Literary Prague

Last weekend I was lucky enough to jet off to Prague in the Czech Republic. With buildings that are centuries old and the Vltava River flowing straight through the middle, Prague is a truly beautiful and charming city. It has often been the centre of political turmoil and yet its buildings stand largely unbruised besides the constant stream of graffiti.

Prague is a cultural hub with the Rudolfilim, which is home to the Prague Philharmonic Orchestra, and the Estates Theatre, where Mozart's Don Giovani debuted. Kanye West and Rihanna have both filmed music videos in the city and Prague has also played host to many film sets, including Mission Impossible and the Chronicles of Narnia.

I, of course, however, will be looking at the literature side of things and the most famous literary figure to have come out of Prague is probably Franz Kafka. Kafka was born in 1883 into a middle-class Jewish family in Prague, Bohemia, when it was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. he house he was born in was situated on Prague's Old Town Square and is now home to a permanent Kafka exhibition. At this time, it is thought that around 26,000 Jews lived in the city. Following World War 2, however, the community has declined to 1,500.

Kafka himself died young, at only 40 years old, but during World War 2, his sisters were deported by the Nazis, along with their families, to the Łódź Ghetto. They subsequently died either in the Ghetto or in concentration camps, including Theresienstadt and Auschwitz.

Kafka was educated at the Altstädter Deutsches Gymnasium and the building still stands today. He later went on to study Chemistry at Prague's Charles-Ferdinand University before changing course to Law. Kafka never actually wrote specifically about Prague in any of his short stories or novels but it is felt that the city, although unnamed, is very much present in his writing. Most of his works were published postumously, despite his last request: "Everything I leave behind me ... in the way of diaries, manuscripts, letters, sketches, and so on, [is] to be burned unread."

Another author to have lived in Prague is American writer, Marcia Davenport, whose house and plaque I saw on my walk around the city.

The Orange Prize: Longlist

The Orange Prize for Fiction is an award given to women writers who have displayed great originality and excellence in a new novel. The winner wins a cheque for a not insignificant £30,000 and a bronze figurine known as a 'Bessie', which is unique each year, designed and donated by Grizel Niven.

The chair of this year's judging panel is the famous writer, Joanna Trollope, who is accompanied by a group of well-known and successful writers and broadcasters: Lisa Appignanesi, Victoria Derbyshire, Natalie Haynes and Natasha Kaplinsky.

The longlist was announced yesterday, on International Women's Day, and includes a handful of debut novelists, which is always exciting to see. Last year's winner, Téa Obreht, was a debut novelist and the youngest to ever win the prize. Her novel was The Tiger's Wife.

Accompanying the debut novelists on the list are some more familiar names, including Ann Patchett, Ali Smith and 2011 nominee, Emma Donoghue, but who will win??

Island of Wings by Karin Altenberg (Quercus) - Swedish; 1st Novel

On the Floor by Aifric Campbell (Serpent's Tail) - Irish; 3rd Novel

The Grief of Others by Leah Hager Cohen (The Clerkenwell Press) - American; 4th Novel

The Sealed Letter by Emma Donoghue (Picador) - Irish; 7th Novel

Half Blood Blues by Esi Edugyan (Serpent's Tail) - Canadian; 2nd Novel

The Forgotten Waltz by Anne Enright (Jonathan Cape) - Irish; 5th Novel

The Flying Man by Roopa Farooki (Headline Review) - British; 5th Novel

Lord of Misrule by Jaimy Gordon (Quercus) - American; 4th Novel

Painter of Silence by Georgina Harding (Bloomsbury) - British; 3rd Novel

Gillespie and I by Jane Harris (Faber & Faber) - British; 2nd Novel

The Translation of the Bones by Francesca Kay (Weidenfeld & Nicolson) - British; 2nd Novel

The Blue Book by A.L. Kennedy (Jonathan Cape) - British; 6th Novel

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern (Harvill Secker) - American; 1st Novel

The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller (Bloomsbury) - American; 1st Novel

Foreign Bodies by Cynthia Ozick (Atlantic Books) - American; 7th Novel

State of Wonder by Ann Patchett (Bloomsbury) - American; 6th Novel

There but for the by Ali Smith (Hamish Hamilton) - British; 5th Novel

The Pink Hotel by Anna Stothard (Alma Books) - British; 2nd Novel

Tides of War by Stella Tillyard (Chatto & Windus) - British; 1st Novel

The Submission by Amy Waldman (William Heinemann) - American; 1st Novel


The shortlist will be announced on 17th April and the winner on 30th May.

