The occupation of Hong Kong by the Japanese during World War II has been widely chronicled as exceedingly brutal. In The Harbour, that period in history is brought to life—and soberingly so—by Francesca Brill. This is her debut work of fiction, but Brill’s background as a screenwriter and filmmaker influences her dramatic prose, which is…
Posted on 1st November 2012
Posted on 24th May 2012
The Light of Amsterdam
David Park’s novel The Light of Amsterdam is a paean to ordinariness and the everyday that resolutely – bravely, even – resists the temptation to make those things somehow holy or magical. There are no glorious epiphanies in store for the three characters he sends off on a December city break from Belfast to Amsterdam, no…
Posted on 7th March 2012
Fiction Fights Back: Alexandra Pringle introduces Bloomsbury Circus
When Helen and I presented Bloomsbury Circus to colleagues from all departments, our Head of Marketing exclaimed ‘Fiction Fights Back!’ This is our battle cry for the future of fiction.
Posted on 27th November 2011
Ghastly Business
With her debut, the sixties London-set A Vision of Loveliness, Louise Levene proved herself a rivetingly stylish and witty storyteller, pulling off the rare feat of revivifying a bygone era with sparkling originality and uncanny, often grim, accuracy. In her equally captivating follow-up, Ghastly Business, Levene turns her gimlet gaze to the London of 1929, where…
