The winner of this year's Independent Foreign Fiction Prize was announced last night as Aharon Appelfeld, with his Holocaust novel, Blooms of Darkness (Alma Books); translated from the Hebrew by Jeffrey M. Green. Appelfeld's novel, which is based … [Read more...]
Bookshelf of the Week: A Montaigne-esque personal library
February 8, 2012 By 7 Comments
The first person I thought of when I saw the subject for this week's Bookshelf of the Week was Michel de Montaigne, the celebrated sixteenth-century French nobleman, who is credited as being the founder of the modern personal essay. If the man were … [Read more...]
Rob Reports: The Story Hour event at West Port Book Festival 2011
October 18, 2011 By 2 Comments
Book events with authors normally follow the same old routine - the author's introduced, the author reads, the author answers questions - but at the West Port Book Festival on Sunday and The Short Story Hour, featuring David Gaffney and Hannah … [Read more...]
Rob Reports: Robert Shearman at West Port Book Festival 2011
October 17, 2011 By 2 Comments
The Edinburgh Book Festival may be the biggest literary event of the year in Scotland's capital, but don't think for one minute that outside of August Edinburgh is bereft of any decent book events. There's plenty going on all year round (it is a … [Read more...]
Cover Love: Penguin Ink collection
September 12, 2011 By 3 Comments
If people can have literary tattoos then why can't literature have people tattoos? My 'Cover Love' feature returns to RobAroundBooks this month, with one of the finest looking set of books to have graced the bookshop bookshelves in recent months. … [Read more...]