A deceptive visit to the Danish capital brings Kevin Fitzgerald into the orbits of physics, philosophy, politics but no escritoire connected to Kierkegaard 1. In March of this year I was privy to certain communications divulging that the escritoire once owned by the Danish scholar Victor Emerita, famous for his literary collaborations with Søren Kierkegaard, […]
San Pedro on St. George’s Day: Letter From La Paz II
Declan Tan’s second ‘Letter from La Paz’ is a fictional account of a visit to Bolivia’s San Pedro prison “A pint a-Carling yeah and whatever you’re havin’,” a white-spit mouth, mine, chums out familiar to the bar girl. I’m pointing at the tap and reaching my hand out as it pours, my fingers snatching at […]
Route 36: Letter From La Paz
In the first of two ‘Letters from La Paz’, Declan Tan straightens a few myths about Bolivia’s Route 36, “the world’s first cocaine lounge” “Take it out of the bag,” one of them whispers, as a small mountain of Bolivian marching powder unfolds from the wrap. Forming peaks where it piles on the surface, the […]
The Seven Original Sins of a Book Addict vs. Seven Original Book Stores of Mumbai
Sourav Roy from Mumbai battles gluttony, despair and cricket fever to hunt down seven utterly original book stores of the city As somebody who has been taking books to bed way before hitting puberty, I have it on good authority that the addiction of buying and reading books, is not so very different from any […]
Ballard in Shanghai
Chris Hall revisits J.G. Ballard’s childhood and finds the future in the past The opening of J.G. Ballard’s Empire of the Sun (1984) has young Jim watching British war propaganda films with fellow choristers in the crypt of the Holy Trinity church in Shanghai, which was designed by George Gilbert Scott and built in the […]
Literary Graveyards
Bunhill Fields Burial Ground near Old Street in the City of London has been given Grade I protected status. Originally the Dissenters’ burial ground, one great names of English literature have tombs here, including William Blake, Daniel Defoe and John Bunyan. The Department of Culture, Media and Sport has also listed 75 of its tombs. […]
How I Work: Nuno Cera
Futureland is a photographic and video portrait of the effects of rapid urbanisation Futureland #17 – Shanghai, China, 2010. Ink jet print, 110 x 145 cm © Nuno Cera and Galeria Pedro Cera, Lisbon, reproduced with thanks Nuno Cera’s project Futureland catches the process of rapid urbanisation in the act. Between 2008 and 2010, the […]
Pinewood Studios in the Dominican Republic
Spike’s brief travel guide to legendary films studios around the world So far, 2011 has been a bumper year for the film production Pinewood Studios Group. The company has just announced a 31% rise in pre-tax profits and now plans to invest in British low-budget filmmaking through direct funding. Chief executive Ivan Dunleavy said, “Although […]
Michael Palin – Himalaya interview
“…Dodgy dentists. The Dalai Llama. High-altitude polo players. Maoist rebels. Yak herders. Imran Khan. Just a few of the diverse personalities professional funnyman turned adventure traveller Michael Palin met on his epic 125-day journey across the world’s greatest mountain range…”
Rory MacLean – Magic Bus: An Interview
Magic Bus: On the Hippie Trail from Istanbul to India is Rory MacLean’s retracing of the Hippie Trail that marked the beginning of the modern travel industry in the Sixties and Seventies, a six thousand mile trek that now leads through war zones and some of the world’s most chaotic cities.
