1+ mon, 2+ week ago (410+ words) The playwright's only living descendant traces the shadow cast by his trial " and his rehabilitation as a gay icon Today, Oscar Wilde is one of the most celebrated writers in English, both instantly recognisable and actually read. His plays are performed. His words are quoted. He reclines in effigy on both the Strand and the King's Road. He even has a commemorative window in Westminster Abbey. But it was not always so. When he died in Paris, in 1900, aged just 46, the obituaries were not generous. There was a feeling of relief that an embarrassing figure had been removed the scene, and a general hope that he and his works would soon be forgotten. The Pall Mall Gazette suggested that nothing he wrote had "the strength to endure. Just five years before, he had been the toast of London, with two…...

3+ day, 7+ hour ago (565+ words) Author tells high court her public support for group means her books could disappear from UK stores altogether The Irish author Sally Rooney has told the high court she is highly unlikely to be able to publish new work in the UK while the ban on Palestine Action remains in effect because of her public support for the group. On the second day of the legal challenge to Palestine Action's proscription, the effect on Rooney, who said her books could disappear from UK stores altogether, was held up as an example of its impact on freedom of expression. In her witness statement, the bestselling author of Normal People and Conversations with Friends, said: "It is " almost certain that I can no longer publish or produce any new work within the UK while this proscription remains in effect. "If Palestine Action…...

7+ mon, 3+ week ago (579+ words) Writers will gather at the Facebook owner's King's Cross office in opposition to its use of the LibGen database to train its AI modelsAuthors and other publishing industry professionals will stage a demonstration outside Meta's London office today in protest of the organisation's use of copyrighted books to train artificial intelligence.Novelists Kate Mosse and Tracy Chevalier as well as poet and former Royal Society of Literature chair Daljit Nagra will be among those in attendance outside the company's King's Cross office. Continue reading... Writers will gather at the Facebook owner's King's Cross office in opposition to its use of the LibGen database to train its AI models Authors and other publishing industry professionals will stage a demonstration outside Meta's London office today in protest of the organisation's use of copyrighted books to train artificial intelligence. Novelists Kate Mosse and…...

7+ mon, 2+ week ago (1057+ words) A couple's struggle to survive a serial killer, a prank that goes terribly wrong " and the hunt for an old friend who went missing in the woodsAbigail Dean's The Death of Us (HarperCollins) opens not with a crime, but with news of an arrest. A serial killer who terrorised south London for decades has been caught, and Isabel, one of his victims many years ago, has been told of the arrest. "He's called Nigel," she says, sardonically, to her former partner, Edward, who was in bed beside her when their home was invaded by the killer. "What were you expecting? Adolf?" he answers.Dean previously told the story of a daughter's escape from the family home where her father had chained her up, in Girl A, and of a school shooting in Day One, both excellent and disturbing novels. She…...

3+ week, 3+ day ago (892+ words) Pippos brings a quieter drama to his second novel, about a subeditor who has a midlife shakeup in the dying world of print journalismGet our weekend culture and lifestyle emailAndrew Pippos's debut novel Lucky's charmed readers with its fusion of Greek tragedy and multigenerational heft. Five years later, he has navigated the notoriously difficult expectations around second novels with aplomb, delivering a sensitive portrayal of professional and personal change, albeit on a smaller canvas.The Transformations is set in Darlinghurst in 2014, in the newsroom of a fictional broadsheet newspaper, the National. Pippos's focus is on amiable everyman George, a 35-year-old subeditor who works the night shift. After six years with the paper, he's yet to become as jaded as some of his colleagues, and ekes out a conscientious living as part of the production crew. He takes pride in his…...

