James Crawford says: “I’m thrilled to be presenting Take Four Books for Radio 4. In many ways this is a dream gig: being able to delve into the creative process with a host of wonderful authors, uncovering fascinating or unexpected influences, and examining the unique power of writing - from the epic sweep of an entire book all the way down to the great weight or significance of a single sentence. I hope it will really bring literature and writing alive for listeners.”
Mohit Bakaya, Director of Speech and Controller Radio 4 says: “Coverage of literature has always been an integral part of the Radio 4 schedule and I’m delighted to launch this new series for book lovers everywhere. James will bring listeners in depth conversations with n...
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28 October 2024
Paul Bailey, beloved RCW author, dies aged 87
It is with great sadness that we announce the death of Paul Bailey, who died on the 27th October, 2024, at the age of 87. Paul was twice shortlisted for the Booker Prize and received many prizes and awards over the course of his career, including the George Orwell Prize and the inaugural E.M. Forster Award. His novels were published by Jonathan Cape, Fourth Estate and Bloomsbury and his poetry by CB Editions. Paul was one of RCW's longest-standing and most beloved authors. We shall all miss him greatly.
'I write because I have to and want to. It's as simple, or as complicated, as that. And I write novels specifically because I am curious about my fellow creatures. There is no end to their mystery. I share Isaac Babel's lifelong ambition to write with simplicity, brevity and precision. It was he who said 'No steel can pierce the human heart so chillingly as a period at the right moment.' I hope one or two of my full stops have done, and will do, just that.'
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10 October 2024
Han Kang wins the 2024 Nobel Prize in Literature
The 2024 Nobel Prize in Literature is awarded to the South Korean author Han Kang “for her intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life.”
Han Kang’s work is characterised by a double exposure of pain, a correspondence between mental and physical torment with close connections to Eastern thinking.
In her oeuvre, Han Kang confronts historical traumas and invisible sets of rules and, in each of her works, exposes the fragility of human life. She has a unique awareness of the connections between body and soul, the living and the dead, and in her poetic and experimental style has become an innovator in contemporary prose.
She follows fellow RCW clients Kazuo Ishiguro, Olga Tokarczuk, and Abdulrazak Gurnah who were the recipients of the 2017, 2018 and 2021 Nobel Prize in Literature respectively.
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18 September 2024
'Jonty Gentoo' by Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler is No.1 Children's Bestseller
Jonty Gentoo by Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler is the No.1 Children's Bestseller!
Jonty the little gentoo penguin longs to find his true home at the South Pole.
One night, he sneaks out of the zoo and sets off on an amazing adventure, all the way to Antarctica (with an accidental detour to the North Pole!)
Children will be cheering Jonty on as he finally finds his way, in this captivating story of bravery, friendship, and finding your place in the world.
“Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler are the Lennon and McCartney… of children’s publishing” The Times
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18 September 2024
'The Bee Sting' by Paul Murray wins the Sky Arts Award for Literature
Paul Murray's The Bee Sting has won the 2024 Sky Arts Award for Literature. The inaugural event, building on the legacy of the South Bank Sky Arts Awards, was hosted by Joe Lycett at the Roundhouse in London on 17th September. The night showcased the very best of British and Irish arts and culture, celebrating incredible achievements across the arts.
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18 September 2024
'James' by Percival Everett has been shortlisted for the 2024 Booker Prize
James by Percival Everett has been shortlisted for the 2024 Booker Prize! The shortlist features stories which transport readers around the world and beyond Earth’s atmosphere: from the battlefields of the First World War to a spiritual retreat in rural Australia; from America’s Deep South in the 19th century to a remote Dutch house in the 1960s; from the International Space Station to a cave network beneath the French countryside. Among other things, the shortlisted books explore the gravitational pull of home and family; the contested nature of truth and history; and the extent to which we reveal our real selves to others.
What the judges said: ‘James is a masterful, revisionist work that immerses the reader in the brutality of slavery, juxtaposed with a movingly persistent humanity. Through lyrical, richly textured prose, Everett crafts a captivating response to Mark Twain’s classic, Huckleberry Finn, that is both a bold exploration of a dark chapter in history and a testament to the resilience of the human spirit. With its virtuosic command of language and moral urgency, James stands as a towering achievement that confronts the...
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03 July 2024
Hisham Matar wins The Orwell Prize for Political Fiction
Congratulations to Hisham Matar for winning this year’s Orwell Prize for Political Fiction for his novel My Friends (Viking)
My Friends by Matar—chosen from a shortlist of eight novels—explores the fallout of the 1984 shootings at the Libyan embassy in London, and its effect on three Libyan friends living in exile in Britain.
Alexandra Harris, who chaired the political fiction panel, said: "My Friends is a work of grace, gentleness, beauty and intellect, offered in the face of blunt violence and tyranny. The shootings at the Libyan embassy in London in 1984 reverberate through the novel, defining the lives of young men who cannot risk return to their families and their native country. Matar’s response to those gunshots is a richly sustained meditation on exile and friendship, love and distance, deepening with each page as layers of recollection and experience accrue."
