The Guardian's Blog, page 6
May 22, 2016
A postcard from Monte Ulia, Basque Country
You might have explored San Sebastian’s beaches, pintxos bars and nightlife – but you almost certainly don’t know the three mountains surrounding it. Basque writer Gabriel Urza explores these spots full of history and hidden beauty
By Gabriel Urza for Public Streets by Public Books, part of the Guardian Books Network
You may have visited San Sebastian, Spain – Donostia, as the locals began calling it again after Franco died in 1975 and the street signs began to revert back to Euskera [the Basque language]. Maybe you spent a couple summer days on the beach of la Concha during your tour of Europe after college, or perhaps you’d been waylaid on your way to the Guggenheim in Bilbao. And sure, you may know the pintxos loaded with plum-colored hams and oily sardines plated on the counters of oak bars in the old part of town, but everybody knows about the pintxos. Even the guiri tourists, after a couple days in the Basque Country, will have their favorite plate at their favorite bars. Maybe you’ve even discovered the metallic taste of barely-cooked venison at the Bar Senra, or an inconspicuous door leading to a hash-filled basement nightclub on the harbor, or if you are of a certain age perhaps you will even know the tuxedoed waiters pouring Ballantine’s over ice for sunburned Brits at the Hotel Londres. But you, almost certainly, will not know the three mountains surrounding the city’s three harbors: Igueldo, Urgull, Ulia.
There is, I suppose, the off-chance that you do happen to know one of the three mountains surrounding San Sebastian (or the three mendiak as the young children who speak only Basque would say, or the three montes, as their parents, the generation without language, would say). In this case, it is surely Monte Igueldo, the westernmost peak, the most traditionally handsome and accessible of the three sisters. You’ve gone to Igueldo, no doubt, to visit Eduardo Chillida’s rusted sculptures reaching from the sea at the base of the mountain, or you’ve taken the rickety funicular up to Igueldo’s battered old amusement park with a few friends and a Coke bottle half-filled with rum. A great way to spend the afternoon, if you’re into that sort of thing.
All of these parts of Ulia elude both guide books and word of mouth – one day, perhaps, you will know them for yourself
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May 20, 2016
Mapping My Return - Salman Abu Sitta on the fate of the Palestinians
Vivid re-telling of the experience of the Nakba - a tragedy that did not end with Israel’s war of independence in 1948
It’s the time of year when Israelis and Palestinians mark the anniversary that matters most to each of them: May 15 is the date of the founding of the Jewish state in 1948. It is also the day that commemorates the Nakba, the flight, expulsion and dispossession of the Palestinians. Nothing underlines more starkly the depth of the unresolved conflict between these two peoples: the independence of the one meant disaster or catastrophe for the other.
In the heat of the recent controversy in Britain over Zionism and anti-semitism, relatively little attention was paid to the Palestinian side of this ever controversial story. Europe’s Jews were the victims of racism, persecution and extermination on a massive and unprecedented scale during the Nazi era. Palestinians, in their turn, in a different way, were victims too.
