In Print Magazine (Book)

READING THE WORLD THROUGH BOOKS
POLITICS SOCIETY LIFESTYLE TRAVEL ENTERTAINMENT ART

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Standfrst Standfrst Standfrst Standfrst Standfrst Standfrst
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Letter from
the Editor
When I tried to explain to my friends who chose sensible careers why
I picked a degree in English, most of them sniggered. I bet you only like
books because youre rubbish at sports, one of them said. In fairness,
there is a degree of truth in this. You know the last child to be picked in
school volleyball teams? I do.
All the same, I dont think Id swap the time Ive spent laying on my
belly reading a book for anything else. I could have become an Olympic
Skeleton champion, but as it happens I got stuck with Roald Dahl. I
might not have the muscles to show for it, but I know a fair deal about
sports or fandom at least. Who, after reading Fever Pitch, doesnt? I
wouldnt say Im a modern-day Madame Bovary, living out a fctional
fantasy, but I do think that Jonathan Coes novels have something to do
with my decision to move to England.
Books arent just something we do with our spare time theyre a lens
through which we look at reality out there, they teach people about all
sorts of things. Think of a subject anything. Lizards, parking lots, outer
space: I bet you theres a book for that.
Thats what we at IN PRINT do. We tell stories about whats going on in the
world through the books that frst opened our eyes to them. Some people
dedicate their life to books weve spoken to those who write them,
make them or sell them. But those of you who at least once have told a
friend you were really sorry but you couldnt go out that night (only to go
back and fnish the last 50 pages of your novel) know what just loving
books means. If youve ever had a rush-hour crush based on the book the
passenger in front of you was showing off, if you understand that reading
a book before watching its flm adaptation is not an option but an ethical
imperative, if youve ever had to hide behind the pages not to admit
you were actually crying like a baby, if the idea of a literary pub crawl
genuinely excites you then youll probably understand where were
coming from when we say that stuff is generally better if its been
IN PRINT frst.
Enjoy our frst issue,
Chiara Rimella
IN PRINT
E D I T O R :
Chiara Rimella
F E A T U R E S E D I T O R :
Lou Boyd
D E S I G N E R :
Serina Sandhu
C H I E F S U B E D I T O R :
Rachael Pells
P R O D U C T I O N E D I T O R :
Daniel McCarthy
P I C T U R E E D I T O R :
Kitty Knowles
I L L U S T R A T O R S :
Lydia Rose Carter, Rachel Stott,
Ellen Twinem, Margherita Mazzola
C O N T R I B U T I N G P H O T O G R A P H E R :
Pippa Bailey
C O N T R I B U T I N G W R I T E R :
Paul Bailey
#In-Print
Twitter: @In_PrintMag
Instagram: @In_PrintMag
Website: www.in-printmag.co.uk
Email: read@in-printmag.co.uk
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S T A F F P I C K S
14
a F U L L Y - F O R M E D winner
32
LITERARY
BOGEYMEN
36
Capitalising on
PIKETTY
10
# S H E L F I E S
44
S H O R T for S H O R T
20
RESTLESS
UKRAINE
12
T H I S not T H A T
46
G A S T R O
24
Tugging at T R A D I T I O N
11
M A R A T H O N
13
J U D G I N G A
B O O K B Y I T S C O V E R
28
Healing S Y R I A
t o me s
8
L O S T and F O U N D
9
home S W E E T home
r e a d i n g
5
IN PRINT
95
T H A N K S
56
KAMILA SHAMSIE
72
noP O R TofC A L L
86
V I S U A L I S Ethis
70
48
Materialising
82
60
B O U N D to L A S T
88
R E B O O T
75
G O inP E A C E
63
Meet the B O O K S E L L E R
76
R U I N among R U I N S
64
A STORYBOOK
ROMANCE
81
P L A Ylit
when life gives you L E M O N S
Brave new F I L M
M A R Q U E Z
c o v e r
93
S T O C K I S T S
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S T A F F P I C K S
I have spent half of my conscious life wishing
I could write like Raymond Carver. Where Im
Calling From is a collection of 37 stories his
best ones, selected by the author just before
his death and in all its 430 pages, none of the
bare, stark sentences are misplaced. Carvers
stories illuminate life with the power of a
fashlight: aggressive, unforgiving and rudely
honest, they scratch at the raw heart of things. I
love Carver because he in turn loves humanity,
despite or thanks to his disenchanted view
of people. Alcoholics, inadequate fathers,
couples that do not know how to speak to
each other any more, all fnd a legitimate space
in his stories, emerging from a silence that is
only apparently painful, and that is, in truth, a
welcome refuge for characters and readers
who know that the shadow of actions always
speaks louder.
Starting Patrick Hamiltons Hangover Square
at the age of ffteen I was instantly enthralled
and knew within the frst few pages that this
book was going to change my literary taste from
that point onwards. Set in grimey World War II
London, Hamiltons words are full of intense
emotion, astute observation and the sting of
unrequited love. Against the backdrop of an
underpaid, alcoholic city, protagonist George
is jealous, schizophrenic and paranoid, but a
character with whom it is easy to sympathise
and relate. As you are drawn into his morally
skewed, unreliable view of the world, his dry
and witty tone invades your mind and stays with
you long after youve closed the pages. Over the
years since I frst discovered Hamilton Ive fallen
in love with many other authors, yet Hangover
Square still inspires and haunts me like me no
other novel.
After a childhood poring over fairy tales,
discovering The Picture of Dorian Gray in
my teens was akin to fnding the censored
alternative. Fiction verging on make-believe,
thought provoking messages about morality and
fttingly cruel consequences for the un-good,
Wildes classic is a tale for the ages. The fable
that Dorian teaches us yearning for eternal
youth and beauty will be the demise of any soul
has scored my mind much like Dorians acts
of vanity scored his portrait. But it is Wildes
depiction of decadence in the Gilded Age and
language calculated to portray darkness that
captivated me most in that frst read. It is those
words, obsessively aesthetic much like Dorian
himself, that I covet in my own writing. And it is
those words, woven together with artistry
unlike anything written today, that will stay with
me forever.
Rachael Pells, Chief Sub Editor
What really affected me about The Collector
even more so than the gruesome descriptions of
kidnap and obsession was the overpowering
sense of loneliness depicted between both
characters. The story is told alternately between
Frederick Clegg, butterfy collector and City Hall
employee, and his newest possession, Miranda,
whom Clegg keeps locked up in a basement.
Reading the story through his eyes, it is diffcult
not to feel pity and even sympathy for a man
trapped in a stagnant existance; he is, after all,
just an artist with a desire to collect beautiful
things. John Fowels does an excellent job of
challenging a readers perception of right and
wrong, of forcing us to guiltily read on through
initial disgust, and experience events through
the eyes of a man we would love to hate, yet
ultimately cannot.
City of Night was, for me, the coming of age
American novel that everyone needs a strange
cross between On the Road and The Adventures
of Tom Sawyer. Its subject matter had no
relevance the underworld of male hustling in
1960s America flled with drag queens, nights
in all night cinemas and struggling young men
but Rechys stream of consciousness style
pulled me in like tornado winds, sticking me
next to him in Times Square waiting for his next
score. Rechy started out writing a letter to a
friend about his travels across the country and
it eventually turned into a dense, 400 page novel
about an outsiders view of a lonely world, flled
with questions about what it means to be a man
and how it feels to grow up. You have to put
down, only because you want to be reading it as
long as possible.

Disturbing to the point that you cant stop
reading, Bret Easton Ellis Wall Street nightmare
blends dark humour with truly shudder-
worthy horror. Whats worrying and I hope
Im not alone in thinking this is that Patrick
Batemans obsessive attention to branded suits,
changing musical genres and every exhaustive
detail of his detached yuppie lifestyle is so
soporifc that youre alarmingly unsurprised as
his violence graduates from kicking a dog, to
stabbing a man, to the most genuinely terrifying
breed of sexualised torture. Despite its gore,
American Psycho is cleverly ambitious and sets
an astonishingly high bar of what it is to be
emotionally and physically moved by a book.
Now, whether Im reading about the tragedies of
war, or of lovers heartache, I only hope to be as
intimately involved.
Kitty Knowles, Picture Editor Daniel McCarthy, Production Editor
Serina Sandhu, Designer Lou Boyd, Features Editor Chiara Rimella, Editor
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#S H E L F I E S
What does your book collection look like?
Ive got a few hundred books. They are stacked in quite a hodgepodge way,
but they are colour coordinated!
What kind of novels do you fnd most appealing?
I enjoy science fction and novels set in a different time or place. I think
thats because its that much easier to escape into the pages and let my
imagination run away. I also enjoy theory and historical texts.
What book should people read now?
Lanark, by Alasdair Gray: following the recent fre at the Glasgow School
of Art, which saw the Mackintosh building destroyed, this dystopian
depiction of Glasgow is testament to the enormously varied and awesome
talent that has emerged from the school.
If you could exist in any book what book would it be, and why?
Id like to get to know Victoria Woolf s Orlando, who is one of the bravest,
most beautiful, delicate and ferce characters I have met.
What book have you been proudest to show off on the tube?
Story of the Eye, by Georges Bataille. Nothing better than looking like a
flthy pervert.
As books are having their moment in front of the lens, we asked
literary instagrammer @leahdolores to talk about her bookshelf
Can you do better? Share your #Shelfe at @In_PrintMag
@andrewwade1983
@boolil
@cavellucci
@conniemtc
@dreadedloon
@eireannmor
@enrichardendure
@lilafrei
@littlemissbutcher
@wannyrow
@strandbookstore @leahdolores
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@boolil
@littlemissbutcher
@wannyrow
@strandbookstore

@LauraloubeeBoyd 11pm
OK. Here we go. With 24 hours ahead of me, I am feeling
pretty optimistic about fnishing the book in time its only
the frst volume. I settle down with coffee, fruit pastilles and
an emergency energy drink. This is going to be fne.
@LauraloubeeBoyd 12am
I hate Proust. After reading and re-reading the frst few pages,
Ive accepted that I have no idea whats going on. Im also
suspicious that no one in this book does, either. The character
is sat confused about life, Im sat confused about the book.
The emergency energy drink has gone, but I can still feel my
eyes closing at the end of every paragraph. For the last fve
pages hes been talking about how he doesnt like to fall asleep.
Not only am I forcing myself to stay awake, the book is now
mocking me for this decision.
I fell asleep. After about two hours of semiconscious dreaming
about madeleines and large volumes of Swanns Way falling on
my face, Im back at it. Two-thirds left and 17 hours to go. Im
confdent but Im behind.
Swanns Way is the frst part of Marcel
Prousts massive seven-volume novel,
In Search of Lost Time. Its almost 430
pages of Prousts recalling old memories in
dream-like prose. I can fnish it in 24 hours,
right? Thats not even 20 pages per hour. I can do that.
