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John le Carré is famous for writing dazzling novels about the contemporary world - whether he is writing about the Cold War in the 1960s, the 'War on Terror' in the early twenty-first century and, today, in Our Kind of Traitor; a story that could have come straight out of Wikileaks. To celebrate the paperback publication of Our Kind of Traitor, Penguin in collaboration with the Daily Telegraph launched a competition in February, inviting anyone in the UK between 16-18 years old to write a short story that reflects the contemporary world. It could be any genre and the word limit was 2000 words. Two months and over one hundred entries later, Penguin are proud to announce the shortlist for the prize. It was judged by the fiction editors at Penguin, and the winner will now be picked by John le Carré. Ben Brusey, one of the editors who judged the shortlist had this to say:
'I'd like to congratulate all of the writers who entered the competition. To write a short story and create a whole world in just two thousand words is what some authors spend their whole lives trying to achieve. That you have been able to do this, with so much flair and imagination, and at such a depressingly young age, is extremely impressive. The stories ranged greatly in geography, subject and style, from revolutionary tales in North Africa, to civil unrest on the streets of London, to the perils of technology in our information age. Great characters were born, and touching relationships forged. You should all take enormous pride in the stories that you have written and I am certain that many of you will be appearing on many more literary shortlists in the future. As for the shortlisted writers, a special congratulations.'
The Shortlist
A Tale from the Holy Land by Rory Tingle, Age 17, King's College School, London What the judges said: "A dramatic and harrowing tale of a young boy in the West Bank who witnesses a suicide bombing, only to discover that his father was responsible for the blast."
But He Didn't by Lottie Pyper, Age 17, Marlborough College, Wiltshire
What the judges said: "Using a poem as inspiration, a moving tale of regret and conciousness in our contemporary world, from recycling to war."
Nobody Important by Simon James, Age 17, Sir John Deane's College, Cheshire
What the judges said: "A modern day parable about the dangers of internet chat rooms and online relationships, with a fresh and clever twist."
Sons of Abraham by Alasdair Wood, Age 18, Worcester Sixth Form College, Worcester
What the judges said: "Set in the outskirts of Jerusalem, an urgent and evocative story about two boys who are caught up in a mistaken government terrorist raid."
Untitled by Helen Price, Age 16, Haberdashers' Monmouth School for Girls, Monmouthshire What the judges said: "A touching story about a secret relationship between a librarian and a reader who pass notes to each other hidden in their favourite books, only tragically never to meet in person."
Nigeria in Pink by Edward Scott, Age 17, Parmiter's School, Hertfordshire What the judges said: "Set in Nigeria, a poetic tale with a powerful conceit where homosexuality is the norm and heterosexuals are persecuted."
The winning story will be announcted next Monday 9th May. It will published in the Daily Telegraph and on the Penguin website.The winner will receive a signed limited edition of le Carré's recent novel, Our Kind of Traitor, along with ten Penguin paperbacks at a special prize-giving event at the winner's school or sixth form college. The prize will be presented by John le Carré at the college or school attended by the winner, and the school or college will receive the full Penguin Decades collection - 20 classic novels from the last four decades.
A guest blog from Olivia Scott-Berry from Penguin's teen site, Spinebreakers
I’ve never wanted to hate but couldn’t help loving so many people all at the same time.
Every now and then an event comes along and you think, you know what? My biology homework can wait, Masterchef can be recorded, dinner is reheatable- It’s a Wednesday night, but I’m going out! (It’s a phenomenon I like to call ‘the dilemma of the sixth-former’)
The Penguin General Bloggers' event then, was something pretty special. Imagine this: you receive an email telling you that seven of the most brilliant authors are going to be giving readings, and that you will get to talk to them afterwards and there are going to be goody bags. Can you honestly tell me that you would have said no, I have to finish this sheet on quadrat sampling?
Arriving at the event, I knew that I had made the right choice between my education and my passion for books, because not only were the free books stacked high, but the room was packed with people each with their own unique take on the publishing world- editors, bloggers, authors- people who I was really excited to talk to and hear their experiences and get some advice.
