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1930 – 2009 ¤ JG Ballard‘s fertile imagination fancifully envisaged yet another World War where the British and the Americans fought on different sides. ⇒ This story, ⇒«Theatre of War» ⇐ was published in his book ‘Myths of the Near Future’, and it’s written in a style which looks much the same as a […]
∇ Slaughterhouse Five⇐
Slaughterhouse-Five is an account of Billy Pilgrim’s capture and incarceration by the Germans during the last years of World War II, and scattered throughout the narrative are episodes from Billy’s life both before and after the war, and from his travels to the planet Tralfamadore. Billy […]
[1910 – 1999] – •→http://www.paulbowles.org/ Paul Bowles was born in Queens, New York, in 1910. He began his travels as a teenager, setting off for Paris, telling no one of his plans. In 1930 he visited Morocco for the first time, with Aaron Copland, with whom he was studying music. His early reputation was as a […]
1919-2010
J.D. Salinger‘s classic coming-of-age story portrays one young man’s funny and poignant experiences with life, love, and sex. Ever since it was first published in 1951, this novel has been the coming-of-age story against which all others are judged. Read and cherished by generations, the story of Holden Caulfield is truly one […]
1918 – 1985
← Read (icon or below) extract from ‘VENUS + X’
PLOT:
Charlie Johns has been snatched from his home on 61 North 34th Street and delivered to the strange future world of Ledom. Here, violence is a vague and improbable notion. Technology has triumphed over hunger, overpopulation, pollution, […]
If you’ve read Iain Banks‘s novel, you’ll enjoy the BBC-Radio 4 interview.
→ http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b016w0nf
Includes an excerpt from Chapter 8 read by Iain Banks himself. Transcript below . . .
Iain Banks meets James Naughtie and readers at the National Library of Scotland in Edinburgh to talk about his […]
South African novelist and short-story writer, Nobel Prize for Literature in 1991. Most of Nadine Gordimer‘s works deal with the moral and psychological tensions of her racially divided home country. She was a founding member of Congress of South African Writers, and even at the height of the apartheid regime, […]
¤ Doris Lessing [1919-2013]
In her long and complex career, Doris Lessing, the winner of the 2007 Nobel Prize in literature, has traversed the savannas of Africa, the crooked streets of London and the chilly reaches of outer space. Irving Howe once described her as “the archaeologist of human relations,” […]
¤ PARROT AND OLIVIER IN AMERICA (excerpts)
Olivier is an aristocrat, one of an endangered species born in France just after the Revolution. Parrot, the son of an itinerant English printer and twice Olivier’s age, always wanted to be an artist but has ended up a servant. Starting on different sides of […]
•→biography← [1874-1963]
Robert Frost holds a unique and almost isolated position in American letters. «Though his career fully spans the modern period and though it is impossible to speak of him as anything other than a modern poet,» writes James M. Cox, «it is difficult to place […]
Born on 21 June 1948 in Aldershot, England, he studied at the University of Sussex, where he received a BA degree in English Literature in 1970. He received his MA degree in English Literature at the University of East Anglia.
McEwan’s works have earned him worldwide critical acclaim. He won the […]
¤ Director’s Cut: Underworld by Don DeLillo
For the 60th anniversary of the Shot Heard ‘Round the World, read an excerpt from
Pafko at the Wall ↓ the prologue to DeLillo’s American epic.
Another except from Underworld . . .
We were about thirty miles below the Canadian border […]
An international bestseller since its publication in 1978, The World According to Garp established John Irving as one of the most imaginative writers of his generation.
This is the life and times of T. S. Garp, the bastard son of Jenny Fields, a feminist leader ahead of her time. This […]
1930 – 2009
Frank McCourt was born in Brooklyn — he would later, much later, memorably describe the scene of his conception in his memoir — but he grew up in Ireland. His parents were both Irish immigrants, and they moved back there, to Limerick, in an effort to stay […]
•→ E.E. Cummings _ A poet, playwright, novelist, and painter ⇐
¤ The Enormous Room
Edward Estlin Cummings (1894 – 1962), the author of the book, was suspected of treason while volunteering in France during […]
¤ Ray Bradbury ⇓ [1920-2012] Φ «The Veldt« ⇐[song]
A short story written by Ray Bradbury that was published originally as «The World the Children Made» in the September 23, 1950 issue of The Saturday Evening Post, later republished in the anthology The Illustrated Man in 1951. The anthology is a collection of […]
1917 – 1993
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A diatribe against behaviourism (or «behavioural psychology») of the 1940s to 1960s as propounded by the psychologists John B. Watson and B. F. Skinner. Burgess disapproved of behaviourism as much as I do myself, calling prominent behaviourist B. F. Skinner’s most popular book, Beyond Freedom and Dignity […]
1928 – 1982
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? is a science fiction novel by American writer Philip K. Dick first published in 1968. The main plot follows Rick Deckard, a bounty hunter of androids, while the secondary plot follows John Isidore, a man of sub-normal intelligence who befriends some […]
This is a book by William Golding (1911 – 1993) you may have already read, or you may fancy reading in the near future. You can read the plot below. Alternatively, you can play the video and listen to a plot summary while you watch the sparknotes_animation.
Set during World War II, […]
Alan Sillitoe (1928-2010) is one of the Angry Young Men of the 1950s (although none of them welcomed such label). › Born in Nottingham to working class parents, he left school at the age of 14 and served in the Royal Air Force as a wireless operator. After returning to England from Malaya, he was […]
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