7+ mon, 2+ week ago (802+ words) Anecdotal evidence suggests a rise in requests to take books off shelves, particularly LGBTQ+ titlesRequests to remove books from library shelves are on the rise in the UK, as the influence of pressure groups behind book bans in the US crosses the Atlantic, according to those working in the sector.Although "the situation here is nowhere [near] as bad, censorship does happen and there are some deeply worrying examples of library professionals losing their jobs and being trolled online for standing up for intellectual freedom on behalf of their users, said Louis Coiffait-Gunn, CEO of the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals (Cilip). Continue reading... Anecdotal evidence suggests a rise in requests to take books off shelves, particularly LGBTQ+ titles Requests to remove books from library shelves are on the rise in the UK, as the influence of pressure…...

8+ mon, 2+ week ago (1553+ words) Slyly investigating language and bias in media culture, this follow-up to Assembly confirms Brown as one of the most intelligent voices writing todayShould your social media occasionally present you with publishing-related content, you may have spotted proofs for Natasha Brown's Universality on your feed last autumn. The excitement with which various "bookfluencers" clutched them was twofold. Brown appeared on the Granta Best of Young British Novelists list in 2023, and Universality is the follow-up to her 2021 debut, Assembly, which saw her shortlisted for a Goldsmiths, Orwell, and Folio prize: its critical and commercial popularity has undoubtedly created a sense of anticipation for this next book. But alongside that fact was the feeling that the proof itself provoked as an aesthetic object: striking and slender, with its reflective gold jacket and spectrally engraved lettering. "Oh, it's a book," a family member of…...

1+ mon, 1+ week ago (892+ words) Quantum of Menace by Vaseem Khan; The Killing Stones by Ann Cleeves; The Long Shoe by Bob Mortimer; Benbecula by Graeme Macrae Burnet; The Winter Warriors by Olivier NorekQuantum of Menace by Vaseem Khan (Zaffre, "20)Dismissed from his role as a back-room boffin in the British secret service, Major Boothroyd, AKA Q, returns to his market-town roots in Khan's excellent James Bond spin-off. This Q is currently in his 50s; his backstory includes a fling with Miss Moneypenny, and emotional baggage in the form of his retired history don father. What's drawn him home is the mysterious drowning of his old friend, quantum scientist Peter Napier, who has left him an encrypted note; although the coroner has ruled the death to be accidental and Q's old flame, DCI Kathy Burnham, is not minded to reopen the case. The stakes here are…...

9+ mon, 3+ week ago (501+ words) The author and journalist on "modern London corruption" and his Orwell prize-shortlisted novel Caledonian Road, how he helped Jonathan Franzen and the last book he gave as a giftJournalist, novelist and cafe owner Andrew O"Hagan, 56, grew up in Ayrshire and lives in London, the setting for his most recent book, Caledonian Road, now out in paperback. Shortlisted for last year"s Orwell prize for political fiction, it follows 60 characters over 650 pages and has been praised as an "extremely readable how-we-live-now novel" (Margaret Drabble) that "captures London in all its messy, multicultural glory" (Yotam Ottolenghi) and "instantly feels like a box set waiting to happen" (the Standard).Tell us how Caledonian Road came about. I was writing a lot of big stories for the London Review of Books " working with Julian Assange [on a memoir that Assange disavowed, an experience…...

7+ mon, 2+ week ago (771+ words) A deft, documentary-like portrait of 70s and 80s Black British culture outside LondonLanre Bakare's first book is not'just a work of history " it'is'a'necessary and urgent recalibration of the way we think about Black Britain. Too often, mainstream accounts flatten the story, centring it on London, reducing the complexities of life beyond the capital to footnotes. Bakare, a Guardian arts and culture correspondent, challenges this myopia head-on, presenting an expansive, deeply researched work that insists on'a broader, richer understanding of'Black life. He travels to Bradford, Cardiff, Birmingham and Edinburgh, pulling together art, politics and social'movements, with a vision of community life in the 70s and 80s that feels both urgent and long overdue.Bakare opens with northern soul, an unexpected starting point, since it's mostly associated with working-class white youth. But in tracing its rise and the spaces where it flourished " clubs, underground venues, dance…...