It was probably one of the most daunting things I’ve ever done as a Spinebreakers - by definition we are readers, which is an activity that calls for quiet and aloneness and the kind of imagination that thrives in that environment more than any other- but it was gratifying to see that the authors were just as true to their sixteen-year-old bookworm selves as I was and acknowledged the paradox of the modern author’s duties. (Not that any of that showed in their amazing readings!)
Equally gratifying was the real interest people took in Spinebreakers and what we do, and I only hope that I represented us well to this group of amazing people, who, after all, were not just composed of authors, but of bloggers too. It was incredibly humbling but also inspiring to see all these people who do what we do at Spinebreakers but to a whole other level, and who do it so well (as you can probably tell from the fact that I’ve written up my report the very next morning without going on iplayer once!)
If you’re anything like me, you probably want to hear all about the books, but I thinkthat whatI took away from last night was the knowledge that I can allow myself to meet the authors- it is not a sacrilege and it could in fact enrich the whole experience (even now I am itching to reread Anatomy of a Disappearance after hearing it in Hisham Matar’s own voice). So I’m going to compromise and tell you a little bit about the books (which you must read, all of them!), and a little bit about the authors:
If you ever wanted to know what it’s like to grow up in a modern commune, it sounds like (I haven’t read it yet- even the Penguin editors are waiting anxiously for their proofs to arrive) Wild Abandon will be the perfect book for you, and if you didn’t- you will now just to hear Joe Dunthorne’s comic take on it. The man himself? Two words: Funny. Shorts. (Get yourself down to one of his poetry readings now).
Landfall, Helen Gordon
Helen Gordon is a former associate editor of Granta magazine and the author of Landfall, the story of an art critic in South East London (woop woop), which sounds (again, I haven’t read this, but I do have the proof right next to me right now) totally brilliant in a knowing and satirical way, but when I spoke to her I didn’t know all of this yet. She took such an interest in Spinebreakers and encouraged me to keep writing (and had a jumper on which I coveted) that I now feel really bad that I didn’t ask her anything about the book, because it sounds amazing.
Mr Chartwell is one of those books where you absolutely love the author and hate them for having the idea instead of you- and hearing Rebecca Hunt read, the feelings intensify. She is absolutely lovely and the kind of person I wish I was and an amazing speaker- who else could pull off the voice of a large black dog who happens to be a metaphor for depression? And do you know what makes it one of those books even more? Even if I did have the idea first, I wouldn’t be able to pull it off in prose half as sparkling as Hunt’s. Girl in Translation, Jean Kwok
Jean Kwok is an absolutely lovely lovely person. I could hear my English teacher screaming at me for my limited vocabulary as I wrote that, but there is no better way to say it- she is the absolute embodiment of everything that is lovely. Not only did she make me feel completely comfortable talking to her, but she managed to command the floor like she was having a conversation with each one of us. Once I could tear myself away from her warm sunshine accent, I was equally fascinated- Kwok’s tale of arriving in New York and the troubles that ensued (having no central heating, working on a piece-by-piece basis in a factory, having a talent for school) has elements of truth with her own life. Even without knowing this, the novel is beautifully brilliant- it will make you smile.
On TV programmes when someone dies or goes missing then those who are left behind are shows in crying in a series of artistic shots, and the cameras will only return to them once something changes in their lives. This is a nice idea to believe in, but it couldn’t be further from the truth- as Hisham Matar shows exquisitely in Anatomy of a Disappearance- life, ordinary life, goes excruciatingly onwards. The absence of the main character’s father is described with such poise, the everyday events imbued with such numbness that it comes to sit in your own heart as you read. This book made me extremely guilty that I didn’t know enough about the events that forced the disappeared father out of Egypt, and especially after I heard Hisham Matar’s mournful, silken reading, I am definitely going to find out more. I’m afraid I might have to disappoint my English teacher again and tell you that Hisham Matar is an absolutely lovely man, who wonderfully disarmed me by telling me that he liked my jumper. I can only respond with how much I loved his book.