What book should Lou marathon-read next?
Tweet @In_PrintMag with your nomination
r e adi n
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M A R A T H O N
After a caffeine and sugar breakfast, I have somehow managed
to get past the halfway mark! Im fully into the novels love
story now Im half hoping it all goes wrong for them just for
some excitement to keep me going. I suspect, however, that
this is not going to be an action-packed story.
Im leaving the book for a few hours and doing some other
work to salvage my sanity. I tell myself that Ill go back to it in
an hour.
Four hours later now, and Im back to reading. I have decided
that a change of surroundings might inspire me. Im in a
coffee shop on my fourth coffee of the day. I now have just
over a third of the pages still to go, and six hours left. I think
its time for another coffee.
There is no way Ill make it. Its been three hours since I
started again and Ive only read 70 pages. The bottle of wine
in the kitchen is looking more and more appealing and Im
wondering if alcohol will increase or hinder my chances of
completing before my deadline. I decide not to risk it.
I still have a hundred pages to go. My eyes arent working
anymore.
@LauraloubeeBoyd 11:15pm
It is done. Fifteen minutes past the deadline. I burn the book,
vow to never read again and pass out on the sofa.
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Standfrst Standfrst Standfrst Standfrst Standfrst Standfrst Standfrst
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F. Scott Fitzgerald
This: The Beautiful and Damned
Not: The Great Gatsby
Fitzgeralds second book is uninhibited, loosely written and far
naughtier in comparison to the straight-edged Great Gatsby. While
fawed characters are key to Fitzgeralds novels the characters in The
Beautiful and Damned are exciting, unlike the sickly-sweet Daisy
Buchanan and forlorn Jay Gatsby. Unashamedly sinful pleasure,
parties, and gin above all else, Anthony and Gloria are wonderfully
wicked. The ending of Gatsby is also somewhat lacking. Jay is shot,
while Daisy and her depraved marriage are able to sail off into the
sunset. The decay of Gloria and Anthony is much more satisfng
wrinkles etch into their skin, telling of decadent, immoral lifestory.
T H I SnotT H A T
Geroge Orwell
This: Such, Such Were the Joys
Not: Politics and the English Language
In his time, George Orwell wrote many poignant essays. The well
known Politics and the English Language shreds apart our language
use, as well as that of politicians. It makes for a provocative read, by
challenging the platitudes of language we simply have never even
considered. However, the intimacy and autobiographical account
divulged in Such, Such Were the Joys form a more compelling read.
In the stirring work, Orwell recounts childhood memories and grief
during his time in boarding school and that is what makes this long
essay so enticing: there is not the usual sense of disengagement that
Orwell portrays in his other essays and novels. In Such, Such Were
the Joys, you feel a true connection to the author.
Hunter S. Thompson
This: Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail 72
Not: Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
Thompsons drug fuelled road trip through LSD, ether, cocaine,
alcohol, and Las Vegas, is his most famous work and his frst foray
into gonzo-journalism, the style that would cement him as a voice of
the American counterculture. But even Thompson himself admitted
later that the novel was a failed experiment in gonzo. In 1973, he
released Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail 72, a collection
of Thompsons writings on the 1972 United States presidential
campaign between Richard Nixon and George McGovern, originally
written for Rolling Stone Magazine. Its the closest Thompson would
get to reliable, even though George McGovern would later call the
collection the least factual, most accurate account of Nixons win.
J.D. Salinger
This: Nine Stories
Not: The Catcher in the Rye
Salingers only published novel and perhaps the most famous coming-
of-age novel in American literature, The Catcher in the Rye tells
the story of anti-hero Holden Caulfeld and his battle through the
angst and agony that comes with being a teenager. Catcher is now a
classroom staple, but the Glass family rivals Holden as the authors
greatest creation. Through eight tales three of which appear in the
collection Nine Stories Salinger weaves the history of a troubled
Upper-East-Side New York family, hiding secrets, dealing with
spiritualty, possessing frightening intellect, and pushing ahead in what
are sometimes listless lives.
The classics are forever heralded but we
sometimes forget the author has written other
books too. Here, we fght for the literary underdog
Tweet your #Underdog to @In_PrintMag
Daniel McCarthys
Underdogs
Serina Sandhus
Underdogs
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9am
Unlocking the shop door I see the usual early
morning suspects. The suited businessman, who
rushes past me to pick up the new parliamentary
biography before work, the eccentric old regular
who will, as always, pick the most obscure title
from the history section before settling into a
chair and snoring for the rest of the day, and the
confused looking tourists who clearly thought that
London woke up earlier than nine.
11am
New titles are delivered. Opening up the box, I see
20 copies of a gigantic sci-f hardback. Hauling the
copies across the shop, I attempt to climb up and
shelve them at the top of the large bookshelves. A
succession of six heavily bound books insolently
fall right back at me, bouncing off my head one by
one, as amused customers watch on.
1pm
The thirtieth customer of the day comes over to
ask whether we stock Harry Potter. I grit my teeth
and point to the huge display in the childrens
section behind them, complete with stuffed owl
and broomstick. How has anyone not read Harry
Potter yet?! I return to fghting with the hardbacks.
3pm
A tall serious looking woman walks over to me.
Where are your copies of Michel de Montaignes
later essays? she asks, challenging me with her
eyes for a sign of recognition. I shamefully go to
Google the book, leaving the woman to roll her
eyes at the stupid, uneducated booksellers of today.
5pm
I attempt to reunite rogue toddlers with their
parents, awkwardly clear my throat at the entangled
teenagers making out in the manga section, timidly
ask the guy with all the conspiracy theory books to
leave and fnally wake up the snorer with his history
book in the chair. Everyone out, I turn to the
empty shop. Two hours of tidying up before home.
1962, Germano Facetti
The eye motif sums up the books themes of
observation and invasion of privacy in the
most simple and effective way. The funnel of
pipes leading to the eye relates closely to a
passage in the book when Winston is captured
by the party.
1966, William Roberts
William Roberts painting of a civil defense
headquarters could easily pass for the inner
workings of one of Orwells Ministries.
However, the overall aesthetic of the
painting - a brightly coloured, appealing offce
environment - could not be further away from
the bleak, monotone surroundings of Orwells
novel.
2000, Stephen Conroy
Its impossible not to assume that this Stephen
Conroys painting depicts Winston. Behind him
hang three clocks showing different times, and
the long shadows give the impression of time
slipping away, as the fgure is quietly resigning
itself to its fate as much as Winston is towards
the end of the novel.
2009, Jonathan Gray
In Jonathan Grays design, the Partys slogan is
plastered on the cover, and each line is divided
by a series of pipes connected to a pressure
meter, possibly a metaphor for the rebellion
that boils up inside Winston.
JUDGING A BOOK BY ITS COVER
Words: Paul Bailey
Lou Boyd:
Working
the shelves
WWhile we dont condone it, sometimes a judging a
book by its cover can really tell you a lot about it
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How do you feel about winning this years
Baileys Womens Prize for Fiction?
Im still in a state of shock. Of course I
hoped Id win it, but I didnt actually think I
would. The shortlist was so strong, it could
have gone to any of the books and no one
would have had cause to complain.
Getting the book published hasnt been an easy
feat. Looking back at the process, how do you
feel now?
I originally wrote the book in six months,
between 2004 and 2005. It then took nine
years to fnd a publisher who was willing to
take a risk on it. Many admired its style, but
struggled with the fact it could not be easily
categorised and were dissuaded from taking
it on by their marketing departments. Only
in 2013 did I fnally meet up with Henry
Layte at Galley Beggar Press who fell in
love with it and wanted to get it out there.
How does it feel to win the Baileys prize, which
is a tribute to female authors?
Its a huge honour, especially given how
much I personally like and professionally
admire the other writers in the short list.
You came to London as a teenager after
spending your childhood in Ireland. What made
your homeland the right setting for your story?
I was interested in looking at a specifc
period in Irish history, the late 80s and early
90s. Its an interesting and often overlooked
time: it was really the tail end of the
Catholic Churchs complete control over
the country. A lot of the conservatism in
the society and many of things that happen
to the girl, including the way she processes
them, are caused by that control of the
Church. It was hugely damaging for the
character and for the country as a whole.
Your father died of cancer when you were a
child and your brother later developed a brain
tumour. How did your past affect the novel?
Certainly themes of loss are very close to
me personally, and although I didnt set
out to write a story in which a boy would
have a brain tumour, it was a theme I kept
returning to. I suppose in some way, there
was an element of trying to re-examine that
part of my life through a different context.
I wouldnt say it was therapeutic, but it was
possibly a way of placing things in order.
The protagonist loses her virginity to her uncle
and then seeks out other aggressive sexual
encounters. What interested you in this theme?
I was interested in exploring the more
insidious nature of sexual abuse, its
consequences and the fact that the girl
feels complicit in it. People tend to be
quite locked in their attitudes toward sexual
abuse, and I think its often much more
complex for the person it happens to, rather
than simply being something nasty theyd
much rather forget. Its almost about how
sexual abuse can shape sexuality.
You went to school with the victims of one of
Irelands frst sexual abuse scandals. Did this
impact your writing of the novel?
The events are now in the open: what went
on, how it was carried out, almost in an
institutional and industrial fashion, and
how it was covered up at every angle by
everyone in authority. It was a large part of
Irish life for many, many years and it has
had a disastrous infuence on the culture.
Its a good thing that these stories are now
being told, and that Ireland has a chance to
become a more honest place as a result.
Eimear McBride, winner of this years Baileys Womens Prize for
Fiction, talks of avoiding Irish sentimentality, raw experiences and how
her past has infuenced her debut novel, A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing.
a
F U L L Y - F O R M E D
winner
Interview by: Kitty Knowles
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For you. Youll soon. Youll
give her name. In the
stitches of her skin shell
wear your say. Mammy me?
Yes you. Bounce the bed,
Id say. Id say thats what
you did. Then lay you down.
They cut you round. Wait
and hour and day
- A Girl is a Half-formed Thing
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What drew you to using such strong references
to blood, dirt and vomit throughout the novel?
I really wanted to avoid any kind of
sentimentality. Theres a great danger,
especially when writing about themes that
are so closely identifed with Irishness and
Irish writers. By rooting the novel in the
physical I hoped it would make it more
immediate, and less emotional in a way.
What effect did you hope your distinctive,
urgent style would have on readers?
I wanted to see if I could give the reader
a very different kind of experience. My
aim was to try and make the author
disappear, so that the text would be an
almost unmediated experience between the
character and the reader, and so that the
reader would feel very closely implicated.
Would you describe your writing as a stream of
consciousness? Did you intend it to be so?
I certainly set out with the idea of writing
a stream of consciousness, but what I
hope Ive achieved is something that
goes a bit deeper, a bit further back than
consciousness, almost to the point of a
gut reaction. The reader is experiencing
everything at exactly the same time and in
the same way as the character I wanted
the reader to feel as though it was a story
happening inside of themselves.