The Tenderness of Wolves

From the back of the book: 1867, Canada. As winter tightens its grip on the isolated settlement of Dove River, a woman steels herself for the journey of a lifetime. A man has been brutally murdered and her seventeen-year-old son has disappeared. The violence has re-opened old wounds and inflamed deep-running tensions in the frontier township - some want to solve the crime; others seek only to exploit it.

To clear her son's name, she has no choice but to follow the tracks leaving the dead man's cabin and head north into the forest and the desolate landscape that lies beyond it...

I have been meaning to read this book for a while, as is the case with so many novels on my shelves... Since I visited Canada myself, both Alberta and Ontario, I have always thought I should read a Canadian novel outside those of the legend that is Margaret Atwood. This book couldn't depict a more raw Canada. Set in 1860s Ontario, Stef Penney describes the impenetrable land, the mysterious indigenous communities, dangerous animals and a brutal murder.

The snow certainly doesn't do anything for shaking Canada's stereotype as a habitable Arctic, but the landscape is really beautifully written, offering some stunning descriptions but without lots of dense paragraphs of description. Penney also creates a really believable rural community with characters you instantly care for. And there are plenty of characters at that... farmer's wives, criminals, magistrates, trackers, foreign tradesmen... Admittedly I got a bit confused at times but, saying that, I liked the community feel to this novel.

It does involve a murder but, for anyone who doesn't like crime books, this is not a crime novel.   Although it isn't fantastical in any way, or even really that scary, this novel has a real haunting atmosphere to it. The winter weather and the wolves on the prowl probably helps but it is also just in its general tone. It has a Brokeback Mountain quietness to it but that's not to say there aren't plenty of twists and turns and satisfying link-ups.


I really liked this novel and found it, overall, very calming: 8/10

Canongate Myths

Myths are some of the world's oldest stories and, as you would expect, these tales have been re-written and re-told in tons of different ways over thousands of years. The publisher, Canongate, have latched onto this and started a series some years ago that saw successful writers re-telling some of these well-known tales. Not only do they make great reading, they are good in-between books. By that I mean that they are very short and are perfect for those times when you have a couple of days or even just an afternoon to hand. There are now 14 myths in the series with the most recent being Ragnarok by A.S. Byatt. I, myself, have read 6 now and will definitely be reading more! Here are 4 of my favourites:

Baba Yaga Laid an Egg by Dubravka Ugresic - Baba Yaga Baba is an old hag who lives in a house built on chicken legs and kidnaps small children. It's a terrifying old Russian folktale that I used to love my mum read to me as a child. She has appeared in many different forms over time but is always recognisable. This is a beautiful and fresh reworking of a classic child-snatching myth.


The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ by Philip Pullman - I think Pullman had Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code in mind when he branded the back of the book with the words, "This is a story". I'm sure there was no way that this book could have been published without some kind of religious uproar, but Pullman does a fantastic job reworking arguably the world's most famous tale. In it Jesus and Christ are twins and represent the different faces of Jesus: the celebrity and the 'good man'. It's very short, lots of fun and Pullman's writing, as always, is frustratingly good.


Weight by Jeanette Winterson - This was probably my favourite of all the myths I've read in this series. I'm a big fan of Greek mythology and in this version of the story of Atlas, Jeanette Winterson fully provides. Weight offers a certain mythic quality that I can't quite put my finger on as well as recreating some great characters. Don't worry, though, if you're a fan of Winterson's other work like me, there's a healthy portion of 'strange'.

The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood - Now everyone loves a bit of Margaret Atwood to read and this is a nice short one for you and, I would argue, probably the most interesting new take on the myths that Canongate done. I say this because Atwood has decided to change the voice of the Odyssey to a woman's - Penelope, the wife of Odysseus. It's a great story and how nice to be able to read it in a couple of hundred of beautifully written but easily read pages!

Click here for a full list.

Introducing... John Fowles

"There are only two races on this planet - the intelligent and the stupid."

John Fowles was born and bred in Essex until he was sent off to the highly regarded Bedford School and then Oxford after completing his military service. He would later become a teacher, which took him to what he called "a ratty little school" on the island of Spetsai in Greece. This part of his life would prove extremely influential, as anyone who has read The Magus will know. Despite his career as a teacher, Fowles wrote all his life but it wasn't until the success of his novel, The Collector, that Fowles gave up teaching for a full-time literary career (now considered somewhat of a luxury by many writers today).

