Reviews & features: Books

Philip Pullman - The Good Man Jesus and The Scoundrel Christ

'The Most Dangerous Author in Britain' comes to the Book Festival

You will know him by the horns, of course, and the casual air of unholy sin. For Philip Pullman is the anti-God and ‘The Most Dangerous Author in Britain’, according to the modern gospel of The Mail on Sunday. To most of us, however, he is the avuncular…

Encounters series offers insight into themes running through the Edinburgh International Festival 2012

2 for 1 deals on Encounters talks during the last week of 2012 EIF

The Fringe/Book/International Festivals are coming to their various ends, but there's no need to dissolve into a flood of fest regrets: there are still gems to be found, and we can help you locate them. Encounters is a series of lectures and talks…

Christos Tsiolkas' The Slap touched a few raw nerves

He tells us how he tackled this multi-story tale.

Judge me once you’ve walked a mile in my shoes, the old saying goes. Well in his latest book, The Slap, Christos Tsiolkas hands us the literary equivalent of eight pairs of walking boots. Set in suburban Melbourne, the novel opens with a chapter devoted…

Richard Milward on karma and a girl called Kimberly

The writer reads from latest book at the Faber Social Unbound event in Charlotte Square

‘One of the best books I’ve ever read about being young, working class and British,’ said Irvine Welsh of Richard Milward’s 2007 debut, Apples. The 27-year-old followed it with Ten Storey Love Song (2009), a riotous tale of tower-block living written in…

John Gordon Sinclair on taking the plunge into crime fiction

Actor discusses debut novel Seventy Times Seven at Edinburgh Book Festival

On approaching your first novel after decades spent working in another industry, it stands to reason that your job will influence the writing. It makes sense then that John Gordon Sinclair’s debut, Seventy Times Seven, has a cinematic quality to it…

Award-winning journalist James Meek to speak at Edinburgh Book Festival

Meek will speak on his upcoming novel and the importance of book festivals

James Meek’s upcoming novel, The Heart Broke In, is billed as ‘a seductive drama full of scandal, dilemmas, love and sacrifice’. Coupled with his previous form, the acclaimed The People’s Act of Love and We Are Now Beginning Our Descent, the Charlotte…

Unbound at the Edinburgh International Book Festival

Night-time strand of off-the-page experimentation featuring Sarah Hall and Jenni Fagan

As wonderful as the Edinburgh International Book Festival is – and believe us, it is wonderful – the leafy confines of Charlotte Square Gardens, the village fete-style white tents and the hordes of latte-sipping Guardianistas can sometimes make the…

Sarah Hall talks of new book Beautiful Indifference at 2012 Edinburgh International Book Festival

Cultured finesse in Booker shortlisted authoress' new work

The Scottish writer Douglas Dunn once gave Sarah Hall a crucial piece of advice while she studied Creative Writing under him at St Andrews: ‘Sarah, why don’t you try writing in sentences?’ Dunn must be very proud of her now given the quality of…

Gordon Ferris - The Hanging Shed

Evoking the dark side of 1950s Scotland

For an author whose subject matters might be referred to as solidly traditional – a compelling combination of post-war historical drama and ripping crime thriller – Gordon Ferris is at the leading edge of a publishing revolution. The first two novels in…

Don’t Look Now - Ed. Paul Newland

(Intellect Press) Don’t Look Now is a work of low-key persuasion; it wants to convince us that seventies British cinema wasn’t an aesthetic dire strait, but a forking path of numerous possibilities. The decade may have given us film versions of On…

Top 5 food events at the Edinburgh Book Festival

There’s nothing like a book event to get your tummy rumbling

Tom Kitchin The Michelin-starred, all-too aptly-named chef must feel like the cat who nabbed the cream as he launches his first cookbook From Nature to Plate. 17 Aug, 2.30pm, £9 (£7) Sue Lawrence The 1991 victor of Masterchef has produced a…

Kids' events

The last few days of the kids programme takes a walk on the dark side with scary-sounding events such as Night of the Living Horror (25 Aug, 6pm) which opens up a world of gothic terror for those aged ten plus, though Justin Somper and his Vampirates…

Lavinia Greenlaw set for Edinburgh International Book Festival date

Poetry collection The Casual Perfect addresses getting older

At 49, Lavinia Greenlaw is hardly ancient, but her thoughts turn to the experience of getting older in her most recent collection of poetry, The Casual Perfect. ‘I wondered for years, thinking, if the casual perfect were a tense, what would it be? Then…