Is there a particular part of the novel that you
feel stands out, or is especially important?
One of the hardest parts for me to write
was toward the end of the book, when
the brother is told that he is going to die.
I decided early on that I would make it
the sparsest piece of writing and set it out
differently to the rest of the book, which
is very dense and has all the sentences
jammed together. This section, on the other
hand, is opened out line by line. I wanted to
set it apart from the rest of the book as a
moment of clarity.
Can you tell us about your next project? Will you
carry on some of the concerns of your debut?
It does have some similar themes, but they
are looked at from a different angle, and
with more distance attached to them. Also,
its about two people so that will be the
major difference. Its mostly through one
perspective, but obviously when there
is a lot of interaction between the two
characters, you have to open up the two
texts in a different way.
What is your favourite Baileys shortlisted entry
this year apart from your own, of course?
I havent read Burial Rites by Hannah Kent
yet, but Im very keen to. I think what it is
about is very powerful. Hannahs interest as
a writer in exploring the quite dark, taboo
subject of women who commit violent
acts I fnd that very interesting, and
Im fascinated by Iceland. I want to pull
Hannah aside and pick her brains about
where I should go and what I should do!
I met a man. I met a man. I let
him throw me round the bed. And
smoked, me, spliffs and choked
my neck until I said I was dead. I
met a man who took me for long
walks. Long ones in the country.
I offer up. I offer up in the hedge.
I met a man I met with her. She
and me and his friend to bars at
night and drink champagne and
bought me chips at every teatime.
I met a man with condoms in his
pockets. Dont use them. He loves
children in his heart. No. I met a
man who knew me once. Who saw
me round when I was a child. Who
said youre a fne looking woman
now. Who said come back marry
me live on my farm. No. I met a
man who was a priest I didnt I
did. Just as well as many another
one would. I met a man.
I met a man.
- A Girl is a Half-formed Thing
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Anna Quindlen
On writing: Still Life with Bread Crumbs
I had already started working on Still Life With Bread Crumbs when it suddenly occurred to me that I
wanted to write a novel that considered the question of money: having it, and then not having it. Not since
Edith Wharton and John Galsworthy, I realized, had novelists meditated much about what ensues when
your cash runs low: not what its like to be poor, but what its like to have your cash fow slow to a trickle.
On reading: Fatima Bhuttos The Shadow of the Crescent Moon
I was particularly happy to see Fatima Bhuttos frst novel on the Baileys Longlist. This book is the story
of three brothers, but in one interview Bhutto said the women in the book simply took over the narrative
at a certain point. I felt that when I was reading, as well as the sense that she was trying to subvert the
notion of the oppressed Pakistani woman with these uncommonly strong and tough characters.
Audrey Magee
On writing: The Undertaking
I wrote The Undertaking because I wanted to understand what it would have been like to be an ordinary
German during WWII; to ask what I would have done if I had lived in that time and in that place; to
question how I would have behaved towards the ostracised, the common enemy.
On reading: Eimear McBrides A Girl Is A Half-Formed Thing
Ease yourself into this work, as though you had crept into the corner of a room to listen to someone
telling a story, to listen to a voice that sings, narrates and recites until a story builds, a fragmented, broken
story of a sisters love for her damaged brother. It is the writing that will stay with you. You will not forget
that you read this book that you were carried into the mind of this troubled girl dependent on a brother
incapable of supporting her.
Hannah Kent
On writing: Burial Rites
I frst heard about Agnes Magnsdttir when I was a student living in Iceland. My town wasnt far from the
site of Icelands last execution and I soon heard about the murderess beheaded there in 1830. What sort
of person had she been? What social or political circumstances had contributed to her fate? I noticed she
was commonly represented as unequivocally monstrous: I wanted to explore her humanity.
On reading: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichies Americanah
This is the kind of book that after less than two pages you quickly recognise is everything you want in
a novel. Its funny, incisive, scathing, observant and tender by turns. Ive not recently encountered a book
that so brilliantly articulates and challenges western preconceptions about immigrants and race. But to
make special mention of the novels treatment of issues is almost a disservice to Americanahs characters.
BAILEYS AUTHORS RECOMMEND
CHAPTER ONE
IN POLITICS
20 Restless Ukraine
24 Tugging at Tradition
28 Healing Syria
19
I
n mid-April, fve men in balaclavas
stood outside a synagogue in Kiev,
handing out posters to tell the
Jewish community that they must
pay a new tax, or leave the country.
The fyers were soon confrmed to be
part of an anti-semitic hoax, but for
many, the actions of that evening were
damaging beyond forgiveness.
It is said that history forever repeats
itself, and with the current situation in
Ukraine, that certainly seems to be the
case. In the opening pages of Bernard
Malamuds 1966 novel, The Fixer, a
young Jewish man named Yakov Bok
witnesses posters being handed out by
the Black Hundred organisation. Their
message: Save Russia from the Jews,
was part of a common ideology leading
up to the Second World War. Sadly,
20
IN POLITICS
Anti-semitic propaganda, state-controlled news outlets, imprisonment without trial and a general distrust of the government.
Why does the plot of a 1966 Russian novel feel so familiar to the political climate of Eastern Europe today?
R E S T L E S S
Words: Rachael Pells
P
h
o
t
o
:

S
h
i
v
y
a

N
a
t
h
Across
the serene
waters of
the Black
Sea, lies
political
tension
it is one that many believe has never
completely disappeared.
The Fixer is a fctional tale based on
the true story of a Jew named Menahem
Mendel Beilis. Falsely accused of
murdering a Christian boy in 1913, Beilis
was imprisoned in Kiev for two years
before even being allowed a trial. The
process sparked international criticism
of the anti-semitic mentality of the
Russian Empire and is perhaps better
remembered as a result of Malamuds
bestseller. In a similar vein, the recent
distribution of propaganda posters in
Kiev was consequential not just because
it was a bitter throwback to Nazi power,
but because it marked out the distrust
within the modern community. By
going viral within hours, it highlighted
to the rest of the world the charade
21
IN POLITICS
U K R A I N E
22
IN POLITICS
of mixed untruths which still sit between
Russia and its neighbour.
* * * * *
T
he hero of Malamuds novel,
Bok, is a bitter, apathetic citizen
who feels let down by not only
the state, but his own people.
Having escaped his provincial, Jewish
town community for a more prosperous
life in Kiev, the distrust he feels for almost
everyone he encounters is vindicated by
the mistreatment he receives. But what is
noticeably striking in Malamuds writing is
the way in which Bok reacts to news: In
his room that night, Yakov, in fascination,
read that the boy had been bled to death
for religious purposes so that the Jews
could collect his blood... Though this was
ridiculous, he was frightened. He got up,
sat down, and got up again. He went to
the window, then returned hastily and
continued to read the newspaper.
Nobody here knows the absolute
truth, says Alexei Tarasenko, a Ukrainian
national, they all think they do, but
they cant. Tarasenko has worked as an
interpreter for the UN and EU in Odessa
for 12 years. Western news leaves out so
much information about what is going on
here, but the way that our newspapers are
covering the civil war is much worse they
distribute lies.
Tarasenko openly refers to the confict
as a civil war a term which is skirted
around in both western and eastern media.
The Ukrainian news only says that there
is an anti-terrorist operation in process.
In reality they are making plans to evacuate
children from the whole city of Donetsk
because they anticipate military confict.
During the riots in Kiev earlier this
year, the state were not showing much of
the action on the news or supporting the
Ukrainian people either way. But at the
same time they were trying to show some
information from the Russian TV channels,
based on the state news there. The day after
the revolution, some Ukrainian nationalists
stormed into the offce of the editor of a
news channel, saying: Who the hell are you
to broadcast Russian propaganda to the
P
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t
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:

A
F
P

/

G
e
t
t
y

I
m
a
g
e
s
Violent
riots have
been raging
in eastern
Ukraine for
months
Ukrainian people? It was quite violent and
very humiliating for him. A video of the
encounter went viral, and was inevitably
used against the Ukrainian Nationalist Party
in both western and eastern news.
Katerina Kravtsova saw the video from
her home in Moscow. The news in Russia
is very state-controlled and of course this
video evidence of violent Ukrainians was
shown everywhere. I question everything
I see because I am a journalist, but the
majority of people here believe everything
they are told and understandably, because
they see nothing from the other side of
the story.
Kravtsova, 23, left her job as a reporter
at The Moscow Times soon after the
national newspaper became Kremlin-
controlled. It happened very subtly, thats
always the way in Russia. Our news editor
was gone for some time but I assumed he
was ill or on holiday or something. Several
weeks went by and people started to realise
that something was wrong the Times
used to be a very liberal paper, quite critical
of the Russian government, in fact, and
we could write whatever we wanted. But
gradually we were told that we shouldnt
shouldnt do this, do it like that... the
changes were never mentioned, there
was no news about it even journalists
never understand whats going on in
these situations.
The editor in chief of The Moscow
Times, Andrew McChesney (an American)
was fred, and Russian national Nabi
Abdullaev put in his place. Abdullaev
worked for a state agency, says Kravtsova.
Its so obvious now that the paper was
a threat to the government and so, like
almost every other news source, the
Kremlin took it over. The main source
of news and entertainment for Russian
residents is television, which is also largely
state-controlled. This means that an entire
generation has grown up watching and
largely believing a biased truth about the
outside world. Ive even got into fghts
with my grandmother about politics, says
Kravtsova. She spends all day watching
television and believes everything it tells
her, that Putin is a hero and that Crimea
belongs to Russia. But then thats what shes
always known. The concept of balanced
news isnt something shes familiar with.
* * * * *
She spends all day
watching television and
believes everything it
tells her
23
IN POLITICS
R
eading The Fixer today, it seems
especially poignant that Boks
fearful attitude towards news is
a mood akin to that of modern
Ukraine. Nationals such as Tarasenko
admit that the ease and rapidity with which
propaganda is spread, both person to
person and through national news forums,
is both fascinating and terrifying. I see
things online posted from all sides of the
confict which are so ridiculous they make
me laugh, he says. But really the only
person who is laughing is Putin. The press
is such a powerful force, and when it is
abused to such an extent it can ruin lives.
The political situation in Ukraine can
only be described as bleak. But if citizens
and outsiders alike can take comfort from
one element of The Fixers story, may it be
that Yakov stands by the truth in spite of
pressure from corrupt offcials to confess
to a terrible murder. For the novel, this is
victory enough. In 1915, Boks inspiration,
Beilis, was found innocent and fnally
granted his freedom. For every oblivious
Russian grandmother, there will always be
those who question what they read and
hear. And thats the unbiased truth.
24
IN POLITICS
IN POLITICS
Scotland is
feeling the
pull, away
from the
rest of the
UK.
