ICYMI: our new weekly round-up of literary goings-on!
Not the Booker Prize: giving power to readers is absolutely what we’re about, with our reading groups and other initiatives, so we’re thrilled to see ‘probably the world’s most democratic literary prize’ back for another year. You’ve got until 27th July to get your nominations in, and three of our wonderful titles are eligible – Double Negative and The Restless Supermarket by Ivan Vladislavic, and A Map of Tulsa by Benjamin Lytal. So if you’ve read them and loved them, don’t keep it yourself – tell the (Guardian-reading) world about it!
Sophie Lewis in Asymptote Journal: the latest issue from asymptotejournal really is an embarrassment of riches, and especially for us – not only do they have this fab essay by Daniel Hahn about translating our next title, Nowhere People, there’s also this excerpt from Violette Leduc’s Therese and Isabelle, translated from the French by our very own editor-at-large Sophie Lewis! Having beautiful baby Xul (who you can read all about in our latest newsletter – sign up here!) clearly hasn’t slowed Sophie down :-)
Okwiri Oduor wins the Caine Prize: now in its fifteenth year, the 2014 Caine Prize for African Writing was awarded to Kenyan Okwiri Oduor, whose winning story ‘My Father’s Head’ was described by the judges as “Joycean in its reach”. You can read the story in full here, and listen to Okwiri and judge Jackie Kay discussing the win on bbcradio4 Front Row. For an in-depth look at this year’s five shortlisted entries we recommend Ainehi Edoro’s Brittle Paper blog – indispensable for keeping your finger on the pulse of the African literary scene.
Thriving Indie Publishers – in praise of Text: over on the Foyles blog, expat Aussie Marion Rankine spreads some much-deserved love for the press that’s won Australia’s Small Publisher of the Year Award for the past three years running(!!) – Text Publishing. Their vibrant yellow classics (bah, humbug, gloomy Penguins) are currently brightening up the shiny new Charing Cross branch of Foyles, and we wholeheartedly recommend you try them out. Marion’s top three are a great place to start, and our social media guru @londonkoreanist is a fan of Elizabeth Harrower’s The Watch Tower. Also, though she read the latest Classic, Janet Frame’s Owls Do Cry, in a second-hand ed from another publisher, it was so stunningly good the fact that it ever went out of print is simply mind-boggling, and speaks volumes re: the indispensable work that publishers like Text are doing. Up the Aussies!
RIP Nadine Gordimer: most of you will have heard by now of the death of Nadine Gordimer, Nobel laureate and anti-apartheid activist. This piece by Margaret Atwood in guardian is a moving introduction to Gordimer’s life and work, for those of you who aren’t already familiar, while openculture is collecting stories available for free online here.