A publishing bonanza has erupted. Every living literary luminary one can think of has a novel coming out soon in either hardback or paperback: Martin Amis, Ian McEwan, Jeffrey Eugenides to name just three of the heavy-weight men. Of the giants of popular non-fiction, Anthony Beevor is back for another series with his one volume history of the second world war (a competitor for Max Hastings’s revered All Hell Let Loose: The World at War 1939-1945, which is available in paperback as well as on digital platforms.) In the video above, Beevor explains why you should read his book.
Of the fairer sex, Jennifer Egan, author of the Pulitzer Prize winning A Visit From the Goon Squad, is publishing her new novel, Black Box, in snippets of 140-characters, via the New Yorker’s twitter feed. In an interview with the New Yorker, Egan says that the format is an experimental take on serialization. Egan is not the first writer to try to claim Twitter for the novel, but she is perhaps the most renowned. See for yourself if it is a worthwhile exercise.
The Orange Prize for Fiction by women will be announced on Wednesday night by Joanna Trollope and her panel of judges. Here is a link to the shortlist if you would like to refresh your memory of the runners and riders for the £30,000 prize, which is provided by an endowment from a private donor. 84-year-old Cynthia Ozick is the odds-on favourite to win for her book, Foreign Bodies.
This will be the last year that Orange sponsors the prize, ending a 17-year association. Kate Mosse, the prize’s founder is confident that her prize’s future remains bright, and many literary journalists share her belief that a new sponsor will be found. The Observer’s eminence grise, Robert McCrum, wrote: ‘at a few quid shy of £500,000, taking on the prize won’t break the corporate bank. I confidently predict a new sponsor very soon.’
It’s almost inconceivable that Mosse won’t secure a new sponsor, even in this dire climate, because the prize is so well regarded. But the identity of the sponsor may prove to be divisive. Some writers’ sensibilities are overwhelmed by self-regard and a presumed moral superiority above those who make filthy lucre. The absurd furore over a hedge-fund’s sponsorship of the Eliot Prize for poetry is an amusing case in point. What price a repeat performance?
The Orange Prize has prompted an interesting piece in the Times (£). Emma Sweeney and Emily Midorikawa ask why it is that friendships between male writers are legendary, while those between female writers are not. The article is quietly predictable until Sweeney and Midorikawa consider how their own friendship may be both fashioned and tested by each other’s success as writers. If they are prepared to be that honest in print, then their friendship ought to survive whatever fate throws at them.
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