Interviews
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John Lucas: Getting gritty
John Lucas chats to Iman Qureshi about his debut novel Turf - a hard-hitting chronicle of East London's Blake Street Boyz
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Ben Lerner: 'Once you start writing the language has its own ideas...'
Poet Ben Lerner turned to fiction recently with the experimental mediation on the life of a writer lost in a foreign land. Leaving Atrocha Station is a quiet, poetic work of compelling beauty and power. We spoke to Ben about 'thisness' in fiction, experimentation and what exactly is the 'anti-novel novel'.
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Shehan Karunatilaka: left-handed spin, Pavilion end
We interviewed Shehan Karunatilaka, author of the award-winning novel Chinaman, about unreliable narrators, cricketing glory and playing in bands.
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Nikita Lalwani: 'You have to be careful what you read sometimes whilst writing...'
We talked to Nikita Lalwani about writing The Village,her second novel, about her humanitarian work and her experiences visiting an open prison herself.
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Aharon Appelfeld: winner of the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize 2012
Aharon Appelfeld won this year's Independent Foreign Fiction Prize for the book Blooms of Darkness along with his translator, Jeffrey M Green (an interview with him will appear next week). We spoke to him the day after his win.
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Matías Néspolo: Seven Ways to Interview an Author
Even Matías Néspolo thought that Seven Ways to Kill a Cat might be untranslatable. It's so full of lunfardo, the rough slang of Buenos Aires, and so deeply rooted in the villas miserias, the shanty towns that surround the city. Ellen Hallsworth talks to Néspolo about new writing in Spanish, Moby Dick and the problem with happy endings.
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Andrea Eames
Mara MacSeoinin talks to Andrea Eames, the author of the chilling The White Shadow, about her super-organised existence, writing in different voices and the conflict that forced her family to flee Zimbabwe.
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Craig Taylor: London Is The Place For Me
So much has been written about London, from Dickens to Ackroyd to Monica Ali to Patrick Hamilton and on and on and more and more. Craig Taylor, the brilliantly funny author of A Million Tiny Plays About Britain has taken on the task of the definitive state of the nation (city). He has interviewed people from all walks of life, from economic migrants to middle-class poshos to refugees to tourists to artists, and everyone you can think of, in order to write Londoners, one of the most authentic books about London.
We spoke to Craig, a jetsetting Canadian, about coming to London, who writes the best London and his sporting motto.
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Colin Grant: Natural Mystic
The music biography is a stalwart of non-fiction books. Everyone wants to know the stories behind the songs, what inspired the musicians and where they came from. Colin Grant's I&I: The Natural Mystics is one such book, telling the story of the Wailers, of Bob Marley, Peter Tosh and Bunny Wailer - placing their lives and music in a socio-political backdrop, exploring their relationships with each other and with Jamaica. All to the backdrop of sweet, sweet reggae music. We talked to Colin about writing the book, about music and about working on non-fiction projects.
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Juan Pablo Villalobos: Down the Rabbit Hole We Go
Ellen Hallsworth talks to Mexican author Juan Pablo Villalobos about his novel, Down the Rabbit Hole, narrowly winning the Guardian First Book Award and his relationship with his translator.






