First Irish woman to win International Dublin Literary Award
“The day Somebody McSomebody put a gun to my breast and called me a cat and threatened to shoot me was the same day the milkman died.” Well, then. If… Read more »
Nobel Nabobs Named; Swedes Suffer Rep Wreckage
It has been a tough couple of years for a number of cultural institutions, many of which are struggling, like brontosauri in a tar pit, to adopt to the new… Read more »
Booker Prize moves online; digital tomes abound
The famed Booker Prize, like everything else, has moved online this year. The prestigious award, which has a long history of skulduggery, controversy, and fractiousness, has been a relatively sedate… Read more »
New Ferrante book received with enthusiasm abroad
The mysterious anonymous author who goes by the pen name Elena Ferrante has released a new novel in Europe, an event that has been greeted with long lines at recently… Read more »
UK wholesaler Gardners reopens to fulfill single book orders
As all of us in the book biz know, we don’t have a ‘biz’ at all without a distribution network. We can publish, publicise, pontificate and, er, something else beginning… Read more »
London Book Fair cancellation highlights need for IRL meetings
On Wednesday it was announced—after much speculation, and a raft of major publisher withdrawals—that the London Book Fair, scheduled for March 10th-12th, would not be going ahead. In an announcement… Read more »
Apple attempts to halt publication of book containing “company secrets”
Tom Sadowski, former head of the Apple App Store for Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, has written a book about his time at Apple (including meetings with CEO Tim Cook, according… Read more »
Racist colouring book distributed publicly by far right German political party AfD
Alternative for Germany (AfD) was only formed in 2013, but it has become the third largest political party in Germany. Eurosceptic and right-wing populist, it is supporting increasingly far-right views and is now, first and… Read more »
Cairo controversy: Egyptian publisher banned from book fair as owner languishes in jail
The Cairo Book Fair, held annually every January, is one of the biggest book fairs in the world, and the oldest and largest of its kind in the Middle East.… Read more »
Charles Sprawson, cult author of ‘Haunts of the Black Masseur’, has died
Sad news this week as it was announced that Charles Sprawson, author of Haunts of the Black Masseur, and widely regarded as the forerunner to the modern nature writing / wild… Read more »