Continue reading...Flash Friday: Women be Wise
A tale of childhood reunions, ghost stories and reality blending with fiction is our latest Flash Friday short story, via Tin House
By Beth Spencer for Flash Fridays by Tin House, part of the Guardian Books Network
You and I had not seen each other for decades when we decided to meet, with our husbands (acquired in the meantime), at an old hotel built during the gold rush. Of the two of us, you had changed least, looking much the same as the pretty girl I remembered from Maine, an only child, always at the top of our class. Unless I am mistaken, it was late September and slightly cool when we met again, but we opted to have dinner outside anyway, the only guests who did, and at some point during the evening a slight, blond woman in a summery dress came out to have a cigarette. Green and deep red ivy covered the back of the brick building, which she leaned against, smoking, below the string lights crisscrossing the patio. Our husbands had hit it off right away, both of them charming and talkative, generous with the wine and bourbon, probably relieved that what might have been an awkward evening was going smoothly. The sounds of live music, some sort of wedding party, drifted out of the hotel whenever the blond opened the door to lean in and listen for a few seconds, before she let it close again and lit another smoke. The truth is, I don’t remember much about her because you were telling me about a ghost from your childhood, that of a woman who had once lived in your centuries-old house and been raped repeatedly by men in the area because she was disabled and unable to fend them off, and you’d had had filmy visions of these doings as a child without understanding what they meant. One doesn’t hear a compelling ghost story very often, and you had such a rapt audience for your tale that neither of us cared that the blond, bored with smoking and a bit tipsy, it seemed, had come over to talk to our husbands. Kristen – I will call her that; she looked like a Kristen – told them her ex was inside and she didn’t feel welcome there, also that she was a hairdresser; she ran her fingers through my husband’s afro to indicate, I suppose, that she knew how to work with black people’s hair. Now you were at the crux of your story, though, and I paid them scant attention. Often women try to engage my husband because he has a kind face and expressive eyes. Will you believe me when I say that I didn’t even mind when she sat or fell down in his lap? He must have resisted a little then because suddenly she rose, came to our side of the table, and took our hands as if she were a priestess, saying how special it must be for us to see each other after so long. Only then did I notice how young and drunk she was, how hard she was trying to stay upright, and I didn’t care, I only wanted her to leave so you could finish your story. Which has long since laid itself within this one, causing me when I am not paying attention to mix up Kristen with the woman in your story, and vice versa.
Related: Flash Friday: O. Vulgaris, or the coming of age of an octopus
Continue reading...An abridged Da Vinci Code implies teens need simple books – they don't
Penguin’s plans to release an abridged version of Dan Brown’s bestseller seems both pointless and patronising
I first became a fan of Dan Brown’s books at 13, when I discovered a copy of The Da Vinci Code on my grandparents’ bookshelf and devoured it in a matter of days. I’m now an author of books that are officially published as “adult” in some countries and “young adult” in others; I know a little, consequently, about the grey area that lies between them, which is a subject of lively debate in the publishing industry. And the news that Penguin is releasing an abridged version of The Da Vinci Code, advertised on its cover as “adapted for young adults”, is puzzling.
A common way to introduce a book to a new market is to give it a fresh cover – a widespread practice, often used for books with “crossover appeal”. Penguin has created a bold new cover for The Da Vinci Code, but they haven’t stopped there – the book is also being condensed, as though what really makes a story appeal to young adults is the prospect of a short read. Yet it’s been proven time and time again that this isn’t the case. A Court of Mist and Fury by Sarah J Maas, which debuted at No 1 on the New York Times’s young adult bestseller list, is a whopping 624 pages. Nobody really agrees on what make a book suitable for young adults, but length has nothing to do with it.
Continue reading...May 19, 2016
Food in books: the treacle tart in Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone
Kate Young blogs about what inspired her to cook meals from books – and why, since that first tart, she has never looked back. The answer lies in Harry Potter
By Kate Young for The Little Library Café, part of the Guardian Books Network
A moment later the desserts appeared. Blocks of ice cream in every flavour you can think of, apple pies, treacle tarts, chocolate eclairs and jam doughnuts, trifle, strawberries, jelly, rice pudding... As Harry helped himself to a treacle tart, the talk turned to their families.
Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, JK Rowling
Related: Food in books: sausage rolls from Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
Related: Food in books: fruitcake from The Ruby in the Smoke by Philip Pullman
Continue reading...JK Rowling is wrong to defend Donald Trump
The Harry Potter author supports Trump’s right to free speech – but what about my freedom to protest against him safely?
In December last year, I started a petition calling for Donald Trump to be banned from the UK, which gathered 585,000 signatures. So I was interested to read this week that JK Rowling has argued against a travel ban for the presidential candidate. Speaking to the PEN America literary gala in New York, the author said that while she personally finds Trump offensive and bigoted, “if you seek the removal of freedoms from an opponent simply on the grounds that they have offended you, you have crossed a line to stand alongside tyrants who imprison, torture and kill on exactly the same justifications”. As much as I adore her work, I think she’s wrong. Rowling’s books tell us to challenge the powerful when they are wrong.