I’m not really sure how to do justice to the presence that is Ross Raisin- is it okay if I just tell you that, despite hailing from Yorkshire and not (as far as I could tell) having any particular links to Scotland that he did his reading in a Glaswegian accent, which, despite his warning that it wouldn’t, I thought sounded pretty good? His new novel, Waterline, sounds a world away from his first, God’s Own Country (which I loved), but looks to be just as brilliant. I’m going to take the words straight from the press release because I think they summarise everything that I am looking for in a book- ‘the tale of an ordinary man caught between the loss of a great love and the hard edges of modern existence’. Sold.
Luke Williams joins Rebecca Hunt in the ranks of authors I want to hate but absolutely can’t- the idea behind his first novel, The Echo Chamber, is brilliant. It tells the story of Exie, whose superhuman hearing means that she can hear things that other people can’t, and who is now writing up her memories of her life, beginning in Nigeria as the British Empire’s influence was deteriorating. I was instantly intrigued by this ambitious idea, and however much I want it to fail to make myself feel better, from seeing Williams read that doesn’t seem likely. He is so confident and in control and in sync with his story (though he actually is Scottish, he too pulled a Raisin and read in a voice completely different from his own) that I just know it is going to live up to my expectations.
Because I refrained so well from adding two simple words to the end of each of these summaries and because I’m pretty sure that my biology homework is going to have to wait for a little while because I will be taking my own advice, I’m going to end my review with what you really really must do. Read them. (Now!)
1. The first time I watched the film of my novel, Submarine, was a strange experience. We were at the world premiere as part of the Toronto Film Festival and it felt, to use the director, Richard Ayoade’s words, like a “ninety-minute heart attack.” Okay, maybe not quite that bad. A ninety-minute anaphylactic shock. (I have a peanut allergy, so I can say that.) Only as the credits rolled was I filled with a wave of relief and pride — much like the feeling of being injected in the glutes with an Epipen full of adrenaline.
2. The second time I saw the film was at the London Film Festival, with my parents, sisters, friends and famous people all in the audience. This time, being more able to concentrate on the film, I’d even go so far as to say I enjoyed it. But there was still this meta-narrative, whereby I was conscious of all the different versions of the story that exist. Not just the film and the book, but all the different drafts of the book, and all the drafts of the script, and everything that got cut out, and all the scenes that I’d watched being filmed — so, although I really enjoyed the film, I was still a little self-conscious. Although that could have been because I was sat next to Alex Turner and Alexa Chung. Did I mention I was sat beside Alexa Chung and Alex Turner? It probably slipped my mind because I was totally relaxed about sitting beside Alex Turner and Alexa Chung.
3. The third time I watched it was at the Welsh premiere in Swansea, my hometown. At this screening, there was my family, my oldest friends, my first girlfriend, all my parent’s friends. I sat on my own, at the side of the audience, sweeping my eyes across all these people from my childhood, trying to read their expressions. I don’t think I’m letting the secret out if I say that my novel, Submarine, was a little autobiographical — so this was an audience made up of people who had been turned in to characters in my book. My experience of the film was through them, which was lucky, because they seemed to really enjoy it. Afterwards, me and my first girlfriend compared notes about how similar the sex scene in the film had been to the, shall I say, source material.
4. The fourth time I watched it was the breakthrough. Associate Producer (and my housemate), Ally Gipps, had smuggled me a copy of the DVD and we watched it, at home, on the projector, with tea. This was the true moment of revelation. It’s a great film. Really, properly great. I instantly wanted to take full responsibility for its greatness. So I did. The acting, the casting, the music, the sets, the shot choices, the lighting, cinematography, production, the PR, the posters, the costumes… All me! I even did all the on-set catering. I’ve always been passionate about the sort of food that suits being warmed by a heat lamp. Reminds me of school dinners, which I also loved. What joy to play lunchtime-football with a stomach full of beans, chips and turkey burger. What was I saying? Oh yeah — the film. It’s really good. Go see it. Though you should probably read the book first.
I suppose I owe you all a charitable high-five for not pointing out that not only had our previous Friday afternoon literary thought-provoker been done before, but it had been done by me. Shameful. But you were all v sporting for not whispering about my fading cerebral powers behind your hands. Or were you?