24
25
IN POLITICS
In the same year that Sir Walter Scotts Waverley marks its two hundred year anniversary, Scotland
prepares to face one of its biggest decisions yet. The 19th century writers descriptions of patriotism,
savagery and tartan are remarkably relevant ahead of the referendum
I
t took Sir Walter Scott nine years to
complete Waverley. Nine years spent
reliving his youthful days when,
roaming the Scottish Highlands, he
heard tales of veterans from the Jacobite
rising of 1745. Nine years worrying that
publishing a novel such as Waverley, one
that sees a severe clash between rebellious
sensibilities and the crown, might injure
his reputation as a poet. Nine years, three
of which were spent with the manuscript
ageing in a drawer in Scotts home,
collecting dust, waiting to be fnished, until
he published it anonymously in 1814.
But today, two hundred years after
Waverley was released to the public, the
novel has become one of Scotlands most
famous, and required reading for anyone
growing up Scottish. Since the novel was
frst published, Scotland has changed
signifcantly, and so has its place within
the United Kingdom. This year, more than
three centuries after Scotland entered a
union with England, Scots will have the
choice to dissolve that relationship.
The most prevalent reasons behind
Scotlands call for a referendum appear to
be economic. The Scottish White Papers,
the countrys guide to an independent
Scotland, spell it out: Independence
will give us the powers we need to build
an even stronger economy... rather than
remain under Westminster, which created
an unequal society and an unbalanced
economy. Yet some questions the voters
face on this September echo back as far as
Scotts writings they could certainly turn
to Waverley for some advice on whether or
not to opt for a Yes.
Waverleys blend of a fctional narrative
Words: Daniel McCarthy
and real events, according to Fiona
Robertson, Professor of Literature at
St Marys University, London, earned it
the title of frst historical novel. Edward
Waverleys transformation from the son of
a Hanover politician to a Jacobite supporter
is largely caused by encounters with
Scottish highlanders, the primary manpower
behind the Jacobite risings in 1745.
The historical backbone to the story is
what made it so celebrated around the UK
at the time of publication. People could
relate to a fctional character living in a
period close enough to their present day for
them to be familiar with, or even remember,
the events. This relatability, Robertson
says, gave readers a true sense of what is
unique about Scottish society. Edinburgh
was a major city, a major port, even back
then, she says, but the Highland way of
life was something that people around the
UK didnt know too much about. The only
thoughts about the Highlanders would be
ones of savagery and violence.
Like the novels readers, Edward
Waverley is at frst foreign to the Highlands
but after encountering the characters, he
becomes sympathetic to their cause. Scotts
political aim was arguably for his audience
to follow the same path. Support for the
The only thoughts
about the Highlanders
would be ones of
savagery and violence
26
IN POLITICS
advantage. Other than being associated
with the Scottish clan system, tartan in
Waverley becomes a positive, powerful
visualisation of Scottish tradition in what
Fiona Robertson calls an interdependence
of art and politics.
The sense of belonging tartan gave
the Scots was so important that the British
government banned its wearing for 36 years
after the second failed Jacobite uprising, in
an attempt to squash the Highland identity.
Scott recognized the power that something
as simple as tartan could have in uniting a
group of people, and brought it back into
fashion, destroying the stigma it carried in
the rest of the UK (a reputation for being
the savages clothing), so much so that
when King George IV visited Scotland
in 1822, seven years after Waverleys
publication, he sported a tartan kilt himself.
Jacobite cause came from many highlanders
because they believed a restoration of
the Stuart dynasty would lead to an equal
union between the three United Kingdom
crowns, and that this would allow for
traditions such as the clan system to live on,
explains Eveline Cruickshanks, author and
researcher at the Jacobites Scholar Trust.
Jacobitism, though, wasnt just a Scottish
position, and for Cruickshanks, portraying
it as such is historically inaccurate: Scott
ignores the English Jacobites, who included
some important people in Parliament, she
says. The Duke of Cumberland, in charge
of suppressing the rebellion, was what
Cruickshanks calls a thug and behaved
with great cruelty in the massacres of
women and children in Jacobite areas of
Scotland, but also had the people who
joined the Jacobite army in Manchester
hanged, drawn and quartered. The Scots
may not have been the only ones to oppose
the Hanover monarch, but Waverley does
a good job of portraying their sanguine,
riotous spirit.
So passionate and robust was the
Highlanders depiction, that Scott didnt
shy away from showing their savagery.
Some, including the director John Fulljames
who based his opera La Donna del
Lago on Scotts writings may think that
the author opposed a romanticisation of
the Highlanders, and that turning them into
savages is his clear motivation, but scholars
often disagree.
For Professor David Purdie, a fellow
at Edinburgh University, there is no doubt
that Scotts experiences of Highland life
before writing Waverley created his desire
to promote Scotland as a unity within the
United Kingdom. He, more than anybody
else, helped to unite the Highlands and the
Lowlands. To do this, Scott had to speak
to the rest of the United Kingdom, his
primary audience, and mesmerise them with
an exciting and uniquely Scottish story.
Few things seem to us more distinctly
Scottish than tartan: Scott himself used it
widely in his novel as a symbol for his love
of the Highlands. When Waverley meets a
highland chieftain, Fergus Mac-Ivor, Scott
writes that Fergus Highland dress closed
trousers made of scarlet and white checked
tartan set off his person to great
It was a cause and effect relationship,
Robertson says. Scott recognized how the
people of the Highlands felt about Scotland
and the popularity of his novel caused
people unfamiliar with it to recognise it
and associate it with the area, too. A lot
of Scottish and Highland culture went into
Waverley, but the book spoke about the
countrys identity for people both inside
and outside Scotland. Now, for some, true
Scottishness is to be found in shedding
the countrys membership of the United
Kingdom and taking on the status of an
independent country.
Travelling the Highlands convinced
Scott that Scottish traditions had to be
preserved within the Union and that central
government should not throw them away,
but respect them. Whether the people of
Scotland still think that their identity can be
recognised and safeguarded by Westminster
will emerge at the end of the summer
when memories of the past might creep
up to upset economic judgements that
are not nearly as bold and brazen as the
Highlanders protests.
IN POLITICS
26
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IN POLITICS
Until I feared I
would lose it,
I never loved
to read. One
does not love
breathing.
- Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
IN POLITICS
28
S
et in southern Syria, Fadi Azzams
2011 novel Sarmada pulsates magic
and mystique through the Druze
communitys village. The novel,
Azzams frst, addresses heavy themes such
as sexual exploration, superstition, family
and religion, but it is the way in which the
villagers women deal with such hardship
that is most intriguing.
Syria has been beset with tragedy since
the uprising against the Baath government
in 2011, and this July will mark three years
since the Syrian army attempted to quash
dissent after hundreds of thousands of
people held demonstrations throughout
the month.
Syrian women are playing an active role
in the revolution, says Zanoubia Alamir
Salim, from Salamieh, a town in central
Syria. Alamir Salim came to London in 2012
to study and has become a member of the
grassroots human-rights group Syria Peace
& Justice. Back home, she says women,
including her, were heavily involved in
the protests. They want peace and dont
encourage military action.
But the perverse and male-dominated
government places the situation beyond
their control. So instead, they turn to their
beliefs to make sense of the world falling
apart around them.
In Sarmada, the narrator meets Azza
Tawfq in Paris, and claims to be the
transmigrated soul of Hela Mansour, a
young girl from Sarmada. After she left
her husband to return home and meet her
fate, Mansour was brutally murdered by her
brothers in an honour killing. The Druze
sect have the belief that when people pass
away, their soul comes back in the body of a
baby born into the family.
In my sect, Ismaili, says Salim, some
people believe in the same thing. And
where death is a daily occurrence in Syria,
Alamir Salim says superstition gives them
great comfort when they lose a loved one.
* * * * *
H
elas murder is the beginning
of a wave of death and misery
that plagues Sarmada, much
like civil war has plagued the
entire country. Religion is another belief
that gives Syrian women a sense of comfort.
When the earth is undifferentiated misery,
heaven will thrive, writes the author. All
Its been three years since the beginning of the civil war in Syria. Sarmada, a novel by journalist Fadi
Azzam, explores the methods by which the countrys forgotten women have managed to survive
Healing
S Y R I A
Words: Serina Sandhu
P
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R
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A
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a
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A
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M
a
r
j
a
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A woman
walks along
a fooded
street in
Damascus
IN POLITICS
29
the people have left is magic, heaven and
houris [beautiful young women]. Alamir
Salim says that although religion is one of
the causes of the tensions and war, women
still have faith in God. Women are trying
to comfort themselves that God is with
them. They believe that God will [resolve
everything] fnally for them.
Community is another pillar of
security Syrian women look to in times of
tragedy. The books second protagonist,
Farida, attempts to lift the gloom of her
entire community by feeding them herbal
remedies, including her mother-in-laws
grief milk, which she drains from her
breasts, after the series of deaths has cast an
unbearable shadow over Sarmada. Alamir
Salim says that women play an active role in
their community and often act as journalists
and activists and donate clothing, food and
even providing shelter to some refugees.
The book also sheds light on the
importance of family and how mothers
become committed to ensuring the well-
being and survival of their children the
wondrous look on a childs face makes it all
worth it.
Women try to hold their families
together more than men, explains Alamir
Salim. They take care of their children,
they cook for them. Especially in fghting
areas, women stay with their children.
These small instances of solace
might not seem enough to support an
entire country at war and at the mercy
of their corrupt rulers. But Alamir Salim
says women feign a sense of normality
through these methods and allow people
to acclimatise to the war. I have family in
Damascus and they say people get used to
the situation, she says. Like when there
is an explosion and, a minute later, they go
back to their daily life, go back to their jobs
and send their children to school.
Its been three years, says Alamir
Salim. People get used to what is
happening, sadly. The country is down.
Its knees are bloodied, bruised and in
desperate need of healing. But as civil war is
still rife between enraged, desperate civilians
and a warped government, these women are
grasping onto whatever they can in order to
carry on in the pretence of normality.
A female rebel
shows her
hand painted
with the fag
of the Syrian
Arab Republic
When the earth is
undifferentiated
misery, heaven will
thrive
CHAPTER TWO
IN SOCIETY
32 Literary Bogeymen
36 Capitalising on Piketty
31
32
IN LIFESTYLE
IN SOCIETY
32
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The heart-
shaped
sunglasses
might not
appear in
Nabokovs
novel, but
Kubricks
flm poster
forever tied
them to
Lolita
33
IN LIFESTYLE
H
umbert Humbert knew
something was wrong. His
immediate obsession with
12-year-old Dolores Haze had
pushed him to marry a woman he didnt
love, just to be close to her child. His lust
for Dolores, who he nicknames Lolita,
increases uncontrollably, until the narrative
is lead to the most illicit of road-trips,
moving from motel to motel warning
her that if she were to go to the police, the
consequences would be drastic.