Related: JK Rowling defends Donald Trump's right to be 'offensive and bigoted'
Continue reading...Dinosaur porn or Rabid Puppy pastiche? The strange story of Chuck Tingle
The explicit erotica parody arrived on a Hugo award shortlist after Vox Day’s endorsement – but who the author is and how he got nominated remains mysterious
Who is Chuck Tingle? Here are the details gleaned from his social media presence: he lives in Billings, Montana, he has a son called Jon, is widowed. He is apparently both a Tae Kwon Do grandmaster and a PhD in holistic massage. Mainly, he is an erotic author and inventor of “the tingler” – “a story so blissfully erotic that it cannot be experienced without eliciting a sharp tingle down the spine.”
Related: Rex appeal: the literary attraction of dinosaur erotica
Related: The Hugo Awards: George RR Martin, Vox Day and Alastair Reynolds on the prize's future
IMPORTANT: cant go to hugos award so to thwart devil plans, true buckaroo ZOE QUINN (name of @unburtwitch) has agreed to accept award for me
Continue reading...May 18, 2016
Kafkaesque: a word so overused it has lost all meaning?
Han Kang’s Man Booker International winner has prompted much use of the word – but do we really understand what it means?
On Monday night, Han Kang’s strange, disturbing, brilliant novel The Vegetarian won the Man Booker International prize. Shortly afterwards, dictionary publisher Merriam-Webster announced that searches for the word “Kafkaesque” had “spiked dramatically” in the wake of her win, because the novel “has been described by its British publishers (and by a number of reviewers) as Kafkaesque”.
Merriam-Webster is not wrong. The Vegetarian’s US publisher calls the novel “a darkly allegorical, Kafkaesque tale of power, obsession and one woman’s struggle to break free from the violence both without and within her”. I spoke to the chair of judges for the Man Booker International prize, Boyd Tonkin, about the novel, and he said that at times when reading it, “I was thinking of Kafka, because it’s about the change of state … part of the heroine’s protest is not getting rid of meat, but getting rid of her humanity, becoming a plant or a tree.”
Related: Translated fiction sells better in the UK than English fiction, research finds
Continue reading...The Da Vinci Code rewritten for YA readers? Please spare them
I don’t know whether it’s possible to dumb down Dan Brown’s blockbuster, but it seems the publisher thinks this will win over the perfectly capable teen market
YA readers react to Dan Brown’s teen adaptation: ‘Why?’Dan Brown’s publisher has announced that this autumn it is going to release a new, abridged version of the Da Vinci Code aimed at the lucrative YA market. The implication I took from this news is that The Da Vinci Code is about to be dumbed down. Even further.
The fear that then gripped me then was far greater than that of my own death. I saw a future filled with too many ellipses, overly complex descriptions and arbitrary races against time. Suddenly, despite all the laws of reason and the many rules relating to logic … Penguin Random House … one of the last few publishing houses and the sole guardian of the UK rights of one of the most successful novels written in the last 20 years … were reissuing a rip-roaringly simple book, made even simpler? Alongside my attractive sidekick, I summoned all my faculties and strength as I began to realise that the time for bad Dan Brown parodies was almost over … I had to … try … to think … like a normal person again…
Related: Dan Brown still can't write, but he deserves some respect | Alan Yuhas
Continue reading...Masculinity in African literature: in praise of a literary heartthrob
As a feminist, Minna Salami is interested in how masculinity is portrayed in the arts. She defends Odenigbo – from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s novel Half of a Yellow Sun – as a romantic hero as impactful and lusted-after as Don Juan, Heathcliff and Romeo
By Minna Salami for MsAfropolitan, part of the Guardian Books Network
From the cultural world to family life, recent discussions point to an increased interest in portrayals of masculinity in society.
The development is welcome. As a writer who is feminist, one of my most fond interests is masculinity. Yes, masculinity. It may sound like an oxymoron but transforming men’s roles is a necessary task while transforming women’s roles.
Odenigbo is as macho as a pint of Guinness: to me, the feminist, this also makes him as charming as one
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