This Friday, new thoughts (one hopes). I'm only fifty pages or so from the end of this (which has possibly the best collection of quotes on the jacket that I've seen for a while) and I'm desperate that it wasn't so. At least with this one, there's two whole sequels, which are equally excellent. I'm just not particularly eager to leave the world of Priss, Lakey and Kay, despite those throwaway name-references making the whole thing sound a little too Blyton. Still.
So, my question to you this fine Friday is: which are the books that, while you're reading them, you wished they'd never end? Subquestion: which book would you actually like to live in?
To complete your happy Friday, here's a man we should all be cheering and whooping and celebrating all round. (Actually am, for once, crying as I read this.) Please read this, as it's so very, very important, and go to your library this weekend, and show it some affection.
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Carol Topolski had a triumphant debut with the highly original Monster Love. It was long listed for the Orange Prize, did very well in both hardcover and paperback editions, and generally scared the pants off everyone with its brilliant collage of voices recounting the story of a murder that we know has been committed from the very first chapters. It was not a Whodunnit, but a brilliant Whydunnit, and a great literary debut.
Carol is by profession a psychoanalytic psychotherapist – it is why people are the way they are and how they got that way that fascinates her; she mined this rich seam in Monster Love, and now she does it again in her new novel Do No Harm.
When Carol’s second novel arrived in manuscript I knew it would be scary. I knew I wouldn’t understand the main character at the beginning of the book. This time, Carol has created a protagonist who isn’t just monstrous (like the married couple in Monster Love who murder their child) but just so repellent that you almost can’t bear to follow her journey on the page. Virginia is brusque with people, rude even. She is greedy, she eats too much; she spills her food down her front; she is large and ungainly, she wears awful clothes and shoes – indeed, she hates clothes. It seems as if she wants to repel other people. She is also a brilliant doctor, but she doesn’t suffer fools, and only her colleagues and her patients like her – and even then they aren’t allowed to get to know her well. Then we begin to discover that maybe she isn’t the staunch upholder of her women patients that we thought she is, that maybe she is doing them harm. And yet, by the end of the novel she is a strangely sympathetic character and when you discover all the things that have happened to her, what her childhood was like, you begin to feel grains of sympathy.
The result is one of the most complex and well realised characters I’ve ever read – indeed, if you walked round her she would be completely 3D. By the end of the novel we know she is deranged, but, in the way of the best fiction, we understand why.
Today we are publishing a novel written by a bright young thing and everyone here at Penguin is very excited. You see, every now and then in this publishing racket you get hold of a novel that really shakes you to your very core. It’s a rare, exhilarating experience, and one made all the more startling when you realise the author was barely older than you are when he wrote it and apparently wrote the thing in only five weeks.
The author in question? A publisher’s dream. Under thirty-five, incredibly talented, handsome and charismatic and with what some like to call a very promotable personal story. So who the hell am I talking about, I hear you type? Well, the author is a man called John le Carré and the novel ‘The Spy Who Came in from the Cold’ was published in 1963 when he was only thirty two.
Now, I’m not too proud to admit that until recently a “le Carré” was something I’d watch, not something I’d read. As regulars to these missives on here will have probably realised, I’m quite picky about what makes it on to my to-read pile and I have to say that I could count the number of crime/thrillers/espionage books I’ve read on one hand. But I was wrong, and thankfully the prize for my ignorance is being able to discover and read for the first time one of the most thrilling and engaging writers working today.
First published 47 years ago, and being reissued today in Penguin Modern Classics, le Carré’s ‘Spy’ still has the power to make you uncomfortably aware of the mechanics operating in the pit of your stomach. His relentless, unflinching and unforgiving vision of the world reminded me of the moral wasteland that permeates McCarthy’s scalpathon ‘Blood Meridian’ and leaves you with an overwhelming sense that no matter how good the good guys are; the bad guys will always win.
