‘The Booker can drive people mad’
When Alan Hollinghurst's celebrated The Stranger's Child was omitted from the literary prize's shortlist, many questioned the award's credibility. Twelve months on, Britain's great stylist breaks his silence on the issue – and on what turns young peo...
Locating the books with the strongest sense of place
The Ondaatje prize shortlist includes novels from Rahul Bhattacharya and Teju Cole, but which are your favourite books which evoke 'the spirit of a place'?The shortlist for perhaps my favourite of the literary awards has just been announced: the Ondaat...
Third of Australia’s top prize-winning books out of print
Twenty of the 53 winners of the Miles Franklin award are no longer in print – is the Booker in similarly rough shape?Literary Australia is angry. Twenty of the 53 books that have won its most prestigious award, the Miles Franklin, are out of print to...
Wooden spoon
As the fuss surrounding the Pulitzer and Orwell prizes shows, book awards are increasingly more about hype than substanceThe great literary boom of 1980 to 2010 is over, but its glittering prizes still linger, like discarded party favours the morning a...
Idol thoughts
Move over Booker and Pulitzer prizes ... there's a new talent show coming to the West Cork literary festival. Writers, are you ready to face the judges?Over the last few decades, books prizes have become commonplace and a key marketing tool for authors...
Booker’s double prizewinner adds to the lustre of county Durham’s Silver Swan
First it was Mark Twain. Now Peter Carey draws inspiration from the beautiful automaton in the Bowes MuseumIt couldn't happen to a nicer museum. The Bowes at Barnard Castle is enjoying a warm bath of free and generous publicity through the talents of P...
Pulitzers 2012: prize for fiction withheld for first time in 35 years
None of the entries for the best American novel of the last year could command a majorityThe best American novel of the last year? There wasn't one, according to the judges of this year's Pulitzer prize for fiction, who announced yesterday that for the...
Anne Enright: ‘Love is a great punishment for desire’
The Booker-winning Irish novelist on infidelity, Ireland's financial crisis and combining writing with motherhoodThe Forgotten Waltz is about the damage wreaked by infidelity and the tricky relationship between a young girl, Evie, her father, Sean, and...
Making it up as he goes along
He cheated at school, rewrites the classics and is happy to admit to being jealous of his friends' success. The two-time Booker winner reveals why he likes breaking the rulesPeter Carey's first thought was to write about engines. He had been reminiscin...
Esi Edugyan on Half Blood Blues
The Booker-shortlisted novelist on discovering her hero's failings, and resigning herself to her novel'sHow did you come to write Half Blood Blues?I was living in Germany at the time, acutely aware of my difference – being a black woman from Canada. ...
Salman Rushdie
The acclaimed author, who is publishing a long-awaited memoir of his decade in hiding from a murderous fatwa, finds himself threatened once more by fanatics over The Satanic VersesFollowing several days of rumour, it was confirmed last week that Salman...
The conversation: Should we celebrate scathing book reviews?