the literary lounge

  ANTHONY BURGESS ONCE COMMENTED THAT ‘ALL NOVELS ARE EXPERIMENTAL’, and while that appears true of such work as A Clockwork Orange and Napoleon Symphony, I think he would be delighted with Adam Roberts’ The Black Prince, based on a 90-page screenplay that Burgess wrote, which was never filmed. Roberts, an academic, great Burgess fan … Continue readings →

Tags : 14th century England, Adam Roberts, Anthony Burgess, Dos Passos, Edward III, from screen to novel, historical fiction, medieval European historical fiction, pastiche, The Black Prince, Unbound, war

  ‘Personal background info. Loud noises make me flinch, and many, many much quieter ones … make me want to punch the wall … Strangers at the door make me nervous. Random conversation in the street makes me suspicious. … Thomas, aforementioned guardian, knows better than anyone how much I hate change in general and … Continue readings →

Tags : coming of age, Coming of Age fiction, contemporary fiction, cult fiction, long-listed fiction, Martine McDonagh, Narcissism for Beginners, reading on location, women writers

  For some reason, and please don’t ask me why, Queen’s ‘Another one bites the dust’ was going through my head as I read Overkill. On repeat. This was slightly off-putting, but strangely quite fitting given that the opening – probably one of the best, attention-grabbing first scenes of any book I’ve read recently – … Continue readings →

Tags : crime fiction, female detective fiction, New Zealand noir, Ngaio Marsh, Ngaio Marsh award, NZ fiction, NZ writers, Orenda, procedural fiction, Queens of detective fiction, Sam Shephard, The Literary Lounge Q&A, Vanda Symon

  Today, we’re delighted to welcome New Zealand writer extraordinaire VANDA SYMON to The Literary Lounge. Overkill, the first book featuring protagonist Sam Shephard, is published in the UK by Orenda. Vanda, thanks so much for spending time with us.     LS: I believe Overkill was the first novel you wrote and  published. How … Continue readings →

Tags : Mataura, Meet the author The Literary Lounge, New Zealand noir, Ngaio Marsh award, NZ crime fiction, Overkill, procedural crime fiction, Roderick Alleyn, Sam Shephard, Sam Shephard series, Taika Waititi, The Literary Lounge Q&A, Troy and Alleyn, Vanda Symon

  Today, we’re delighted to welcome writer Mike Shanahan to The Literary Lounge. Mike’s beautiful book, Ladders to Heaven, is published by Unbound. It celebrates the fig tree, a ‘keystone species’ which sustains a huge number of animals and insects around the world and is also important not just in terms of our past but … Continue readings →

Tags : book review, book review Shanahan, books about trees, botany, fig trees, flora and fauna, Ladder to Heaven, Mike Shanahan, non-fiction, Q&A, The Literary Lounge Q&A, tree love, Unbound

  This is an important year, the centenary of the introduction of the first vote for women in Britain. The vote – the privilege of being able to vote, to step forward and have a voice – is something to be celebrated, especially in these times of politically shifting sands. So, when I first heard … Continue readings →

  The Incendiaries, RO Kwon’s debut novel, is a restrained study of obsession, deceit, love and loss. Kwon’s characters, Will, Phoebe and John Leal, meet at an elite American university. Will and Phoebe are students there, John Leal, the arcane leader of a cult linked to North Korea who focuses his attention on recruiting Phoebe. … Continue readings →

  If you were to say that you were writing a book combining Sherlock Holmes, iconic filmmaker Billy Wilder and the Loch Ness Monster, set in London and Scotland, in two different time periods, I would probably wonder if the world had gone slightly mad – yet that’s exactly what novelist Patrick Kincaid has done … Continue readings →

    Today, we’re delighted to welcome writer Patrick Kincaid to The Literary Lounge.  Patrick’s debut book, The Continuity Girl, is published by Unbound. It draws on iconic filmmaker Billy Wilder’s controversial and yet cult movie The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes. We’re particularly excited as we love Sherlock in all his incarnations and yet … Continue readings →

  doppelgänger noun An apparition or double of a living person.“   The doppelgänger is a recurring device in popular culture, the duplicate other often featuring as part of some larger, nefarious plot – the rather creepy film The Double Man (1967) and Ira Levin’s excellent The Stepford Wives (1972) cases in point. Michael Redhill, … Continue readings →

  A great setting is important to any book, but in a work of crime fiction it is particularly so. In this, Sandra Ireland’s Bone Deep doesn’t disappoint: it has atmospheric locations in spades. A disused watermill lies at the heart of the book, a place suitably immersed in history and legend and bound up … Continue readings →

August is the month that celebrates women writers in translation, of which statistically there are still far too few. Teresa Solana has the distinction of being both a writer in translation and a career translator. Her books, which often blend crime, dark satire and the surreal or grotesque, are translated from her native Catalan by … Continue readings →