The Week in Pieces

International Literature Festival Berlin

The eighth International Literature Festival Berlin runs from September 24 to October 4 and boasts a first-rate schedule, including events dedicated to world literature, children’s literature, music and art. Last year more than 34,000 visitors attended. For more information and to view the full programme of events click here.

Worth noting

Actor Robert Downey Jnr cancels HarperCollins book contract.

American writer sells shares in his next novel – is this an example of economic ingenuity or the act of a desperate man?

Slate’s The Ten Oddest Travel Guides Ever Published.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918 – 2008)

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, the Nobel Prize-winning Russian novelist and Soviet dissident, died on Sunday of a heart ailment. He was eighty-nine.

Kikinda Short Story Festival

Peter Hobbs writes in to say:

‘I’m back from the Kikinda Short Story Festival in Serbia and thought you might be interested by a brief report. It’s a fantastic festival for writing from Eastern Europe, with (mostly young) authors from Serbia, Bosnia, Croatia, Slovenia, Poland, Austria and Slovakia. Great Britain was the guest nation this year, and represented by Clare Wigfall (the winner of the National Story Award this year), Paul Ewen (of London Pub Reviews fame) and myself. We read two nights in Belgrade, and then two nights up north in Kikinda (a lovely town justly proud of its mammoth – not only did we get a guided tour of the bones but were also treated to a 3-D movie on the subject).

‘It was a fantastic experience – eye-opening to the range and quality of literature being produced in the region, almost none of which gets translated into English. (All the stories read were translated so that we could follow them). I think we represented our country well – enough for some coverage on national television and an invitation to return next year. Clare was a big hit especially – aside from being introduced as ‘a beautiful English lady, like from the movies’, her stories were greatly admired by all, including the Serbian guests of honour, authors Danilo Nikolić and Nenad Šaponja (the latter is also the leading editor of translated fiction in Serbia).

‘There was real interest in the state of British literature – they’re familiar with Ian McEwan, Martin Amis and Julian Barnes, and were very keen to find out what else was going on. So it was a great opportunity for all of us to catch up with what’s been going on elsewhere in writing.

‘The only downside was that no one was even remotely interested in funding UK involvement in what’s ultimately an important festival for writers and for literature (even the British Council, with their professed interest in ‘regional’ activities). So full credit to organisers Srdjan Papic and the Kikinda National Library for making it happen regardless.’

Man Booker longlist announced

The 2008 Man Booker longlist was announced today. The longlisted titles are Aravind Adiga’s The White Tiger, Gaynor Arnold’s Girl in a Blue Dress, Sebastian Barry’s The Secret Scripture, John Berger’s From A to X, Michelle de Kretzer’s The Lost Dog, Amitav Ghosh’s Sea of Poppies, Linda Grant’s The Clothes on Their Backs, Mohammed Hanif’s A Case of Exploding Mangoes, Philip Hensher’s The Northern Clemency, Joseph O’Neill’s Netherland, Salman Rushdie’s The Enchantress of Florence, Tom Rob Smith’s Child 44 and Steve Toltz’s A Fraction of the Whole. The judging panel includes Granta’s new editor, Alex Clark.

Worth noting

The Translation Association of the Society of Authors has published their list of fifty outstanding literary translations from the last fifty years.

Ian McEwan on the brother he never knew he had.

A great deal has already been written about Salman Rushdie’s Best of Booker win earlier this week (see our post below). In today’s Guardian, Stuart Jeffries has an engaging, witty and comprehensive interview with Rushdie. It’s the freshest and funniest Rushdie profile we’ve read for a while. Read it here.

Best of Booker announced

Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children has been judged the Best of Booker – for the second time. We congratulate Granta contributor Rushdie on the win and are proud to note that five of the six authors whose novels were shortlisted for Best of Booker are Granta contributors. They are Pat Barker, Peter Carey, J.M. Coetzee and Nadine Gordimer.

Jhumpa Lahiri wins Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award

Jhumpa Lahiri’s collection, The Unaccustomed Earth, has won the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award, the world’s most lucrative prize for short fiction. The panel of judges consisted of Granta Senior Editor Rosalind Porter, Cork City chief librarian Liam Ronayne and Irish Times literary correspondent Eileen Battersby

A good year for screenwriters

According to Variety, earnings for Hollywood writers ‘rose 4% to a record $943 million in the fiscal year ended March 31’, and this despite the 100-day, 2007-2008 Writer’s Guild of America (WGA) strike, which caused significant damage throughout the industry.

Screenwriters had a particularly strong year – ‘feature work jumped nearly 16% to $502.5 million’ – although this spike is largely attributable to ‘accelerated employment’ as ‘studios stockpiled’ scripts in anticipation of the strike.

Television writers had a harder time of it, with smallscreen earnings being the ‘lowest in three years’ and employment the lowest in eleven. According to the WGA, much of the decline can be blamed on ‘the emergence of primetime reality TV, which uses fewer writers than primetime series and is often not covered by the WGA contracts. In addition, the relative popularity of hourlong formats, especially drama, is a negative factor in employment compared with half-hour formats, which more than double the number of writers per hour of television produced’.

The way in which so-called reality television has impeded upon writer’s livelihoods is, of course, a strike against it. But reality TV is to blame for other things as well. Most reality shows are artless, crude, cynical, repetitive, cheap on every level and manipulated in a way that makes even scripted shows seem honest. But what’s most distressing about reality television is that it shows no signs of going out of fashion.

Worth noting

The University of Warwick has announced a £50,000 writing award. ‘The prize will be given biennially for an excellent and substantial piece of writing in the English language, in any genre or form. The theme will change with every prize: the 2009 theme is Complexity’, according to the press release.

2008 Caine Prize winner announced

South African writer Henrietta Rose-Innes has won this year’s Caine Prize for African Writing, for her short story ‘Poison’. ‘Poison’ also won the 2007 South African PEN Literary award, judged by South African Nobel Laureate J.M. Coetzee. Rose-Innes received a Masters in Creative Writing at the University of Cape Town (UCT) in the late 1990s, studying under Coetzee. Her two novels are Shark’s Egg and The Rock Alphabet. Rose-Innes, who lives in Cape Town, was shortlisted for the £10,000 Caine Prize once before, in 2007. She is the second Capetonian, UCT-graduate to win the award, after Mary Watson won the prize in 2006, for her story ‘Jungfrau’.

And the winner isn’t...

A mishap occurred at the Presence Wales Book of the Year award ceremony when Cultural Minister Rhodri Glyn Thomas announced the wrong winner. Watch what happened here.

Worth noting

Variety has published their annual Ten Screenwriters to Watch. The list includes The Road screenwriter Joe Penhall.

Vanity Fair on New York’s dying culture of reading.

The New York Times on book clubs and progressive politics.

London’s Times on the books people loathe.

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