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03 July 2024
Isabella Hammad wins the RSL Encore Award
Isabella Hammad has won the newly boosted RSL Encore Award for her second novel Enter Ghost (Vintage), now worth £15,000.
The Encore RSL award celebrates the second novel, marking the achievements of authors moving beyond their literary debuts. It was first presented in 1990 and has been administrated by the RSL since 2016.
Hammad said said: "Everyone loves a debut, but I think it may actually be in the tricky transition from the first book to the second that a writer really becomes a writer. The second novel is also a famously hard moment for writers who are still at the beginning of their careers, so prizes like this are incredibly valuable for both the material support they offer and the recognition."
Enter Ghost follows Sonia, a British Palestinian actress who flees a failed marriage and love affair in London to stay with her sister in the West Bank.
The judges described the book "as profound as it is powerful, exploring in beautiful prose the essential, humanising importance of art in a world overthrown by conflict".
They added: "In a voice that is always original Hammad takes one of th...
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03 July 2024
Tom Crewe, Fiona Benson and Cecile Pin win Society of Author Awards
Congratulations to all the winners of this year's Society of Authors Awards! Especially -
Fiona Benson for winning a Cholmondeley Award which recognises poets’ sustained excellence across a body of work. "The Cholmondeley Awards prove that excellence can be perceived across a wide range of poetry from a diversity of poets. It is hoped that the recipients will feel valued, encouraged and truly celebrated."
Cecile Pin for winning a Somerset Maugham Award. The judges said "this year’s Somerset Maugham Award shortlist was made up of young voices who used poetry, non-fiction, fiction, or other forms entirely, to explore history in unique fashions and to tell stories that document the present, reveal the author’s psyche, delve deep into our emotions and take us down roads of imaginative brilliance."
Tom Crewe for winning a Betty Trask Award. The judges praised The New Life as "a brilliantly complex and moving novel that does what the best historical fiction does: bringing the past alive in your head and your heart. It’s extraordinary to read a debut novel that has such subtlety, such range of both language and feeling. Ra...
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24 April 2024
Anne Enright and Isabella Hammad shortlisted for Women's Prize for Fiction 2024
Anne Enright and Isabella Hammad are among the writers shortlisted for this year’s Women’s prize for fiction. Irish author Anne Enright, who has been shortlisted for the prize twice, is shortlisted for a third time for The Wren, The Wren (Jonathan Cape), while British-Palestinian writer Isabella Hammad is shortlisted for her second novel, Enter Ghost (Vintage), which is about a production of Hamlet in the West Bank.
The winner of the 2024 Women’s Prize for Fiction will be announced on Thursday 13th June 2024 at the Women’s Prize Trust’s summer party in central London, along with the inaugural winner of the 2024 Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction. The winner will receive a cheque for £30,000, anonymously endowed, along with a limited-edition bronze statuette known as the "Bessie", created and donated by the artist Grizel Niven.
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22 April 2024
Pari Thomson's Greenwild wins Waterstones Children’s Book Prize
Pari Thomson has been named the Overall Winner of the Waterstones Children’s Book Prize for her debut, the illustrated magical door fantasy Greenwild: The World Behind The Door (Macmillan Children’s Books), illustrated by Elisa Paganelli.
The prize is voted for by Waterstones booksellers and is now in its 20th year. The winner receives £5,000 and the promise of ongoing commitment to their writing and illustrating career.
“Pari Thomson’s debut enchanted our booksellers with its sweeping escapism and standard-setting lyrical world-building," commented Bea Carvalho, head of books at Waterstones. "At once a fast-paced adventure story and a heartfelt entreaty to care for the natural world, Greenwild is a timeless fantasy tale of friendship, mystery, and the magic and beauty to be found in nature."
Pari Thomson, who is also editorial director for picture books at Bloomsbury Children’s Books, added: “I am lucky enough to live near Kew Gardens in London, a place full of sparkling glasshouses and carnivorous plants and lily pads big enough to take a nap on. I have always felt that nature was a little bit magic — and Kew made me ask, what if it w...
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20 March 2024
Tom Crewe wins The Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award 2024
Debut novelist Tom Crewe has been named winner of the Sunday Times Charlotte Aitken Young Writer of the Year Award for The New Life (Chatto & Windus), a novel described by judge James McConnachie as “thrillingly intimate” and “a compassionate and tenderly sensual account of masculine sexuality”.
The New Life is set in 1894 while the Oscar Wilde trial is igniting public outcry, “and everything John and Henry have longed for is suddenly under threat,” the synopsis says. “United by a shared vision, the two begin work on a revolutionary book arguing for the legalisation of homosexuality.”
Judge Johanna Thomas-Corr, chief literary critic for the Times and Sunday Times, said: “Sometimes a début novel comes along that feels like an immediate classic – a book that you suddenly can’t imagine not existing. If you’ve read Tom Crewe’s bold and beautifully observed début, The New Life, you’ll know that it is just such a book. He is a writer of rare promise.”
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