People can be forgiven for doing crazy
things for love, and Vladimir Nabokovs
Lolita is certainly a love story. Narrator
Humbert writes that he loves Lolita more
than anything else I had ever seen or
imagined on earth. But Doloress young
age turns the novel into a new moral
debate, toeing the line between a tale told
by a self-diagnosed madman in love, and a
story about a menacing paedophile.
Nabokov was so concerned with
the theme of his novel that he strongly
considered publishing it under a
pseudonym. When he initially contacted
publishers, most turned down what has
become a defnitive classic on the grounds
of its unsavoury content. In the opening
pages of Lolita, an imaginary editor says of
Humbert: how magically his singing violin
can conjure up a tendresse, a compassion...
that makes us entranced with the book, all
the while abhorring its author!
Paedophilia has been making headlines over the last year, but its been prevalent in literature for much longer. Is the
treatment of this taboo subject in print helping to create a counterproductive, monstruous myth?
Words: Lou Boyd
IN SOCIETY
33
Paedophilic storylines have long had
the ability to intrigue as well as repulse.
Paedophilia in turn has become an
increasingly popular theme in 20th and
21st Century literature due to its characters
being universally hated and depicted as
depraved, immoral people who are also
cunning and manipulative. In popular
culture, the fctional paedophile is typically
male, with intrinsically evil intentions;
the common storyline is based around an
escape from and eventually, punishment
of the villian. But in recent years, more
and more individuals and groups are
stepping forward to speak out against the
popular view adopted by the general public
that paedophiles should be abhorred.
Those involved say that reality is far
removed from the fctional devils that most
are presented with. They believe that these
misrepresentations are hindering research
and progress in the prevention of sexual
offences against children.
Paul Christiano is a spokesperson for
B4U-ACT, a charity that aims to open a
dialog on the subject of paedophilia and
dismantle what they believe are Comic-
book representations of the Insatiable Sex
Monster in the public psyche. He is also a
self-diagnosed paedophile.
I know of no major literary works
that depict a paedophiles inner struggles
without such characters inevitably
transgressing adult-child sexual boundaries
LITERARY
BOGEYMEN
34
IN SOCIETY
of the West of England, has studied the
current public understanding of paedophilia
and the impact literary characters have on
real-life opinions. He says that paedophilia
has become a major social issue in modern
society, but that there remains considerable
ambiguity in how society understands and
perceives this phenomenon.
Moral panics are focused around
specifc groups of folk devils, who are
vilifed by society. McCartan argues that
these demonised fgures suffer because
society rejects them, and that paedophilia
has become so prominent in society that a
general feeling of paranoia has taken over
the media and within peoples homes.
Modern societys view of paedophilia
is so intrinsically mixed and mirrored by
literary villians that the societal view and
conversation on the subject is tarred by
and perpetuating the illusion that
paedophiles, as a rule, cannot interact with
children without abusing them, he says.
No present-day publishing house would
sign off a manuscript written in frst-
person paedophile that forces the general
readership to commit thought crimes
simply in order to empathise with the
main character.
Christiano believes that it is the view of
paedophilia shown through literature that
prevents an open dialogue about it as an
unpreventable but manageable problem
in modern society. Instead, he believes
that most authors blur the line between
paedophiles and sex offenders, without
distinguishing between an attraction and
physical acts.
Communities have historically required
a cultural bogeyman, some straw man on
which to project their fears, hatred, and
outrage, he explains. This fgure switches
every couple of decades. From the Salem
witch to the early 20th Century black man
to the homosexual of the 50s and 60s, to
the alien abductor of the 1980s, to the
paedophile of the here and now. Societys
morbid fascination with the knife-wielding
playground stalker and the sweet-talking
murderer stereotype is readily apparent in
the enduring success of such characters in
all mediums.
Christiano calls himself a paedophile
as a way of encouraging free and unbiased
discussion. He says that this is a necessity
for people struggling with conficting
feelings to come forward, in order to bring
down the number of sex offences against
children. It is the literary portrayal of
paedophiles and child abuse that prevents
him from carrying out this work to the best
of his ability.
I can sit here and refute every
fctional misrepresentation and every false
characterisation thrown my way until Im
blue in the face, but no parent short of
a mind-reader will ever know for certain
whether Im an impulse-ridden predator or
whether Im a decent guy. Paedophiles are
trapped in a closed feedback loop of public
panic, ill-informed diagnoses, and cut-throat
legislation that is gathering momentum.
Dr Kieran McCartan, an Associate
Professor in Criminology at the University P
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IN SOCIETY
the assumption that every person with
paedophilic inklings is a Humbert Humbert
waiting for their moment to attack.
Professor Elizabeth Letourneau is
the director of the Moore Center for the
Prevention of Child Sexual Abuse at Johns
Hopkins University. Its with the mandate
of preventing sexual abuse to children, that
shes pushing hard for research into people
like Christiano. Because even though the
public is no stranger to the subject, theres
still very little research on paedophilia. We
dont know much about the sexuality of
adolescents, let alone what might make
someone a paedophile.
If we can prevent this, we can prevent a
lot of harm and a lot of cost, she says, But
we dont. Its nuanced. Its diffcult to wrap
your head around. The sad fact is that its
a lot easier to say, these guys are monsters,
lets put them in prison, lets put them on a
registry lets put them in civil commitment
facilities and forget about them.
The subject of paedophilia will probably
never be discussed without some stigma.
Christiano and others like him are vocal
Literary
portrayals of
paedophilia
could be
preventing
an open
dialogue
about it
over the fact that their urges are both
morally and socially wrong. But if our view
of the topic is skewed through exaggerated
fctional caricatures, we may not be doing
everything we can to prevent sex offences
against children.
Groups like as B4 U-ACT are now
aiming to promote a realistic view of
paedophilia, removed from the pantomime
villain recognisable from the literary canon.
We want to stop violence against children,
says Christiano, but to do that people must
entertain the notion that human complexity
applies to people who are sexually attracted
to children.
Its easy to brush diffcult subjects
under the carpet and fall back on learnt
stereotypes, but in reality, no one is
inherently evil and nothing can be as black
and white as a character from a book.
Communities have
historically required
a cultural bogeyman
on which to project
its fears, hatred and
outrage
36
IN SOCIETY
E
very now and then, a seminal
book is published think The
Wealth of Nations by Adam
Smith in 1766, or Karl Marxs
Das Kapital, which appeared in 1867. They
may be received with cynicism, thought to
be extremist or idealist, but most often are
shelved with respect for having captured
the zeitgeist. Last year, a little-known
French economist named Thomas Piketty
published an academic book: Capital in
the Twenty-First Century. Its reception
was completely unremarkable. The books
translation into English and re-release this
March, however, is a different story. It
stormed to number one in The New York
Times bestseller list and became the ffth
most popular book on Amazon UK. But
with an intimidating page count of 640, as
well as data analyses and economics lingo a
world away from easy-read Michael Lewis
books, does this Capital risk falling onto the
never read but I did at one point intend
to shelf in the study bookcase?
* * * * *
M
any have likened Pikettys
Capital to Marxs text by
virtue of their shared name
and concern about rising
inequality under capitalism. Marxs original,
to attempt a handy summary, argued that
proft-hungry capitalists who controlled
the means of production were annexing
returns and exploiting the workers in
doing so. Pikettys Capital suggests we are
entering a second Belle poque age where
the wealthy one per cent will continue to
get richer. Essentially, the rate of return
on capital is usurping the rate of growth
of the economy as a whole, thus widening
the gap between the rich and poor.
According to the Conservative MP Kwasi
Capitalising on
PI KETTY
Econimists and reviewers are keen to give their tuppence worth onThomas Pikettys
Capital in the Twenty-First Century. But given that time is money, and money is a
dwinding commodity can anyone spare the time to read it?
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The wealthy
are getting
wealthier,
the poor
are getting
poorer:
welcome to
Capital in the
Twenty-First
Century
38
IN SOCIETY
Kwarteng, Pikettys version is music to
the ears of many fgures on the left. The
book addresses many economic concerns
including inherited wealth: a sore subject
among many who cannot comprehend why
a lucky few have riches handed to them on
a plate, while others work to the bone just
to get by. Pikettys Capital only exacerbates
the tensions by highlighting that inherited
wealth will dominate that amassed from
a lifetimes labour by a wide margin.
Pikettys solution for narrowing the gap
between wealth and poverty is to confscate
the excess wealth through severe taxation
on inheritance (possibly deterring people
from saving during their lifetime) and by
charging 80 per cent taxation on incomes
exceeding $500,000 in the US.
* * * * *
U
nderstandably, some right-
wingers perceive Capital to
be neo-Marxist, and Piketty a
raging leftie having his moment.
Many, says Kwarteng, feel they have heard
it all before. But after the economic crash,
record levels of unemployment, multibillion
dollar companies such as Starbucks
avoiding tax, and one in fve people living
below the offcial poverty line, this book
has undoubtedly hit a nerve.
The signifcance of the book and its
popularity are a function of the time were
in. People are disillusioned by mainstream
capitalism the crash raised a lot of
questions about [it], says Kwarteng.
The perception is that, really, rich
people got away with it. There is popular
unease out there, and the book is trying
to justify the resentment. But Kwarteng
feels that Pikettys solutions are rather
bold and would not necessarily be the
most productive to the economy: The
policies he describes are very left wing.
Massive taxation kills the incentive to work
and we could end up with a completely
unproductive economy. There would be
less inequality but everyone would be much
poorer.
Professor Benjamin Zissimos, an
associate professor of Economics at the
University of Exeter Business School,
believes Capital is of current concern
also because of its method of analysis:
It has captured the moment because
these days the economics profession is all
about excruciatingly careful data analysis.
This book applies such analysis to an old
concern: whether capitalism is working.
And, following the crisis, in the popular
mind I think that question is very real.
What Piketty is most discontented
with is the economy in America. Zissimos,
who lived in the US for eight years, found
himself constantly thinking that the
American Dream the idea of working
ones way up to an amazing life was dead
because the hard-working middle classes
have seen their incomes stagnate, or even
fall over the last 40 years. He thought
Americans were living in denial because
people were still taking on personal debts in
expectation that their income will eventually
rise. The book addresses an uncomfortable
feeling that most Americans have had for
some time now: that the unquestionable
rise of incomes over the post-war period
is over, he says. It is precisely because
Capital is an academic book that it has
proved so popular. Would people have
been prepared to accept such a profound
message in an airport book? Probably not.
* * * * *
C
apital may have seized on a
widespread feeling, but what
is quite signifcant is that an
academic book has essentially
become a mainstream read. According
to Kwarteng, the popularity of Capital is
due to its clarity. He compares the book
to Stephen Hawkinss A Brief History of
Time, which he thinks was impenetrable.
