Quillblog (Free subscription) | yesterday
Edna O’Brien, Curtis Sittenfeld, and Paul Theroux are among the writers who will be making their short fiction available exclusively to Kindle users thanks to a new deal between online retailer Amazon.com and the general interest magazine The Atlantic. The first two of these stories, O’Brien’s “Shovel Kings” and Christopher Buckley’s “Cynara,” are available...
Sunday Tribune (Free subscription) | 12/06/2009
A dead hand might suggest a police procedural or a gory thriller for a novel subtitled 'A Crime in Calcutta', but Paul Theroux prefers a metaphorical slant. The hand in question is indeed a severed, pickled piece of evidence in what might more accurately be called a plot circumstance than ...
Hindu (Free subscription) | 12/05/2009
Paul Theroux's novel is not a traditional whodunnit. But what exactly is it, the reader is left wondering.
The Guardian (Free subscription) | 12/05/2009
Paul Theroux's latest novel falls short of his best work, says Kevin Rushby In the summer of 1990 I found myself marooned in a Malaysian bungalow while recovering from a bout of dengue fever, a convalescence that gave me the chance to read a short story by Paul Theroux in which a man suffers a debilitating bout of dengue fever in Malaysia. I had an almost unbearable sense of the pages coming to life....
My Right Word (Free subscription) | 12/02/2009
After failing for the umpteenth time to garner the Nobel Prize for Literature, Amos ('Lefty') Oz missed another first place. This time it is the Literary Review's Bad Sex in Fiction Award 2009. Jonathan Littell has won the seventeenth annual Literary Review Bad Sex in Fiction Award, for The Kindly Ones (Chatto & Windus). The prize (a plaster foot) was presented by award-winning actor Charles Dance....
Redlines and Deadlines (Free subscription) | 12/01/2009
by Raelene Gorlinsky Jonathan Littell has won the seventeenth annual Literary Review Bad Sex in Fiction Award, for The Kindly Ones . The award was created in 1993 to draw attention to the "crude, tasteless, and often perfunctory use of redundant passages of sexual description in contemporary novels, and to discourage it." The other finalist books include those by some well-known names: The...
Beattie's Book Blog (Free subscription) | 12/01/2009
Goncourt winner Littell wins Bad Sex Award Mon Nov 30, 2009, Reuters LON DON (Reuters) - Jonathan Littell, who won France's prestigious Prix Goncourt in 2006 for " The Kindly Ones, " has picked up another prize for the same work -- the Literary Review Bad Sex in Fiction Award. The annual prize was contested this year by literary heavyweights Philip Roth for " The Humbling ," John...
The Velvet Blog (Free subscription) | 12/01/2009
Yay--the annual Bad Sex Awards , for terrible smutty writing, are in! The winner is Jonathan Littell, from his novel The Kindly Ones : "I came suddenly, a jolt that emptied my head like a spoon scraping the inside of a soft-boiled egg." Remind me not to have breakfast at his house. But I'd say Paul Theroux should have won for this passage from A Dead Hand : "She took my head in both...
Bill Crider's Pop Culture Magazine (Free subscription) | 12/01/2009
Bad Sex for Jonathan Littell | theBookseller.com : "Jonathan Littell has beaten stiff competition from Philip Roth, Nick Cave and Paul Theroux to the Literary Review Bad Sex in Fiction award for his novel The Kindly Ones (Chatto). The awards were announced yesterday evening (30th November) at the In & Out Club in London, where the accolade was awarded by actor Charles Dance and accepted by...
PrairiePundit (Free subscription) | 12/01/2009
Guardian: The American winner of the Prix Goncourt, Jonathan Littell, has added another feather to his cap. His novel, The Kindly Ones, was tonight announced as the winner of the Literary Review's 2009 bad sex in fiction award . The Kindly Ones, which tells the story of the Holocaust through the eyes of one of the executioners, beat off stiff competition from a stellar shortlist that included entries...
George Szirtes (Free subscription) | 11/30/2009
So this is the man who won. Jonathan Littell from his Prix Goncourt winning novel, The Kindly Ones. According to the judges: The Kindly Ones, which tells the story of the Holocaust through the eyes of one of the executioners, beat off stiff competition from a stellar shortlist that included entries from Philip Roth, John Banville, Paul Theroux and the literary rock star Nick Cave. The judges paid tribute...
The Observer (Free subscription) | 11/30/2009
Bad sex judges pay tribute to 'part-genius' of winning novel and hope winner 'takes it in good humour' The American winner of the Prix Goncourt, Jonathan Littell, has added another feather to his cap. His novel, The Kindly Ones, was tonight announced as the winner of the Literary Review's 2009 bax sex in fiction award . The Kindly Ones, which tells the story of the Holocaust through the eyes of one...
Tym Blogs Too! (Free subscription) | 11/27/2009
I've seen Saint Jack before on DVD, but when I saw that the National Museum of Singapore was packaging a special screening of the film with a bus tour by Saint Jack expert Ben Slater (who also happens to be a friend of mine), I knew I had to be there. The film screening and bus tour was part of the museum's ' Once Upon a Time in the Orient ' film programme, which features films that were shot on location...
baithak (Free subscription) | 11/22/2009
An accused Plotter, Today, Mr. Headley is an Islamic fundamentalist who once liked to get high. He has a traditional Pakistani wife, who lives with their children in Chicago, but also an American girlfriend, a makeup artist in New York, according to a relative and friends. Depending on the setting, he alternates between the name he adopted in the United States, David Headley, and the Urdu one he was...
The Guardian (Free subscription) | 11/21/2009
On the 10th anniversary of Paul Bowles's death, Paul Theroux remembers the writer and traveller who set him on his way T he Sheltering Sky was Paul Bowles's first novel and, although he honed his art almost to his dying day – novels, poems, stories, translations, as well as musical scores – it was this strange, uneven and somewhat hallucinatory novel, and a handful of disturbing short...
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