Prolific young Nigerian author Chibundu Onuzo to talk at the 2012 Book Festival

Looking to a future beyond books

Chibundu Onuzo’s tale is a heartening one for young writers. The Nigerian-born author began her first novel when she was just 17 and secured a two-book deal with Faber at 19, before being published at 21. Her debut, The Spider King’s Daughter, follows…

Choose Your Own Adventure author Ian Livingstone to visit Edinburgh

The author will appear at both the Book Festival and Edinburgh Interactive

I always had a big interest games. In the 1960s I used to play Diplomacy [a strategic WWI board game] and play-by-mail games. When Steve Jackson and I met up in London in the 70s, we were old school friends and we thought, wouldn’t it be a great idea to…

Sandi Toksvig comes to Fringe with live show My Valentine

The author and broadcaster's show is inspired by her latest novel, Valentine Grey

As the incomparable Sandi Toksvig prepares for a Fringe pit-stop, as part of her UK tour, The List grill her on what’s inspired her latest opus

New 'Spoken Word' category houses some of the finest acts of Fringe 2012

Performers in the new strand include Luke Wright, Mark Grist, Alex Keelan and Claire Mooney

‘People still think it’s going to be “Charge of the Light Brigade” by a bloke in a suit,’ Luke Wright crackles down the phone to me. He’s sitting in the pub where he’s working on a new show with Mark Grist, a teacher turned rap battler and fellow…

How to make your Edinburgh Fringe show a success

Author of The Edinburgh Fringe Survival Guide Mark Fisher dispenses good advice

A couple of years ago, I was commissioned by Methuen Drama to write The Edinburgh Fringe Survival Guide, a 280-page manual published earlier this year and described by Lyn Gardner of the Guardian as "a wonderfully practical but also inspirational book…

Five writers' views on Seamus Heaney ahead of Edinburgh Book Festival

Ruth Padel, Ron Butlin, Bashabi Fraser, Alan Gillis and John Burnside

Ruth Padel. I’ve carried Heaney’s work with me all over the place, both his poetry and his always illuminating criticism. He gets to the heart every time. When I first met him, the book I shyly asked if he’d sign was Station Island: such innovative…

Jane Harris

The author of The Observations and Gillespie and I on making Glasgow an evocative character

‘The secret was what I began with,’ says Jane Harris about her most recent work, Gillespie and I. And what a mystery we unravel, as narrator Harriet Baxter reflects on her time in 1880s Glasgow and the consequences of a chance meeting with ‘soulmate…

Horror Stories for Kids at 2011 Edinburgh Book Festival

Darren Shan, Barry Hutchison & Alexander Gordon Smith talk horror

As far as groundings in the horror business go, young adult writer Barry Hutchison knew exactly what fear was from an early age. ‘I lived in a perpetual state of terror when I was a kid,’ says the Fort William-based creator of the Invisible Fiends…

Bella Bathurst - The Bicycle Book

New literary vehicle for Lighthouse Stevensons author

Bella Bathurst’s The Bicycle Book navigates the past and present of two-wheeled travel. From the suffragettes who recognised it as a ‘freedom machine’ to the huge rise in cycling’s popularity in Britain since the millennium, it features a cast of…

Interview: Ali Smith - There but for the

Scottish writer appears at 2011 Edinburgh Book Festival

There can be few more anxious experiences for an author than turning to the literary section of a newspaper as the book they have slogged over for possibly years is taken apart by a faceless critic. One national paper gave Ali Smith the fright of her…

Ewan Morrison - Tales from the Mall

Author's latest project contains pictures from shopping centres

Can you give us five words to describe Tales from the Mall? Anecdotes, confessions, myths, underbelly, consumerism. Which authors should be more famous than they are now? Wishing fame on a writer is tantamount to desiring their demise as…

Nick Kent: The rock journo who became the story

Apathy for the Devil will have plenty to talk about at the Book Festival

‘When you get right down to it, the memory is a deceitful organ to have to rely on,’ reflects notorious rock scribe Nick Kent in the opening lines of his memoir, Apathy for the Devil. But even Kent’s near-fatal rock’n’roll lifestyle couldn’t wholly…