Capital could become a classic. The
reaction has been extraordinary, I cant
think of an economics book with such a
large reception, he adds.
James Davidson is a professor of
Econometrics who has taught at many
business schools around the world. While
he calls the book a left-wing polemic in
academic dress, he says its ideas appeal to
the masses: There is always a large market
for works that give intellectual respectability
to readers fond beliefs.
Positive reviews of Pikettys Capital
by respected American economists such
as Paul Krugman and Robert Solow have
garnered many page hits by offering readers
a well-rounded synopsis. For Davidson, this
is one of the reasons Capital has become
integrated into popular culture. He says
Krugman, the Nobel-prize-winning neo-
Keynesian economist is as eminent as they
come.
Given the context, it was natural that
the book would be taken up as talking point
by the media and promoted by columnists.
It may well become a classic of the genre,
who can say? But the irony of Davidsons
opinions of Capital is that, of course, he
hasnt read it. I dont intend to read it, he
I dont intend to read
it. Life is too short!
Democracy in America
Alexis de Tocqueville, 1835-40
De Tocqueville discovered that
democracy was spreading and
advised just how the elite and
middle class could rub shoulders.
Note to elite: Be nice.
The Wealth of Nations
Adam Smith, 1776
Selling out in its frst six months,
Smiths book informed countries of
how they got so rich. I mean, wealthy.
On the Origin of Species
Charles Darwin, 1859
Full title: On the Origin of Species by
Means of Natural Selection, or the
Preservation of Favoured Races in the
Struggle for Life. Got it?
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IN SOCIETY
says, life is too short! Indeed, life is too
short. And many have thought the same
since The Wealth of Nations was published
nearly three centuries ago.
* * * * *
I
n addition to numerous reviews, an
easy-reading executive summary of
Capital has already been published,
providing the main points of the
book, minus the 640-page labour, to those
with an interest. Most of these great
books have popularised versions. People
simplify them and take the main message
and thats whats taught, says Kwarteng,
very few of these books are read from
cover to cover. Instead, he believes that
the meaning of some books can be derived
without having to actually read them.
Books of a certain type can serve the
role of encapsulating a widespread meme.
No need to read it to know whats in it.
In that respect, Marx is a good example.
Capital has indeed captured the moment.
It evidences a popular point of view and
speaks to the majority who are discontented
with the state. I suspect that Capital will
resonate for a while, or at least until the
next economic upheaval makes way for a
new set of tensions to be written about.
I also suspect that it will become one of
those books that few people have read but
everyone knows about. But then again,
what do I know? I havent read it either.
Ulysses
James Joyce, 1922
What do you get when the Greek
meet the Irish? A modernist
novel following a mans day in
Dublin, drawing parallels with
Homers The Odyssey.
Das Kapital
Karl Marx, 1867
Marx certainly had a few things
to say about how capitalists were
amassing proft and depriving the
working class in doing so.
War and Peace
Lev Tolstoy, 1869
The dense novel chronicling the
French invasion of Russia is one
of the longest ever written. It
certainly was war for anyone who
tried to read it.
The Interpretation of Dreams
Sigmund Freud, 1899
Freud was the frst to theorise what it
means to dream about your nails falling
off. But in proper Freudian fashion, the
book was slightly tortuous. Mein Kampf
Adolf Hitler, 1925
Hitler tried to justify his
ideology for Nazi Germany. The Second Sex,
Simone de Beauvoir, 1949
De Beauvoir wrote about the history of
womens treatment and initiated a second
wave of feminism. Girl Power was born
way before the Spice Girls, people.
A Brief History of Time,
Stephen Hawking, 1988
Hawking attempts to explain
all things cosmic such as the
Big Bang and black holes.
Really, its not so brief.
No ones
read em
A chronological list of the books
that everyone knows about, but
very few have actually read
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That I could fnd
company and
consolation and hope
in an object pulled
almost at random
from a bookshelf--felt
akin to an instance of
religious grace.
- Jonathan Frazen, How to Be Alone
CHAPTER THREE
IN LIFE
44 Shorts for Shorts
46 Gastrotomes
48 Materialising Marquez
43
44
IN LIFE
I understand that hes not more moronic
because of the brandy than he is because of
his cowardice. Gabriel Garca Mrquez
The frst of Gabriel Garca Mrquezs works
to be published, Leaf Storm tells the story of
a doctors life through the eyes of the town
patriarchal fgure known as the Colonel his
daughter Isabel, and her son. Beginning with
death and working backwards through hostility,
tears and destruction, this 128-page novella is
an apt description of a town transformed by
the rapid rise and fall of the banana growing
industry in Colombia. The Colonel probably
wouldnt approve, but why not accompany
such a heavily emotive read with one of Latin
Americas more traditionally thought-of drinks:
tequila with lime will go down a treat, followed
by a siesta you might need it.
S H O R T S
f
orS H O R T S
The only companion you need for your liquor is a short story. And maybe some ice.
I wanted to try this new drink. Thats all
we do, isnt it look at things and try new
drinks? Ernest Hemingway
At just 14 pages long, and part of his 1927 Men
Without Women collection, Hemingways Hills
Like White Elephants is the perfect thing to
read while you try a new tipple. All hot Spanish
breeze and heavy winding discussion, the piece
is a stirring tale of the complex relationship
between two lovers. Hemingways protagonist
cannot decide how she feels about her unborn
baby. And, despite her American partners
disapproval, the Ebro hills, which were once
problematic white elephants, soon turn into
forms that are lovely and wanted. Unless
youre planning a trip to Madrid, its unlikely
youll have Anis Del Toro (the characters
preferred liqueur) to hand, but Hemingway did
have a well-documented penchant for Daiquiris,
so why not try a Papa Doble also known as the
Hemingway Special.
A retired captain lived there, and he had
half a dozen visitors, gentleman of doubtful
reputation, drinking vodka and playing stoss
with old cards. Fyodor Dostoevsky
The link between Russia and vodka is as clear as
the drink itself. But Dostoevskys connection is
personal his father was murdered by his own
servant, who mainlined vodka down the doctors
neck until he died. Thus it is understandable that
Dostoevkys dark tales, such as the short story
The Dream of a Ridiculous Man, depict the
despair and hopelessness of Russian society,
attempting to lift gloom with a swig of vodka.
The Ridiculous Man is a despondent soul, toying
with the idea of suicide. Falling into slumber, he
descends upon a dream where he sees his life
after death with the clarity of 80 degrees proof
Stolichnaya. Despite the graceful start, much
alike your frst sip of ice-cold vodka, the dream
turns bitter just as the drink cuts your throat.
Maybe you need a dash of cranberry?
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IN LIFE
If a man ordered a beer milkshake, hed
better do it in a town where he wasnt
known. John Steinbeck
Steinbeck, better known for his novels The
Grapes of Wrath and Of Mice and Men, wrote
Cannery Row towards the end of World War
II for a group of commandos he met in 1945.
The soldiers, who said they were sick of war
and wanted something to escape the struggle, so
Steinbeck gave this short novel. The story is set
in Monterey, California, and describes a group
of down-and-out vagrants trying to get enough
booze together to throw a party for Doc, a sort-
of caretaker for the areas bums. The American
author was known to prefer a Jack Rose: a
cocktail consisting of two ounces of Applejack
brandy, one ounce lemon juice, and one ounce
grenadine. Drink it down and dont worry the
cocktail glass wont bring the puzzled looks
that the novels characters would have got for
wielding a beer milkshake.
One night, returning home, much
intoxicated, from one of my haunts about
town, I fancied that the cat avoided my
presence. Edgar Allan Poe
The truth behind Poes fnal, frenzied hours
remains a mystery he may or may not have
died of alcohol poisoning. What is sure, though,
is that he enjoyed drinking to excess, as do many
of the characters in his short stories. Despite
a widely spread myth, Poe probably never had
the chance to become an absinthe addict but
a little drink of the Green Fairy might help
readers to get into the eerie, hallucinatory worlds
he created. Alcohol leads the narrator of The
Black Cat to ruin, and heightens his shrieking
paranoia about a meek cat to the point of
obsession. Of course, awaiting him is a grim
ending. Spooky and smooth like a silky feline, a
Death in the Afternoon absinthe with a few
splashes of Champagne will go down like a
potent potion.
Whiskey makes the heart beat faster but it
sure doesnt help the mind and isnt it funny
how you can ache just from the deadly drone
of existence? Charles Bukowski
The universally recognised laureate of
American lowlife, Charles Bukowski was a
notorious barfy, rising to mythic proportions in
the drunkard lore of cult literature. His poetry
collection The Last Night of the Earth Poems
takes the reader through the tornado of human
experience, past the foulest and most depraved
of his imaginations inhabitants. A man of
detestable spiritual qualities, Bukowski used
alcohol and all manner of substances to veil
his vulnerabilities and free his creative being to
roam. While we dont recommend you follow
him down the rabbit hole of alcoholic excess, its
good for all to let the soul wander through the
dirt every now and again. Pour yourself a glass
of bourbon, let Bukowski lead you astray and
remember: Some people never go crazy. What
truly horrible lives they must lead.
46
IN LIFE
Rules,
35 Maiden Lane, Covent Garden
Heralded as Londons oldest restaurant, this place
has so much going for it before even listing the people
who used to frequent it: William Thackeray, John
Galsworthy, H. G. Wells and Charles Dickens. If you
dont think you can afford its game and oysters, you
can always read about them in novels by Evelyn Waugh,
Graham Greene, John le Carr and Penelope Lively.
Thats a reading list to keep you occupied for a while.
HIX at Browns Hotel,
33 Albemarle Street, Green Park
Bang in the middle of Mayfair, this is as
decadent as luxury gets. Famous chef
Mark Hix, who has his own restaurant
down the road, is the director of food.
Agatha Christie and Stephen King wrote
some of their books here, and Rudyard
Kipling also penned his Jungle Book from
one of the hotel rooms. He must have had
room service at least once.
Verde & Co,
40 Brushfeld Street, Spitafelds
Bacon sandwiches are on the pricier side
at Verde & Co but who wouldnt sell
a kidney for the hope of bumping into
the owner, Jeanette Winterson? This
delicatessen also offers food hampers but
keep them nice and varied remember,
oranges are not the only fruit.
The Lamb,
94 Lambs Conduit Street, Russell Square
At least one Bloomsbury address had to
make this list. This pub was a meeting point
for the Bloomsbury Group, an infuential
group of early 20th century writers that
included Virginia Woolf. She was known to
have a rather complicated relationship with
food, but raise a toast to her anyway as you
enjoy their famous Sunday roast.
The Hunter S,
194 Southgate Road, Dalston Junction
This place is only an homage Hunter S
Thompson had been dead for a few years before
it opened. Even if he had been alive, were
not sure the bars risqu decorations would
have impressed him much. Taxidermy and
pornography would barely have tickled him and
rather than the juicy organic steak, he probably
would have opted for a good glass of rum.