Fast forward 47 years and 19 novels later, and le Carré set to publish his new novel, ‘Our Kind of Traitor’, in September. While ‘Spy’ was absolutely of its time, painfully relevant to the Cold War world it so expertly describes, ‘Our Kind of Traitor’ is a novel for now, for today and le Carré tackles the City of London’s unholy alliance with Britain’s Intelligence Establishment with aplomb. This was the first le Carré I read, and I loved it. As he leads you down the rabbit hole of intrigue and espionage, seamlessly gliding through the heads of his characters, offering a hint of information here, a glimmer of understanding there, you cannot help but feel under the control of a complete master.
So, if you are life long fan, like an awful lot of people are, then you are in for a real treat. If you are a novice, an ignoramus, like me, then what are you waiting for? You have 21 novels to catch up with before the launch of ‘Our Kind of Traitor’ on September 16th.
It was my friend Roger Robinson who put me up to it. A fellow writer, he introduced me to the concept of viral marketing. Eh? Viral what? Some kind of disease-spreader? He told me that having a blog was an opportunity to connect to a wider readership through the internet and he hooked me up with Yemisi Blake, also a writer, blogger and now my ‘Blog Guru’.
Yemisi is in his early twenties and probably first entered cyberspace when he was still collecting cereal stickers, whereas I didn’t encounter computers or the internet until I was well into adulthood and was a two-finger typist for longer than I care to admit. It took me years to discover the cut-and-paste function, and even longer to discover pull-and-drag or is it drag-and-drop? And what, exactly, is HTML? My biggest problem is that I’m not wired to read technical instructions. Can I set the video at home? No. Can I follow simple self-assembly instructions? No. Do I understand my digital camera? No. But Yemisi does, and he’d also attended blogging workshops run by writer Karen McCarthy for Spread the Word literature development agency in London. With his patient expertise we set about creating the kind of blog I wanted.
And so at the start of October 2008 ‘Bernardine Evaristo's Blog’ was launched. It’s about 'Writer's Stuff' and my relationship to it is an evolving one. The initial impulse behind it was to market my books, in particular my new novel 'Blonde Roots' - about a world where Africans enslave Europeans. To this end I post stuff about the book, featured prominently on the side bar along with my other Penguin books. But it's become more than just a marketing tool; it’s now a kind of hybridized online diary-memoir-column-archive. It’s like being editor of my own online magazine too, of which I am frequently the subject matter and it’s my mug that gets to go on the cover of every issue. (Well, Oprah does it!)
My blog is also very visual as I’m an avid (sub) amateur photographer and use photographs to illustrate my posts such as: '105 Writers Tour Europe' - about a writers’ train tour I took in 2000; ‘The Amazing Arctic’ – about a dog-sledging trip; 'Up a Chinese Mountain' - about my visit to China on a Penguin/Arts Council England translation project earlier this year. I also have posts about other writers’ book launches, links to my literary criticism, Obama of O!merica (of course) and posts on my recent ‘Blonde Roots’ tour. ‘Blonde Roots’ is published by Riverhead/Penguin USA this January and in a recent post I linked to glowing, starred ‘Publishers Weekly’ review. Now, the British call that ‘showing off’, the Americans call it ‘sharing’, I call it ‘by any means necessary.’
The blog is becoming a possibly permanent record of my professional life with some personal stuff thrown in too. It's interactive, dynamic, dialogic - people leave comments and I respond to them. To be honest, I’ve discovered that I love blogging and think it’s brilliant for networking and creating or maintaining relationships - like the genius that is Facebook.
One very concrete result of my blog is that several bloggers have reviewed 'Blonde Roots' (positively, thank God) and recommended it. I find it quite amazing that they do this voluntarily, without payment, often at length and often quite brilliantly. As I receive Google Alerts and I know that ‘Blonde Roots’ now has a lively life in the blogosphere. I did make the mistake of reading some comments on one of these reviews and won’t again. It’s like eavesdropping on a public/private conversation about me and my work. No thanks!
Before I became a blogger, I'd completely ignored the blogosphere and thought it would be a waste of my time. That's changed. Many writers' blogs host really interesting, provocative, honest discussions about literature, some are influential and for someone as nosy as myself, I enjoy the voyeuristic aspect of seeing what people get up to. I can ‘drop in’ on writers I admire such as the American poet Mark Doty. It’s a way to find out about the person behind the books.