The French Lieutenant's Woman (1969) was probably Fowles' most famous novel. Set on the coast in Lyme Regis, where Fowles himself had a home, the novel centres on a disgraced woman who is surrounded by rumours of a past extra-marital affair with a French soldier. The novel is largely a romance and I did really enjoy it - it's a pleasure to read - but it's not simple, famously providing three alternative endings.

The Magus (1966) This is not just one of my favourite John Fowles novels but one of my favourite ever reads. In it, Nicholas Urfe seeks to escape his fractured life in London by taking a teaching job on a small Greek island (sound familiar). Urfe gets more than he bargains for, though, when he meets a master trickster, whose illusions become increasingly dark and frightening. It's just incredibly good.

The Collector (1963) was the first novel Fowles had published. It's shorter than his others and centres around a butterfly collector who becomes obsessed with a young art student and kidnaps her. Although it's not explicit, there's a definite and intelligent unease to this book but it's definitely worth a read.

All three of these novels have been made into successful films but I would say that these are definitely cases where you should read the book first.

"There comes a time in each life like a point of fulcrum. At that time you must accept yourself. It is not anymore what you will become. It is what you are and always will be."

Literary Wiltshire

This weekend I spent some time over in the county of Wiltshire. What a beautiful county, with plenty of rolling green hills and sun-kissed hay wheels (only to be followed quickly by hours of persistent rain...). All of this has provided plenty of inspiration for writers over the years. 

Being prehistoric, it's not surprising that Stonehenge has appeared in literature across history, starting off with the Legend of King Arthur. Merlin was called upon to make a memorial for Arthur's uncle, Ambrosius, who, amongst others, was killed on the Night of the Long Knives. Merlin first came across the stones in Ireland. Known as the Giant's Dance, they were a circle of stones that were believed to give water healing powers. Eventually, Merlin miraculously floated these huge stones on rafts across to England and positioned them in the place where they now stand. Hundreds of years later, Thomas Hardy revisited the stones and used the resplendent setting at the end of his novel, Tess of the D'Urbervilles. Anyone who has read or seen its adaptation will remember well the scene when Tess and Angel stumble across Stonehenge. I won't go any further in terms of the story as would not want to ruin it for anyone who doesn't know, but the scene is as great as its impressive prehistoric setting.

Although the 2008 film was shot at Castle Howard in Yorkshire, it is thought that Brideshead Revisited was set in a large house amongst the county's lush hills, "when the ditches were creamy with meadow-sweet and the air heavy with all the scents of summer".

I'll end there, leaving you with that quote that has me dreaming of summer!

Book Club: The Group

From the back of the book: The Group follows eight graduates from exclusive Vassar College as they find love and heartbreak, and choose careers and husbands against the backdrop of 1930s New York.

'Focussing on a group of New York friends, its open discussion of sex and contraception, careers and motherhood was unprecedented and it can now be seen as the precursor of the women's novel - without The Group there would certainly be no Sex and the City.' Independent

'She's so funny and bitter and clear-sighted and witty that it was a real joy to read.' Marian Keyes

The Group was our second book club read, following The Interpretation of Murder. Like Rubenfeld, Mary McCarthy offers an old New York City. The glitz and glamour of the 1930s hits Manhattan but the aftermath of the Great Depression and the gradually increasing chances of a second war in Europe does its best to overshadow it.

Despite McCarthy doing a great job of setting the time and place, the best thing about this book is the fact that the concerns of the young women at the centre of the novel are the same as they would be today. The Carrie Bradsaws and the Miranda Hobbs of the 1930s still talked about being terrible mothers, not finding Mr Right, whether to have sex with Mr Nearly-Right and having enough money to buy the coat that is far too expensive. There's plenty of humour in this book and the group's dynamic is, I thought, very believable.

That aside, though, I think we did all feel a bit cheated at the book club. It was sold to us, courtesy of Candace Bushnell's introduction and a couple of quotes on the back of the book, as the original Sex and the City and, in terms of subject, it is. However, the whole book's tone was different and the constant time-changes made it, at times, difficult to follow. The characters were believable, yes, but sometimes we felt that just as you'd started to feel some kind of affection for one character, you'd be back in time talking about a new one who you cared nothing about. There's also a slightly darker feel to this book; something that goes beyond a simple drunken argument with the boyfriend.

All in all, it's a great snapshot of 1930s NYC and young culture. It obviously was original upon publication in terms of its frank discussion of sex and women's issues but I fear that we have become so used to seeing sex and taboo subjects, that it just doesn't quite have the same effect.

We ended up giving it an average of 6/10