47
IN LIFE
Gordons Wine Bar,
47 Villiers Street, Embankment
We all know it for its bountiful wine selection,
but Gordons also serves food well,
traditional and well priced grub, as they call
it (you cant aim for excellence on all fronts).
G. K. Chesterton and Alfred Tennyson loved the
place, and Rudyard Kipling spent so much time
here he actually penned the entirety of The Light
That Failed in the room above the bar.
Kettners,
29 Romilly Street, Soho
This restaurant was renowned for its risqu
parties, so it comes as no shock that Oscar
Wilde was a frequent visitor. Agatha Christie,
on the other hand, is certainly a surprise
but maybe she was just really into the
brasserie and the champagne.
The French House,
49 Dean Street, Soho
Somebody once found Dylan Thomass manuscript
of Under Milk Wood underneath a chair in here.
Its unlikely that youll stumble across any other
unpublished masterpieces lying about, but the
Francophile atmosphere will reward you with
inspired food and, apparently, rivers of Ricard.
The Anchor,
34 Park Street, London Bridge
The story goes that Samuel Pepys watched the
Great Fire from this location and that Samuel
Johnson wrote part of his dictionary here.
Whether the pub was there back then remains
unsure as records are pretty sketchy, but their
honestly priced fsh and chips make it worth a
visit just in case.
G A S T R O
t o me s
The George Inn,
75-77 Borough High Street, Southwark
With the Globe just around the corner, the George Inn
was Shakespeares own local where he enjoyed a cheeky
tankard after work, possibly accompanied by a dish of
sorrel stew. As the last gallieried coaching inn left in
London, the George had been an institution well before
it was destroyed by the Great Fire. A couple of hundred
years later, after being rebuilt, it was frequented by
Dickens. It seems like Charles had a few favourite
watering holes across London.
Londons bars and restaurants have played host to
many writers over the years. So wine with Woolf
and dine with Dickens, or in their shadow at least
48
IN LIFE
Materialisin
g
M R Q U E Z
N
o flm adaptations of One
Hundred Years of Solitude
have ever been made: Gabriel
Garca Mrquez, who died
in April, refused to grant the rights to any
producer. Some of his other books Love
in the Time of Cholera, Chronicle of a
Death Foretold made it to the big screen,
but Gabo (as the author was affectionately
called) never compromised on what he
must have recognised as his masterpiece.
Perhaps it is no surprise that nobody
pushed too much for that adaptation to
happen. Magical realism has a wonderful
visual appeal, but doing justice to the
complex, spiralling and asphyxiating
structure of this family saga would require
some clever trick, such as the one Mrquez
himself suggested to the director Giuseppe
Tornatore to record two minutes of flm
every year for one hundred years. I wonder
how Gabo would have felt fnding out
about a young fashion designers attempts
to translate his novel into clothes. Would
he have asked her to weave them during
the day and unmake them at night, like a
perennially frustrated Penelope? I suspect
he would have appreciated the sense of
slipperiness that Margherita Mazzola
describes when she talks about her project.
Its been a lot harder than I thought it
would be. Mrquez is not one to dwell on
detailed descriptions, but he manages to
evoke with a couple of words a very precise
and yet elusive idea a lot more than books
devoting entire paragraphs to descriptions
of a characters dress. Macondo, the
imaginary town around which everything
revolves in the book, is a lush and hermetic
world, a lot like Mrquezs prose, full of
fowerings and subtle unsaids.
Mazzola decided to focus on her
favourite character, Rebeca. The earth-
eating orphan had a particular charm
for the designer: I love her because you
just cant pin her down. She keeps doing
unexpected things, only acting according to
her own passions and basest instincts.
It was Rebecas compulsion to nibble at
walls that brought Mazzola to experiment
with sticking actual soil and cement to
fabric. Yet the initial results disappointed
her: Id chosen too literal a process,
she explains. Impractical showpieces may
make people ooh and aah at catwalks,
but unwearable designs are not for her. I
just think clothes are made to be worn,
she states. She fnally opted for a texture
incorporating little pebbles in acrylic paint,
and enlarged prints of photos from her
travels to Colombia, Mrquezs homeland.
One of them is a picture of Colombian
earth, the one Rebeca would have walked
on and devoured. Another zooms in to
some pulped fgs. Figs have this sensuous
and weird feel about them. This green pod
opening into something looking like veal
meat is unpredictable, carnal and disturbing
a good non-literal metaphor for what I
was trying to do.
How many years of solitude does it take a designer to create a Mrquez-
inspired fashion line? For Margherita Mazzola, two werent quite enough
Words: Chiara Rimella
49
IN LIFE
Something in the instinctual nature of
the project Mazzola embarked on makes it
particularly diffcult for her to get to grips
with. Dealing with one of her favourite
books means she does not feel like only
dedicating a half-hearted homage to it.
* * * * *
W
ith emotional investment
come high expectations. She
admits she has redesigned
the collection three or four
times since she frst created it two years
ago as a short university project. Stuck in
a never-ending cycle of unfulflment, the
collection has started to look a lot more like
the book than shed expected. Maybe my
clothes will end up swallowed by a swarm
of ants as well, who knows? she laughs.
It was because of a resolution she made
when she was 13, with what she calls the
youthful stubbornness we only have at that
age, that Mazzola decided to move to
London. At the age of 18, she left Rome
just as shed planned, to go and study
fashion at the University of Creative Arts.
Now 24, she is a freelance pattern-cutter
who has worked for the likes of Gareth
Pugh, Aitor Throup and Studio Toogood.
Pattern cutting, which she likes to
call the architecture of fashion, largely
informs her way of thinking. It grants
her an objective distance that she feels is
fundamental to the creative process: In
order to draw beautiful things you have to
have a certain degree of detachment. You
need to get out of your work, which is
such a diffcult exercise.
This danger of becoming too attached
was one of the reasons why Mazzola
decided to turn her collection into a
menswear project. It was a compromise,
she admits. Most of her work for the
frms she collaborates with is unisex
womenswear would feel more personal, but
working on gender-neutral fashion allows
her to concentrate on the projects aim in
what she calls a purer way.
Most of the inspiration for Mazzolas
other projects comes from theory and
abstract concepts such as psychogeography.
Idea-driven collections can feel more
manageable for designers in need of
Mazzolas
prints and
sketches of
her 100 Years
collection
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51
IN LIFE
structure, but shes keen to point out that
nothing should ever be prioritised over
the functionality of a garment. Fifty
years ago, you wouldnt have needed a
linear inspiration behind a collection, she
explains. Most design was based on the
beauty of a dress, on its cut and fabrics.
After the fashion-school boom in the
90s, though, London was swamped by
thousands of aspiring young designers
who tried to justify themselves by coming
up with overbearing concepts to cover up
failing or missing technique.
Thats when concepts become an
intellectual pretext for people whove
lost sight of what Mazzola thinks fashion
should be about. Ultimately, inspiration
requires validation: clothes need to be
beautiful and well made. You can have
all the inspiration you want but thats
not what people will see in the fnished
product. Her own favourite designers
belong to that elite who, she believes,
manage to combine conceptuality with
technical rigour and an eye to functional
aesthetics: Hussein Chalayan, Yohji
Yamamoto, Rei Kawakubo and Comme
Des Garons.
If people dont recognise the process
that led her to a specifc design, Mazzola
wont be offended or bothered, even.
The clothes you design change identity
according to whos wearing them as soon
as theyre sold, they turn into something
that does not depend entirely on you
any more. Yet, there will always be an
element of partial control on the part of
the designer which is what she ultimately
cherishes: In a way, the clothes you
design end up designing the people who
wear them, because the way we dress is
so important in determining our social
identity. Thats where her authority lies.
Seeing somebody wear something I
designed gives me a sense of primordial
gratifcation, a sort of delusion of
omnipotence. Creating clothes is a way of
designing the world around you. Mrquez,
for one, knew that there is no way a
novelist can claim complete ownership of
its creation: the force of interpretation, by
readers or by wearers, creates and destroys
at will all kinds of art but writing, and
fashion, couldnt survive without it.
Raw
inspiration
for Mazzola:
gravel, fgs
and rocks
The moment that counts
most for me is the
moment that precedes
reading. At times a title
is enough to kindle in
me the desire for a book
that perhaps does not
exist. At times it is the
incipit of the book, the
frst sentences... In other
words: if you need little
to set the imagination
going, I require even less:
the promise of reading
is enough.
- Italo Calvino, If on a Winters Night a Traveler
CHAPTER FOUR
IN PERSON
56 Kamila Shamsie
60 Bound to Last
63 Meet the Bookseller
64 A Storybook Romance
55
56
IN PERSON
KAMILA
SHAMSIE
Unearthing stories from the buried
drawers of the past
I N T E R V I E W : C H I A R A R I M E L L A
P H O T O : R A C H A E L P E L L S
57
IN PERSON
58
IN PERSON
K
amila Shamsie stirs the vivid
green leaves in her fresh mint
tea with the same poised calm
with which she speaks. The
40-year-olds eyes light up with youth, but
her manner demonstrates maturity. As
she talks about the horrors of war and
imperialist violence that she tackles in her
latest book, A God in Every Stone, not
once does she lose the composure of a
seasoned writer.
Opening in 1914, the book traces the
interlinked histories of Vivian, an English
archaeologist, and Qayyum, a recruit of the
British Indian Troops who is injured in the
Second Battle of Ypres. Both characters
take a path that brings them to Peshawar, in
Shamsies native Pakistan. The book follows
their lives until 1930, when the Indian
Independence Movement takes centre stage
in local history.
Years of research fed into the novel,
and it is only by chance that it was released
to coincide with the centenary of the First
World War. The book originally started in
1930; the end section opened the novel. As
I was writing it, though, I was interested
in understanding what happened to these
characters before, so I inserted an earlier
part, Shamsie explains, then laughs:
I initially thought it was going to be a
completely different book, which is how I
usually work!
The frst half of the story spans until
1918, but very little of the narration takes
place on the battlefelds. Most of the action
revolves around a Peshawar that is distant
enough from combat to resemble an Edenic
retreat. Yet the war, far from being just a
pretext, deeply shapes the livses of each of
the characters. Once you take on the war,
you really have to take it on, Shamsie says.
If you have characters who are involved in
it, I dont see how it cant be a big deal for
them and the reader.
For Qayyum, the wars effect is
straightforward: he fghts as a soldier
and loses an eye, something that both
fguratively and literally changes the way
he looks at the world. Vivian, on the
other hand, is pushed by her work as an
archaeologist to collaborate with Englands
propaganda department, which opens a
refection on her sense of nationalistic
duty. We hear quite often the story of
the suffragettes and women going to the
factories, and how this changed social
dynamics, but I wanted this to be a different
story of a woman in war, says the author.
