booker prize

Tom McCarthy: C-ing is believing

David Wolf
/ September 10, 2010 / 1 Comment

On Monday night I stared at a bald scalp for an hour. The event was a sell out—about 50 people, primarily bespectacled, cardigan-wearing males in their 20s, packed into the London Review Bookshop to hear Tom McCarthy talk about his new novel, C—currently 2-1 favourite to win this year’s Booker...
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The Booker shortlist: failing to write the present

Tom Chatfield
/ September 9, 2009 / 3 Comments

A strong female trio dominate the Booker prize shortlist this year—Mantel, Waters and Byatt—with Coetzee competing for a record third win. But what’s perhaps most striking about the list is its preference for history over the present: the six books on it are variously set during the late Victorian era,...
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The fine art of the literary prize

Tom Chatfield
/ December 18, 2008 / 11 Comments

As the judges for the 2009 Booker prize are announced, it’s time, once again, to ponder the merits of the swelling class of event to which it belongsâ€”the modern literary award. Which is exactly what I’ve been doing in an essay for our latest edition. I’m fascinated by the whole...
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Divine comedy

Julian Gough
/ May 26, 2007 / 24 Comments

The Greeks understood that comedy (the gods' view of life) is superior to tragedy (the merely human). But since the middle ages, western culture has overvalued the tragic and undervalued the comic. This is why fiction today is so full of anxiety and suffering. It's time writers got back to the serious business of making us laugh
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Tom McCarthy: C-ing is believing

The Booker shortlist: failing to write the present

The fine art of the literary prize

Divine comedy

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