Charles Bukowski : Bukowski: Born Into This
Pedro Blas Gonzalez Bukowski: Born Into This – Charles Bukowski See all books by Charles Bukowski at Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.com Charles Bukowski was a solitary man and a courageous writer. Without daddy’s money to deliver him into high places or the protective cloak of a godfather, Hank forged his way through the world with the […]
Michel Houellebecq: Lanzarote
Pedro Blas Gonzalez Lanzarote – Michel Houellebecq See all books by Michel Houellebecq at Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.com Lanzarote is a colorful vignette that describes the scope of meaninglessness in an apocalyptic age. Even the landscape – the lunar aridity of this Spanish island where the action takes place – is scarred by volcanic activity. Whether […]
Joshua Davis: The Underdog: How I Survived The World’s Most Outlandish Competitions
Chris Mitchell The Underdog: How I Survived The World’s Most Outlandish Competitions – Joshua Davis See all books by Joshua Davis at Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.com Joshua Davis set out to win. At anything. Living in a crappy apartment with a crappy job and a loving but long suffering wife, Davis set out to prove himself. […]
Nic Dunlop: The Lost Executioner
Chris Mitchell The Lost Executioner is my Book of the Year. Like my pick for last year, Emma Larkin’s Secret Histories: Finding George Orwell in A Burmese Teashop, The Lost Executioner is a personal travelogue into a country that tries to understand its recent, disastrous politics. Where Secret Histories documents Burma’s slide into a real-life […]
Raj Kamal Jha – If You Are Afraid Of Heights
Harpreet Singh Soorae Give yourself some time, he says, I will leave the pictures and the pieces of paper with you. Keep them carefully, whenever you are afraid, take them out, arrange them in whatever order you want and you will understand your parent’s stories. What stories? I ask. Of the dreams your father and […]
Christopher G. Moore: Gambling On Magic
“…I was at a bit of a disadvantage during our caffienated conversation as I have yet to read any of Moore’s books. He kindly gave me copies of the aforementioned Zero Hour, along with the Burma-set…”
Emma Larkin: Secret Histories: Finding George Orwell In A Burmese Tea Shop
Chris Mitchell This could well be my book of the year. Ostensibly an attempt to retrace the physical origins of George Orwell’s novel Burmese Days, Secret Histories is actually a superbly concise and deeply scary history lesson in the fate of pre and post-colonial Myanmar. (It’s been published in the USA under the less lyrical […]
Robert Carver – The Accursed Mountains: Journeys In Albania
Chris Mitchell This is truly an armchair traveller’s book: Robert Carver delivers a fascinating account of his time in a country that you’d never want to visit. Managing to make several journeys through Albania in the early 1990s directly after the collapse of communism and shortly before the onset of all-out anarchy, Carver reveals a […]
Stewart Lee Allan – The Devil’s Cup
Katrina Gulliver From this book I learnt that my method of consuming a Vienna coffee – drinking the coffee through the cream – is apparently a terrible faux pas. The correct method involves piling the cream on the coffee (it should be served on a separate dish – attention Starbucks!) sprinkling chocolate shavings on top, […]
Daniel Mason – The Piano Tuner
Katrina Gulliver The Piano Tuner is an enticing book, telling the story of Edgar Drake, the piano tuner of the title, who travels from London to Burma in 1886 to tune the grand piano of a British Surgeon Major stationed in the Shan states. This original premise helps to create the feeling of a fable, […]
Anthony Bourdain: A Cook’s Tour: Eat The World
Jayne Margetts on Anthony Bourdain’s quest to eat the most gastronomically dangerous dishes on the planet I love my authors a tad on the fresh, petulant and carnal side. A splatter of blood-and-guts-style reportage only heightens the pleasure, as do tales of human squalor and degradation. I can hack romance, but only in staccato style, […]
Tony Wheeler – Lonely Planet Unpacked
Chris Mitchell Lonely Planet: the world famous travel guidebook company which has scores of writers in the field at any one time and scores more desperately trying to get a job with this coveted organisation. So the logic behind Lonely Planet Unpacked is sound – given that LP has a veritable travel anecdote treasure trove […]
Banana Yoshimoto / Michael Emmerich : Goodbye Tsugumi : Two Worlds And In Between
Jonathan Kiefer discusses the delicate art of translation with Michael Emmerich, English translator of Japanese novelist Banana Yoshimoto Here’s what it means to be a literary translator: If you haven’t heard of Banana Yoshimoto, you probably haven’t heard of Michael Emmerich. If you have heard of Banana Yoshimoto, you probably haven’t heard of Michael Emmerich. […]
Mark Taplin: Open Lands: Travels Through Russia’s Once Forbidden Places
Gary Marshall During the Cold War huge areas of Russia were strictly off-limits to foreign visitors and, in classic tit-for-tat style, Russian visitors were allowed entry to the USA provided their travels didn’t take them anywhere there were roads, people or small animals. In 1992 both superpowers signed the “Open Lands” agreement (from which Mark […]
Alex Garland : The Beach : Backpacker Blues
Nancy Rawlinson finds out why The Beach author Alex Garland is still unsure of his writing success No matter where you go on this small planet of ours, you will encounter ‘Garland’s Law.’ That is, for every 10 people under the age of thirty that you meet, approximately 3.33 per cent of them will have […]
