Your weekly guide to the latest happenings in the world of books!
With a new year now underway and the 2021 edition of the Emirates Airline Festival of Literature drawing closer and an exciting list of authors already announced — along with three venues for three weekends worth of sessions and events — we here at the Emirates Literature Foundation have hardly been able to think of anything else! But when we haven't been clearing our calendars for those weeks ahead, here's what caught our eyes?
Two Dubai-based authors who will both be attending the Festival were also interviewed in The National this week. Zeina Hashem Beck talks about her poetry collection ‘O’ to be published with Penguin in 2022, and Saba Karim Khan discusses her debut novel Skyfall.
The Great Gatsby has entered the US Public domain — and the first Great Gatsby prequel titled Nick by Michael Farris Smith has already been published.
One of the oldest literary prizes in the region — the Moroccan book prize — has announced its 2020 winners. You can explore some fascinating titles in a feature in The National, including a winner in the translation category: Translating Casablanca, from Origins to 1914, originally written by a Belgian Diplomat and translated by Abderrahim Hazl.
Wrong change! The alien tripod with four legs and the Invisible Man wearing the wrong hat are just some of the mistakes that have been spotted on the War of the Worlds author HG Wells’ commemorative 2 pound coin, which was recently released to commemorate 75 years since his death.
The 2020 Costa book award winners — best novel, first novel, biography, poetry and children’s books — have been announced, with The Mermaid of Black Conch by Monique Roffey winning best novel and The Louder I will Sing by Lee Lawrence winning best biography. Explore the full list of winners on the Costa coffee website in the ‘behind the beans’ section.The overall best book of the year will be announced on 26 January.
“T.S. Eliot is the world’s worst living poet” and DH Lawrence and James Joyce are “overrated” according to a collection of strong opinions from the likes of Virginia Woolf, Hilaire Belloc and more which is due to be auctioned off later this month. The burn book consists of 39 handwritten questions and answers, collected between 1923 and 1927.
An essay from Norwegian author Karl Ove Knausgaard on the relationship and role of writers and editors goes in-depth and touches on the experience of writers throughout history woven into his own.
33 writers write about…well…why they write. Peel back the curtain on the impulses behind all the scribbling and typing in this article