Jonathan Barnes
Jonathan Barnes on Five First Novels
This year’s longlist for the Man Booker prize is an unusually intriguing one. Alongside commendations for such established writers as Alan Hollinghurst and Julian Barnes is a surprisingly healthy amount of what publishers might designate as ‘genre fiction’ (D J Taylor’s Derby Day; A D Miller’s Snowdrops) as well as an encouraging number of first novels.
Stephen Kelman’s Pigeon English (Bloomsbury 288pp £12.99) is one such debut. Its hero is Harrison Opoku, an eleven-year-old Ghanaian boy who lives on an inner-city housing estate with his mother and sister. At the beginning of the story Harrison, with the aid of a pair of plastic binoculars
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
'Foreign-policy pundits, then as now, tended to lack subtlety, even if they could be highly articulate about a nation they did not like very much.'
Read Lucy Wooding's review of Clare Jackson's 'Devil-Land', which has won the @WolfsonHistory prize.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/the-view-from-across-the-channel
From the First World War to Evelyn Waugh: @DaisyfDunn takes us into the world of Oxford between the wars.
Generously supported by @Lit_Review
#CVHF #AmazingHistory #UniversityofOxford
'That they signify something is not in question. Yet how to interpret the symbols of a long-vanished society? What would the inhabitants of the 50th century make of the ubiquity of crosses in Europe?'
Hilary Davies on the art of the Lascaux caves.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/poems-of-the-underground