Category: publishing

“FT management has begun consultation with employees about the redundancies, with staff in the editorial library and the managing editor’s office at risk of losing their jobs. Other employees who face possible redundancy include staff from advertising sales, finance, IT, conferences and marketing. No journalists will be made redundant, but FT insiders fear the loss of librarians will affect editorial quality.”

“Rawi Hage’s Cockroach, already nominated this year for the Scotiabank Giller and the Rogers Writers’ Trust prizes, added a Governor General’s Literary Award for Fiction nomination to the list yesterday. It is the only novel in the running for all three of Canada’s top book prizes.”

“Most featured writers at this year’s International Festival of Authors will spend Toronto’s 29th annual literary happening engaged in readings, panel discussions, book signings and media interviews… Not so Maung Thura, the Burmese poet, activist and comedian better known to his countrymen by the stage name Zargana. Zargana will pass the event in the same way that he has spent much of the past 20 years: imprisoned in a Rangoon cell by the military rulers of Burma.”

Carlin Romano: “Its departures from solid historical facts… lie within the normal ambit of historical fiction. Its sympathies tilt completely toward Muhammad and Aisha. Controversial aspects – Aisha’s possible flirtatiousness and fibbing, her jealousy, her sharp tongue… all stem from Islamic history itself. Only a Muslim who rejected Muhammad’s lifelong insistence that he was a man like other men could find The Jewel of Medina objectionable or anti-Islam.”

“It’s one of the most contentious debates in the literary blogosphere, but its roots stretch back more than 2,000 years. Is realism, ‘lifeness’ or verisimilitude a necessary quality of good literature? … James Wood argues forcefully that it is, and in so doing has trampled on and trounced some glamorous, bulgy, iconic American novels.”

“Jordanian police arrested a local writer Tuesday for incorporating verses of the Quran, the Muslim holy book, into his love poetry, a judicial official said. The poet, Islam Samhan, published his collection of poems, ‘Grace like a Shadow,’ without the approval of the Jordanian government, and authorities say it insults the holy book, the official said.”

“Late last week, a reader asked us an interesting question: Since most of the coverage of the launch of Tina Brown’s new website, The Daily Beast, mentioned that she appropriated the name from the fictional newspaper in Evelyn Waugh’s Scoop, what’s been going on with sales of the novel lately?” Turns out they’re up.

In reading Charles Dickens, the closer we get, “the more we start to recognise: the scramble for credit, financial scandal, panic. … And not only can we find parallels in his novels with the current crisis, we can also learn from them how to survive and triumph over it.”

British libraries are in crisis. “It is tempting to argue that the mission of Andrew Carnegie, the great 19th-century benefactor who saw libraries as the backbone of national culture, is exhausted. Protests from the ageing band of traditionalists who shrink in horror at change provide no answer. The only hope lies in revolution – long overdue, and in places already under way.”

“In Zhenjiang, where [Pearl] Buck spent much of her first 18 years, the Chinese are working hard to create a viable, profitable tourist industry based on interest in the writer. They are renovating houses and places tied to her to lure visitors from Europe, the United States and Asia. Today, officials here dedicated a grand new Pearl Buck Museum.”