Tag: Fiction
Bad sex award goes to Italian novelist Erri De Luca’s genital ‘ballet dancers’
The Literary Reviews annual pillory of overheated erotic writing selects a passage from The Day Before Happiness for high-profile ridicule. Italian author, poet and translator Erri De Luca has added another accolade to his glittering career although this may be one he would prefer to have avoided. The winner of the 2013 European Prize for […]
Thom Jones: the writer who explored madness, art and violence
The writer, who died this week aged 71, began his career late in his tumultuous life, exploding onto the literary scene with his Vietnam story The Pugilist at Rest. Thom Jones, the Illinois-born short-story writer who has died, aged 71, of complications from diabetes, rocketed onto the literary scene in 1991, when the New Yorker […]
Why the prissy reaction to Ferrante being unmasked? | Catherine Bennett
The latest literary outcry might suggest that readers are rarely interested in the novelist. History disagrees. The first time that someone urged me to read Elena Ferrante, he mentioned her anonymity, along with her evocation of Naples, and her peerless representation of womens friendships, as among her most impressive qualities. This was in 2013, shortly […]
Ottessa Moshfegh interview: Eileen started out as a joke, also I’m broke, also I want to be famous
The books interview: the Man Booker-shortlisted author talks about writing a thriller to get noticed, exorcising her childhood and sexist critics. So here we are. My name was Eileen Dunlop. Now you know me This is the story of how I disappeared. Ottessa Moshfeghs novel, Eileen, shortlisted this week for the Man Booker prize, centres […]
Whodunnit and whowroteit: the strange case of The Face on the Cutting-Room Floor
The real mystery of this 1930s cult thriller is not its murder, but the identity of its writer. So, asks Jonathan Coe, who was Cameron McCabe and what were the facts behind his fiction? This extraordinary work of postmodern fakery from the golden age of detective fiction was last reprinted 30 years ago, and in […]