Troy Blacklaws wins Lire Magazine award for the “Best Discovery in Foreign Fiction”

Troy Blacklaws has won the Lire Magazine award for Best Discovery in Foreign Fiction 2013 for his novel CRUEL CRAZY BEAUTIFUL WORLD, published in France by Flammarion, and translated by Pierre Guglielmina. Other winners of the award this year include Pierre LeMaitre for Best French Novel and Joyce Carol Oates for Best Foreign Novel. Lire Magazine also recognised Troy’s debut novel KAROO BOY with an award in 2006.

CRUEL CRAZY BEAUTIFUL WORLD is set in South Africa in 2004. Jerusalem (half Muslim, half Jew) is a young student with poetic leanings. Jabulani loses his teaching job for making a satirical remark about Mugabe and flees his native Zimbabwe. As the two men's lives merge, their stories reveal the paradoxes of the Southern African experience.

Troy Blacklaws is a South African writer, photographer, and English teacher, who currently lives in Luxembourg. He is also author of the semi-autobiographical BLOOD ORANGE and his prize-winning debut novel KAROO BOY. KAROO BOY was shortlisted for the South African Sunday Times Fiction Prize 2005, and the Prix Femina for foreign fiction 2006, the year of his previous Lire accolade. In Germany KAROO BOY was longlisted for the International Literature Award 2009, given by the Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin.                                                                                                               

Praise for Troy Blacklaws:

‘With his supple and inventive use of the language, Blacklaws creates fully realized characters and vivid imagery that shimmers against a stark backdrop.’ -- John Berendt, author of MIDNIGHT IN THE GARDEN OF GOOD AND EVIL

‘Troy Blacklaws effortlessly conjures up the sights, sounds and rhythms of the South African landscape.’ -- Vikas Swarup, author of SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE

 Praise for CRUEL CRAZY BEAUTIFUL WORLD:

‘Mesmerising and evocative.’ -- Deon Meyer, author of TRACKERS

‘A sense of metaphor breathes poetic dimension into the novel that lifts its writing to a higher plane.  [...] one of those books which manage to bewitch the reader from the very first paragraphs, as much by the storyline as by the realism of the lands painted therein.’ -- Alexis Brunet, La Cause Littéraire

‘Astonishingly rich…A fresh and vivid depiction of South Africa…Similes and metaphors leap off the page, landscape and inner feelings are described in ways I have not experienced before which allow one to see and experience the familiar as something strange and exotic.’  -- Hazel Barnes, The Witness

Mick Martin & Hull Truck's FLAME HAIRED DYNAMO opens

This Christmas, Hull Truck invites you to join Chris on a hilarious and heartfelt journey - part Back to the Future, part A Christmas Carol, all brilliantly unhinged - from Mick Martin, the writer of 2012 Northern Soul smash Once Upon a Time in Wigan.

The play, directed by Nick Lane, has opened in newly-announced City of Culture 2017, Hull and will run until 11th January:

Chris McCann's life is going nowhere. He's out of work, out of money and out of luck. His kids don't understand him and his wife's at her wits' end. Worst of all, it's Christmas.

Is Chris in the mood for mistletoe and wine? No. He can't afford them for a start! He's blown what cash he had on old Christmas Annuals so he can revisit the world of his boyhood heroes, especially Titch McCreavie, the Flame-Haired Dynamo - a superstar footballer, 1970s style!

As Christmas Day approaches, Chris withdraws into the cartoon world of perfect goals, perfect girls, flared jeans and fondue parties - with some rather surprising results!

Click here to buy tickets, click here to see the actor Dave Maccreedy (Titch McCreavie) talking about the play, and here to see photos from the play's rehearsals.

THE TRICK IS TO KEEP BREATHING voted one of 10 Best Scottish Novels of Last 50 Years

Janice Galloway’s THE TRICK IS TO KEEP BREATHING has been voted one of the best ten Scottish Novels of the Last 50 Years. This was the result of a poll from the Scottish Book Trust for Book Week Scotland, and over 8,800 votes were cast from 57 different countries. THE TRICK IS TO KEEP BREATHING placed 9th after Scottish classics such as TRAINSPOTTING by Irvine Welsh, BLACK AND BLUE by Ian Rankin and EXCESSION by Iain M Banks. You can see the list of winners here.

Janice Galloway was born in Ayrshire in 1955. Her first novel, THE TRICK IS TO KEEP BREATHING (Vintage), now widely regarded as a contemporary Scottish classic, was published in 1990. It was shortlisted for the Whitbread First Novel, Scottish First Book, Italia Premio Acerbi and Aer Lingus Awards, and won the MIND/Allen Lane Book of the Year. Her second novel was FOREIGN PARTS (Vintage, 1995), which won Te McVitie's Prize. CLARA (Vintage), a fictionalised account of the life of Clara Schumann, was published in 2003 and won the Saltire Book of the Year.

Praise for THE TRICK IS TO KEEP BREATHING:

"The novel presents a searing portrait of a mind in crisis and offers the possibility of hope in its darkest moments." - Stuart Kelly

Andrew Wong on Paul Hollywood’s Pies and Puds

Photo copyright: Danny Elwes

Andrew Wong, winner of Chinese Masterchef in the UK, appeared on Paul Hollywood’s Pies And Puds last Thursday to help Paul make a chicken chow mein pie, as well as demonstrating the ancient art of noodle-pulling. If that sounds delicious or bizarre to you, and you want to find out more, you can watch the program here. Andrew’s segment starts at 15:20.

After stints in kitchens across London, Andrew decided to travel around China, moving from kitchen to kitchen - from a noodle stand in Chengdu to the Millennium Hotel in Qingdoa. Upon returning to London, he opened restaurant A.WONG to rave reviews from the Evening Standard, Guardian, Independent and Times. Just nine months after opening, the restaurant's modern exploration of regional Chinese cuisine has already resulted in it being rated as one of the best Chinese restaurants in the UK by The Good Food Guide, as well as recently winning a coveted Bib Gourmand in the 2014 Michelin guide.

Andrew is currently working on his first book.

Lucy Mangan's BOOKWORM sold to Square Peg

Square Peg has acquired Lucy Mangan's book about Children's Books, BOOKWORM. The book sold at auction to editor Rowan Yapp, who will publish it in Autumn 2015.

BOOKWORM is a love letter to the joys of childhood reading; it will offer a witty, impassioned history of the childhood stories we loved and the extraordinary people who created them; it will also explore the thousand subtle ways these books shape our own lives - the bonds we form, the rites of passage we undergo, the understanding we gain. It will begin as we all do, with picture books such as The Very Hungry Caterpillar, leading us through secret gardens, along railway lines and across prairies, right up to a shared coming of age with Judy Blume, Patrick Ness and Philip Pullman. 

Lucy Mangan is a columnist for Guardian Weekend magazine and Stylist, and author of MY FAMILY AND OTHER ANIMALS, THE RELUCTANT BRIDE and HOPSCOTCH AND HANDBAGS.