Beasts and Bollocks

So what are you reading this week?

I didn't get a whole lot of reading during the litfest, with so many events to attend and people to talk to. And over the past week I've been a bit of a nibbler, dipping into several different books.

One book I did finish was Uzodinma Iweala's Beasts of no Nation. It was high on my must-read list anyway, especially as it is written by a Nigerian author (albeit one who is also an American author) and Nigeria's a part of the world I know and care about. And then Ms. D declared it her favourite book of last year, and I respect her opinion. And then it won the John Rhys Llewellyn Award.

I can't recommend this little book (142 pages) too highly. It's the story of a child swept up into the chaos of Nigeria's Civil War, abducted by a rag-tag group of rebels and forced to become a child soldier. Agu narrates his own story in broken English: the voice is very well done, capturing the essence of Nigerian pidgin without ever slowing the writing down.

The book addresses a very basic human question - how can an individual be drawn in to committing inhuman acts? Poignant flashbacks of family and school days show us Agu's life before the war. But his descent into hell is rapid and fueled by starvation, drugs and the sure knowledge that if he does not kill, he will himself be killed. Soon he is slaughtering innocent victims along with the rest, and even deriving pleasure from it. Despite the setting , the book could actually have been set anywhere in the world where children are recruited to fight.

I could write a whole lot more about the book but will save that for a review I'm writing for Off The Edge.

I must also add that I love this particular paperback edition from HarperPerennial for its handfeel, cover design, the flexibility of the spine, the weight of the pages, the size of print ... and all the add-ons at the end including an essay by the author talking about how the book came to be written. This is how I would like all paperbacks to be.

I've been dipping into a couple of books that I acquired at the last Big Bookshop warehouse sale, among them Bollocks to Alton Towers is a sort of alternative travel guide to places in UK. Most books of this sort direct you to the famous tourist spots (like the amusement park, Alton Towers, in the title), this quirky little book recommends day trips to all kinds of obscure places which also guarantee a dose of fun. Here's a pub built like a pack of cards in Devon, the David Beckham trail in North London, a village on Salisbury Plain abandoned during the war when the army wanted to test weapons, the Cumberland pencil museum ... and much much more. The pieces by Robin Halstead, Jason Hazely, Alex Morris and Joel Morris are amusing and informative and I'd love to follow up some of these unusual day-trips next time I go back to dear old Blighty. (I'm getting homesick!!)

Actually I've several more books I want to talk about but I'm afraid I'll be sucked into the black hole of this blog for the rest of the morning when my typing fingers are demanded for elsewhere things.

So I kick the ball to you, and promise to post about other reads later.

And The Next Big (American) Writer Is ...

The guys at Granta magazine bring their crystal balls out of the cupboard every ten years to predict the most important writers of the future. They've done it with British writers with a great degree of success: a glance at the lists for 1983, 1993, 2003 reads like a Who's Who of the British literary scene.

And now, for the second time they are doing the same with American writers, the Guardian reports.

They didn't do a bad job last time with Jeffrey Eugenides, Jonathan Franzen, Lorrie Moore and David Guterson making the list. But most of the writers, I still haven't heard of, despite a more than average ear to the ground. (It's probably something to do with my Britlit bias: apologies to my American friends.)

These then are the chosen ones, and if you want to read more about them, there's a biodata of each on the Granta website.

Daniel Alarcón
Kevin Brockmeier
Judy Budnitz
Christopher Coake
Anthony Doerr
Jonathan Safran Foer
Nell Freudenberger
Olga Grushin
Dara Horn
Gabe Hudson
Uzodinma Iweala
Nicole Krauss
Rattawut Lapcharoensap
Yiyun Li
Maile Meloy
ZZ Packer
Jess Row
Karen Russell
Akhil Sharma
Gary Shteyngart
John Wray

How many have you heard of? If you said "All of them", sorry, you're bluffing. Seven have not been published yet and make their debut in the latest edition of the magazine.

A.L.Kennedy (herself Granta listed twice) on the Guardian blog admits she's only heard of one them.

I feel nicely smug because I've heard of Jonathan Safran Foer, have bought Uzodinma Iweala's novel, and have read (and loved!) Yiyun Li and Rattawat Lapcharoensap. (Come to think of it, it seems that some good writers from elsewhere have been conveniently appropriated. Poor Yiyun Li probably doesn't even have her green card yet!!)

The age limit for "young writers" has now apparently been lowered from 40 to 35. Says Granta editor Ian Jack:

People seem to be writing (and publishing) fiction sooner ... they have, at least in theory, a head start on their predecessors and should be getting better, quicker.

In the introduction to the current issue of the magazine which brings together samples of the writing, Ian Jack points to a changes in focus: writers' interest in social class has "ebbed" and in its place is "a concern with death, uncertainty and the outside world". He also observes that nearly all of the writers on the list have attended creative writing courses.

But won't be all sunshine and roses for listed writers from hereonin if Kennedy's own experience is anything to go by. She described the dubious pleasures of:

... touring the country for readings, largely to tiny audiences, and sitting in a cupboard with my fellow authors to sign so many copies of Granta that by the end of it all, my signature was so permanently mangled I had to notify my bank. And it meant I attended a party at the Saatchi gallery and got to see the Blood Head and Patrick Stewart.

But come to think of it, the first time I heard of A.L.Kennedy was on a Granta list, and I have, since, bought her books.

I think I will make my predictions about the most promising young Malaysian writers, but hey, I'm going to seal up the paper and bury it in a time-capsule ... and blog about it ten years hence!