, Sea Creatures (Turnaround) by Susanna Daniel, and & Sons (Harper Collins) by David Gilbert. Drama High is incredibly smart, moving non-fiction about an American drama teacher who for four decades coaxed sophisticated and nuanced theatrical performances out of teenage students who weren't privileged or otherwise remarkable and in so doing, changed their conceptions of what they could do with their lives. Sea Creatures is a gripping, beautifully written novel about the mother of a selectively mute three-year-old boy; when she takes a job ferrying supplies to a hermit off the coast of Florida,...
- 11/24/2013
- by Ali Smith, Robert McCrum, Tim Adams, Kate Kellaway, Rachel Cooke, Sebastian Faulks, Jackie Kay
- The Guardian - Film News
If there's anything more exciting than speculating on who will win a Nobel Prize in literature, it's placing actual bets on it. Your odds-on favorite for this year's honors, according to British gambling site Ladbrokes: Haruki Murakami, with ten-to-one odds! (According to the Times, Ladbrokes is pretty reliable for these sorts of things.) Murakami's followed by Chinese author Mo Yan (twelve-to-one), Dutch author Cees Nooteboom (twelve-to-one), and Albanian author Ismail Kadare (fourteen-to-one). Cormac McCarthy comes in with 16-to-1, Alice Munro with 20-to-1, Bob Dylan with 33-to-1, Margaret Atwood with 50-to-1, and Jonathan Franzen's alllll the way at the bottom with 100-to-1 odds. Place your bets, cats and kittens.
- 8/23/2012
- by Margaret Lyons
- Vulture
Stockholm -- Is it time for the Nobel Prize in literature to come from the east?
After last year's South American win and years of European dominance, many experts expect the Swedish Academy to do just that when it announces this year's winner on Thursday.
Many of the big names in Asian and Middle Eastern literature, including South Korean poet Ko Un and Syria's Adonis, have been mentioned as possible candidates for years, but still haven't received the prestigious, 10 million kronor ($1.4 million) award. The same goes for Algerian poet Assia Djebar and Israeli author Amos Oz.
"I know the academy doesn't think in this way, but I still feel it would be timely to give the prize to a Syrian poet during this period of uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa," said Maria Schottenius, a literature expert at the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter. She has Adonis as her...
After last year's South American win and years of European dominance, many experts expect the Swedish Academy to do just that when it announces this year's winner on Thursday.
Many of the big names in Asian and Middle Eastern literature, including South Korean poet Ko Un and Syria's Adonis, have been mentioned as possible candidates for years, but still haven't received the prestigious, 10 million kronor ($1.4 million) award. The same goes for Algerian poet Assia Djebar and Israeli author Amos Oz.
"I know the academy doesn't think in this way, but I still feel it would be timely to give the prize to a Syrian poet during this period of uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa," said Maria Schottenius, a literature expert at the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter. She has Adonis as her...
- 10/5/2011
- by AP
- Huffington Post
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