Janice Galloway Opens Fabula Festival with Sold-Out Event

Janice Galloway last week went to Ljubljana to open Fabula Festival, which hosted a number of prominent Slovenian and translated authors. Janice was there to launch CLARA, her novel about Clara Schumann, and her reading of the book was accompanied by a beautiful piano recital.  Supported by Beletrina, the event was a sell-out, with many great names from the Slovenian literary scene attending.

Here’s a short video of Janice’s interview and reading:

CLARA is published in the UK by Vintage, and rights have sold in Germany, France, Italy, Russia and Slovenia.

GIRLS WILL BE GIRLS out in paperback today

Emer O’Toole’s witty and intelligent GIRLS WILL BE GIRLS is published by Orion today. For fans of Caitlin Moran, in GIRLS WILL BE GIRLS Emer encourages young women to explore the issues surrounding their gender, and to face them with confidence. The book examines the performance aspect to being a woman, and what it really means to “act like a girl”.

Emer will be on Woman’s Hour today to celebrate the publication, so be sure to tune in at 10am.

GIRLS WILL BE GIRLS was the number one book pick for February in Stylist Magazine, and was on the Guardian List of 150 Arts Essentials for 2015. The Irish Times also listed it in their Biography and Memoir picks for 2015, and will review in full this weekend, with their preview: "Anna Carey reviews Girls Will be Girls by Emer O’Toole, a witty, engaging appeal for everybody to stop conforming so rigidly to gender stereotypes."

Emer wrote for The Guardian Weekend Mag on Top Ten Things Feminism Has Ruined for her.

Follow Emer on Twitter

Tatamkhulu Afrika’s BITTER EDEN out in paperback in the US today

Tatamkhulu Afrika’s haunting, semi-autobiographical World War II novel is published in paperback today in the States, by Picador USA.

BITTER EDEN is based on Tatamkhulu Afrika’s own capture in North Africa and his experiences as a prisoner-of-war in World War II in Italy and Germany. This frank and beautifully written novel deals with three men who must negotiate the emotions that are brought to the surface by the physical closeness of survival in the male-only camps.

Named in NPR’s Best Books of 2014, Saeen Jones writes that ‘Afrika's autobiographical novel based on his experiences as a prisoner of war during World War II is as beautiful as it is heartbreaking.’

BITTER EDEN has been selected in the 2015 Stonewall Book Awards as an Honor Book of Literature.

Presses de la Cite recently pre-empted for French rights for the novel, which they will publish for the Rentrée Litteraire in Autumn 2015.

Praise for BITTER EDEN:

‘Afrika ‘shows with an insider’s empathy how, in the myriad battles of our recent past, an even greater number of private wars were lost or won.’ – Argus.

‘BITTER EDEN’s love is neither kind nor tame nor ever adorned.  The word love is never mentioned, because love—if this is really the name for it—is so spare and brutal and bare-knuckled that the characters themselves aren’t even aware of it.  But this book will haunt you, and stay with you, and won’t ever let go, just like the memory of a love that never happened but should have happened continues to exact its toll of misfired hopes and regrets.  But the language is not spare and the poetry here, like shards of a broken bottle, is simply everywhere.’ – André Aciman, Call Me By Your Name

'Bitter Eden is earthy and lyrical, caustic and moving.' – Christos Tsiolkas, author of The Slap

Paul Mendelson's THE AFRICAN QUEEN adaptation airs on BBC Radio 4

At 2.30pm tomorrow, Saturday 21st February, tune into BBC Radio 4 to hear Toby Jones and Samantha Bond in Paul Mendelson's radio dramatisation of CS Forester's classic World War I novel THE AFRICAN QUEEN, set in German Central Africa. Click here to stream it live, or to find it on iPlayer catchup.

“It’s a brave team who will have a go at surpassing the 1951 John Huston film of CS Forester’s story but here’s Toby Jones in the Humphrey Bogart role and Samantha Bond in the Katherine Hepburn one... Paul Mendelson’s script is deft, the acting superb, the production a delight.” - Gillian Reynolds, The Telegraph

THE STORY:

Rose Sayer’s work as a missionary comes to an abrupt end when the village she lives in with her brother, Reverend Samuel Sayer, is invaded by the German army. Samuel dies of fever and Rose blames the ungodly Germans for having ground him down and frightened off the entire village.

Patriotically but naively, Rose conceives of blowing up a German warship, thus helping the war effort. She convinces cowardly Cockney Charlie Allnut to lend his rickety steam-powered boat, The African Queen, to the cause. He has offered to give Rose a lift in his boat to get away from the village and the Germans, so reluctantly goes along with her plan. If they manage to survive German attacks, rapids, malaria and mechanical mishaps, will they be able to survive each other?

The novel was the basis for the highly popular Hollywood movie of the same name. Paul Mendelson's dramatisation goes back to the novel, reinstating Forester's original ending and giving Charlie his Cockney identity back.

With Samantha Bond as Rose; Toby Jones as Charlie; Stephen Critchlow as Samuel Sayer; Mark Edel-Hunt as German Sailor; and David Acton as German Sea Captain.

Music composed and played by Gary C Newman
Producer/Director: David Ian Neville
Written by Paul Mendelson

Peter James is the ‘Best Crime Writer Of All Time’

The public have voted Peter James the ‘Best Crime Writer of All Time’ in a poll run by WH Smiths. Peter James won the poll ‘by a landslide’, beating crime heavyweights including Ian Rankin, James Patterson and even the classic Agatha Christie.

Earlier this month, Peter’s detective Roy Grace came 7th in WH Smiths poll of the Top 20 Detectives.

The Roy Grace novels are published in the UK by Macmillan and are international bestsellers, translated into over 35 languages. His 11th Roy Grace novel, YOU ARE DEAD, is out in May 2015.

Praise for Peter James

'Peter James is one of the best crime writers in the business.' -- Karin Slaughter

'Exceptional, knock-your-socks-off.' -- Washington Post