On average I create a post about once a week, so it’s not too time-consuming. Yemisi has shown me how to drive traffic to my blog so that it’s now the first thing that appears when you google my name. I’m happy with that. Meet me, meet my books.
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This year, as well as signing at 36 bookstores, performing at 8 events, we ate rock in Blackpool, saw dozens of plastic sheep in Liverpool, then dozens more plastic elephants in Norwich. We got lost in midnight Leeds (that one way system…), scared away a fox in a Secret Garden at dusk (that tiny brown smudge at the back of the garden is the exiting fox), and had to contend with some fairly adverse weather conditions on the road once again. I even managed to get Gervase into Lancashire, which for a Yorkshireman still smarting about the War of the Roses, was no mean feat. It turns out the best thing to come out of Lancashire ISN’T the road to Yorkshire after all – it’s the extremely lovely booksellers and bookshops there.
To say that I used Gervase’s time well is an understatement – the two week tour ranged across most of the length and breadth of the country, and Gervase signed at an average of 5 stores a day, followed by an event each evening. When I said goodbye to him yesterday at Exeter Station, I joked that I’d lied to him that this was the last day of the tour, and that in fact we had another 3 days of the tour to go. It turns out that only one of us should be making the jokes – and he’s the one selling out venues across the country each year, rather than the one holding the lead balloon.
It’s always nerve racking in those 2 minutes before the scheduled signing, approaching the bookstore not really knowing how enthusiastically the bookshop has been promoting the event in advance of the author’s visit. I won’t post mortem each signing and event – largely the signings were really well attended and really well promoted by the various wonderful booksellers at each store, but there’s always the inexplicable exceptions, where despite the hundreds of leaflets which have been picked up by enthusiastic book buyers, the posters everywhere, and the ads and author interviews going out in the local paper – you’ll get 4 people turning up with a large tumbleweed following along close behind. But these quieter ones were definite exceptions to the more general tour madness, and were in the most part linked to bad weather rather than a lack of enthusiasm by customers and/or booksellers. Sold out events and massive book sales in each evening venue testify to Gervase’s countrywide and long lasting general appeal.
A further few specific comments about the tour: to the friendly waiter in Pocklington who was sure that he knew me – I’m afraid we lied to you – you don’t know me off Casualty and I have never been swathed from top to toe in bandages on the telly. To Gervase and Barry – it turns out that Nobby Clark is also an accomplished musician as well as Morris Dancer, bell ringer, pub landlord and all round keen bean - who knew? And to the author sharing the stage with Gervase at one event, having read from his novel for 45 interminable minutes, and asked at 10pm ‘have I got time to read any more?’ – the answer is always going to be a resounding NO! Good lord…
The nice chart position in the top ten of last weekend’s bestseller lists is gratifying, and solidifies the raison d’etre for the 2 weeks away from home, however it’s meeting Gervase’s enthusiastic fans in every town that really makes it all worthwhile. Most people who meet Gervase tend to thank him for cheering them up; from the lady in Christchurch who had a brain haemorrhage last year and was kept going for many long weeks in hospital by listening to all the Dales audio books, to the woman in Derby who was pulled over by the police for suspected driving under the influence, but was in fact listening to Gervase and laughing so hard she was swerving all over the road. The policeman, it turned out, was also a fan, so let her off without charge.
Going on a book signing tour with an author is one of my main reasons for wanting to work in the publicity department of a company like Penguin. It’s incredibly hard work, but ultimately rewarding and, when you’re on the road with someone like Gervase, full of helpless laughter. Note: Evil Knievel was NOT the guy riding that bike in ‘Rebel Without a Cause’.
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Not yet they aren't. But one of the most famous opening lines in modern English literature seems to me a good place to start writing about where to begin when reissuing an old book.
A friend of mine over at HarperCollins - in fact the wise chap that employed me here at Penguin a few years ago - had to hire a new copywriter a while back. He was looking for a good way to separate the wheat from the chaff and came up with the rather neat idea of inviting all applicants to supply the current blurb of a book they were fond of together with an entirely new blurb of their own devising. They then had to explain why theirs was better.
Improving on what has gone before in publishing is usually not so difficult since jackets tend to stay on books for many years and by the time publishers get around to reissuing them they look rather tired if not plain antediluvian. Here's an example, appropriately enough, from the Eighties:
The blurb on 1989's Nineteen Eighty-Four doesn't sound much like a novel at all: Newspeak, Doublethink, Big Brother, the Thought Police – George Orwell's world-famous novel coined new and potent words of warning for us all. Alive with Swiftian wit and passion, it is one of the most brilliant satires on totalitarianism and the power-hungry ever written.
Maybe. But it sounds like a bit of a slog.
When it came to doing the reissue (out in July) it didn't take a lot of head scratching for me to decide that a) it was time I re-read one of my favourite books and b) the starting point for writing this blurb had to be the excellent opening line, which manages to be perfectly ordinary until its very last word - which rips the rug out from under your feet. Nice work, George.
By listing some of the words that Nineteen Eighty-Four had added to the English language, the old blurb was trying to get across the book's weight, its sheer importance. Unfortunately, as if with a lot of attempts to make things sound worthy, Nineteen Eighty-Four just comes across as dull. Something to be admired rather than liked.
I think we can do better than that.
‘It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.’
Winston Smith works for the Ministry of Truth in London, chief city of Airstrip One. Big Brother stares out from every poster, the Thought Police uncover every act of betrayal. When Winston finds love with Julia, he discovers that life does not have to be dull and deadening, and awakens to new possibilities. Despite the police helicopters that hover and circle overhead, Winston and Julia begin to question the Party; they are drawn towards conspiracy. Yet Big Brother will not tolerate dissent – even in the mind. For those with original thoughts they invented Room 101 …
This edition is not the Penguin Modern Classics edition. This edition is the one we want to get into the hands of school kids, to grab their short attention spans. So yes, putting the key words - Big Brother, Thought Police, Room 101, Ministry of Truth - in there is important, but that is no reason to leave the story or the characters out. The great thing about Nineteen Eighty-Four is that it is so unsettling, it is so terrifying and bleak (and not much fun as satire, either). To get that across we need to know what's at stake - what Big Brother is opposed to. We need Winston and Julia, their hopes and love, their humanity. Without Winston and Julia there is no tension, no story.
A book might be a classic, big names may rate it, teachers might tell you it is an essential read. But that's no reason not to sell it as if it's brand new - to some people it will be - or not to try to seduce the sceptical reader into turning to the first page despite themselves.
At the same time as Nineteen Eighty-Four we're reissuing Animal Farm:
Both books feature stunning covers by Shepard Fairey - if you're going to grab people, get them by the short and curlies. But don't let either cover art or blurbs distract you from the words within.
Any lazy or awful blurbs on good books you'd like to share with us? And can you do any better?
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Don't know if you ever watch the West Wing but (last couple of seasons aside) it was possibly my favourite tv programme ever. If I could have any job in the world it would definitely be something that involved me being in lots of meetings, walking down corridors talking much too quickly, doing lots of very important work and having an assistant who not only would take my calls, do my photocopying and buy me coffee but would also organise my entire day so really I just had to be fabulous and dynamic at work without actually having to remember where I'm going next. Sadly my job isn't actually like that but I did just meet someone who may well be the real-life equivalent of Sam Seborne. Or maybe Joey Lucas. Mark Penn runs a PR agency and is a lifelong pollster and political advisor to the likes of both the Clintons and Tony Blair. He's been described as 'the most important man in Washington you've never heard of' and has just given me the idea for my next job. Upscale tattoo parlours! Did you know that whilst tattoos are massively on the increase every year, you still have to go to some slightly scary place full of huge tattoed men in order to get one? Why isn't there somewhere like an Elemis spa or The Sanctuary, full of smiley women in immaculate white coats to comfort you that you aren't going to catch something unpleasant (in a Pamela Anderson-type way) from their needles? Tattoo parlours for ladies who lunch in Whole Foods, it's the way forward!
If you want to steal the next big business idea that means you can get out of your 9 to 5 and stop working for da man, or you just want to impress your friends, then check out this man's book, Microtrends, set to change our world now!
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