Looking for hidden histories led
Shamsie into the uncharted territory of the
forgotten stories of the First World War:
the Indian troops, for example, are often
overlooked when thinking of the casualties
of the war but more than 70,000 colonial
soldiers lost their life in the confict. Its
just where my interest spontaneously went,
she says. Of course as a novelist youd
rather tell stories that havent been told a lot
of times before. Her inspiration is often
sparked by something she herself doesnt
know much about, and this makes the
process of researching all the more exciting.
Like her archaeologist protagonist
Viv, Shamsie dug these stories out of the
buried drawers of history. The whole book
revolves around the search for Scylaxs
circlet, a Persian artefact, and yet the author
claims she was unaware of what appears
to be the central, glaring archaeological
metaphor of the book until very recently: I
didnt actually think about it until the novel
came out, she explains, smiling. I was at a
festival and somebody said: Your book is a
form of excavation in itself thats when
I thought Im defnitely going to use that!
Endless afternoons in the colonial archives
of the British Library gave her a proper
explorers excitement of discovery:
unearthing a cover-up in the number of
victims from the massacre, featured at the
end of the novel, was a genuine satisfaction.
On the other hand, her characters
mission is not as successful. The circlet is
found and subsequently lost again. Shamsie
refuses to call the search futile: I like to
think that in the end, people would hope
that one day it will be unearthed again.
The novel lives and
dies at the level of the
individual story
59
IN PERSON
There is tragedy in one of the characters
cry, at the end of the book, that history
does not matter and all that counts is the
fact people are dying in the violent clashes.
And yet, their lives are not spent in vain:
their stories are raked up by Shamsie, an
optimistic reorganiser of existential chaos.
* * * * *
F
or Shamsie, history does matter
because of the impact it ultimately
has on individuals. And fction can
only function through peoples
stories: The novel lives and dies at the
level of the individual story, she explains.
Both A God in Every Stone and her
previous novel, Burnt Shadows which
earned her an Orange Prize shortlisting
and a nomination as one of Grantas best
young novelists tackle huge geographical
and historical time spans, which are to a
much grander scale in her latest stories.
She believes she wrote her last two novels
in opposition to the frst four, all of which
were set in her native Karachi. But her
work always returns to the intimacy of
individual characters: There was a sort of
comfort and familiarity in writing about
what I know, Shamsie says, but now
the last thing I want to write about is my
neighbourhood in Karachi.
Shamsie left her family home in Pakistan
after school to study Creative Writing at the
University of Massachussets, and gear up
towards her ambition to become a writer.
Since she was nine years old, she says, she
never seriously considered doing anything
else. That was pretty much it that was
me done, she admits joyfully.
In 2007, Shamsie decided that London
would be her new home. When I was
a child we came here for holidays, and I
used to think that in my ideal life Id spend
half of my time here and half in Karachi.
Considering that Shamsie visits Pakistan at
least once a year, she can pretty much say
her prediction has come true. The two
cities are different kinds of home to me
now. London is home-home: Ive been
living here for seven years. But Karachi is
the frst place where the word home ever
meant anything to me. Having said that,
when I go I am aware that Im now at least
half a visitor there.
The compulsion to return to Pakistan in
her narrative is a mixture of both nostalgia
and civic duty: As you might have noticed,
Pakistan is a particularly messed up place
right now, so I think many people are
wondering how did this happen and for
me this question leads to different points
in history. But writing about a land where
she does not live anymore often opens
her up to harsh criticism on the part of
the residents or at least, the minority
of Pakistani public who read in English:
Because Im writing about their histories,
people feel some ownership of the subject,
she explains.
Likewise, her decision to write in
English a forced one for her (my Urdu
isnt good enough!) has gathered a
typical brand of neo-colonial orientalist
criticism: Some people believe that if
youre writing in English, youre writing to
please someone elses expectations which
I think is very insulting to readers, as if they
were reading only to see their views of the
world confrmed. I also get told I should be
writing nicer things about the Pakistani.
The relationship she has with her native
country was complicated even more by
her decision, seven years after moving to
London, to acquire dual British-Pakistani
citizenship. The ceremony took place in
Camden Town Hall while she was writing
A God in Every Stone, the themes of
imperialism and of national belonging
still echoing in her mind as she was
handed a Union Jack and asked to wave
it something she suddenly felt quite
uncomfortable doing. It wasnt a reaction
against Britain, but to the fact I wished the
country Id been born in had done a better
job at being independent.
Being fxated on national identity
doesnt do anybody any favours, she thinks.
Her novel uses the same ideas.: I think
the book problematizes the question of a
nation demanding your allegiance because
you happen to be a citizen, whether you are
born in it or not. I think you should choose
a side according to something else. Her
characters follow the parable epitomised by
Scylax, the explorer sent by Darius down
the course of the river Indus, who ends
up turning his back to the emperor hed
sworn loyalty to, and switching allegiance
to the side he feels genuinely connected
to. Qayyum moves past his identity as
soldier of the 40th Battalion at Ypres to
become part of the Indian Independence
Movement and Viv eventually disavows
both priciples she held at the beginning:
patriarchy and imperialism.
Rather than being at someone elses
service, her characters choose to serve
a cause they genuinely believe in: an
important switch between a negative and
a positive connotation. The kind of
service when you decide you want to do
things because you feel an obligation to the
community seems a fne kind of service
to me. I think by the end the characters
understand whats to be gained by doing
something for another human being.
Shamsies book spends its frst half
lulling the reader with its hypnotic prose:
but the second half explodes in starker,
direct language. As if the author herself
paid her due to the service she owes both
her nations histories.
There is a role to be played by fction
that exists purely to make you laugh, and
does not force you to think about anything
else. But there is also fction of different
engagement, and we need both of those
kinds. I think my own work sits on the
more engaged side, but I would hope its
not without a certain lightness. Not comic
lightness there are some novels that
suck you into the darkness, and I dont
think mine are like that. Archeological
excavation digs up unsavoury memories, but
to look at life is to make justice for the past
and understand a bewildering present.
The compulsion to
return to Pakistan
in her narrative is a
mixture of nostalgia
and civic duty
IN PERSON
60
Retired bookbinder Mervyn Bailey talks
about a profession that was a world
away from todays Kindle generation
T
he professional bookbinder is a
dying breed. As eReaders food
into bookstores and texts once
reserved for dusty shelves in
libraries transition into the digital world,
their services are needed less than ever.
But bookbinders still hold a place the
modern literary world, both as craftsmen
and historians; creating new products and
preserving those on their last legs.
These professors would go into the
bindery in Manchester and try to get a huge
volume bound and the owner would say:
Well, we cant do this here but I do know
a chap who can get it done for you. Of
course that chap was me! Mervyn Bailey,
79 and living in Morecambe Bay, spent
most of his life in bookbinderies before
he retired 20 years ago. He began as an
apprentice at the age of 15 and meandered
his way through the industry, spending time
working as a foreman in local shops.
He eventually got work as a regular
binder with Manchester Universitys library,
and then as an entrepreneur working in
his own shop. Through his 30-year career,
some very old and memorable books have
passed through his hands. He has rebound
books for the King of Spain and for
Buckingham Palace, and his international
orders have spread from Canada to Japan.
I used to get people coming in with an
old family bible a James I bible and say
I have a pretty old book here. When they
brought it in it was only maybe 150-years-
old and they thought it was a real treasure,
but I had books three times as old on the
shelves in the shop!
More often than not, Baileys job, and
that of bookbinders like him, wasnt to
create something new but rather to recreate
something long gone. My job was to
do as little as possible, so as to preserve
the original book. You get tremendous
satisfaction when an old book comes in
really worse for wear and you make it look
like the original. His work required him to
bind new encyclopaedias for the university
library or to re-bind
older books that had
been worn out by
years on the shelf.
When Bailey
moved into his own
shop, he would bind
family photo albums,
private books, or
smaller, stranger
projects. Someone
came in around the
1980s and had this
photo album they
had rescued from the
Blitz, to see if I could
repair it. In the front,
it had photographs of
the Hitler Youth all
these young people in line goose-stepping.
It was one of the strangest things Id seen
and should have been in the British War
Museum, really!
Bailey valued what he did, and most
of all, loved presenting a customer with
something precious. They were always
thrilled some dumfounded which is very
pleasant really. It was very gratifying.
B O U N DtoL A S T
Mervyn Baileys hand
taken notes from his
bookbinding career
P
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IN PERSON
61
Lock up your
libraries if you like;
but there is no gate,
no lock, no bolt
that you can set
upon the freedom
of my mind.
- Virginia Woolf, A Room of Ones Own
IN PERSON
62
IN PERSON
63
I
dont have much time to read, but I do have a couple of
biographies on the go right now I fnd them fascinating
because you can learn so much about life from others.
Im reading about Marlene Dietrich, the German actress,
and JG Ballard, who lived in Shanghai like me.
Weve had quite different lives, Ballard and me he came
from a very wealthy family and I moved to the Shanghai Jewish
ghetto as a refugee in 1939. I was two years old when Mr
Hitler made it necessary for my family to escape Vienna.
China was the only place we could get into, and it took us
weeks to get there by bus and boat. The ghetto was a slum, but
we were well looked after. Of course, it was all an adventure
for a child.
I moved to London when I was 10. When I fnished school
I got into handbag manufacturing, like my brother, father and
grandfather before me. I made bags for Harrods for 25 years
and even have a photograph of the Queen wearing one of
my designs. My greatest hobby is books, however collecting
Jewish books in particular. I have 20,000 in my garage at home,
and thats just the beginning.
This bookstall is an extension of my hobby. I havent taken
a day off in 20 years. Im here Saturdays and Sundays, but soon
Ill be cutting it down to one day a week on the wifes orders.
Weve been married 50 years and shes the boss.
We live in Bells Hill, north London, and we have two
daughters and fve grandchildren, who all live about fve
minutes down the road.
People seem to like books, despite the Kindle, and I like
people who like books. They tend to be more intelligent and
youve always got something to talk about, a shared interest.
I like people who like books.
They tend to be more intelligent
Meet the
B O O K
S E L L E R
N A M E : K U R T W I C K
A G E : 7 7
B O R N : V I E N N A, A U S T R I A
S E L L I N G S P O T : G R E E N W I C H M A R K E T
Kurt Wick
in front of
his stand in
Greenwich
Market
P
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63
64
IN PERSON
A STORYBOOK
ROMANCE
I
t was Autumn 2007 when I started
writing my frst book, I Promise.
Until that point, I had mainly done
secretarial work and brought up the
children. I was sitting at the bottom of the
stairs when something came over me, I just
turned to my husband and said: I am going
upstairs to write a book. Before I could
even fnish the frst chapter, Jack had taken
over my life. I knew it was love. I didnt
want to be with anyone else. I had created
the perfect person I just wanted to share
my life with him.
The story was about a woman in her
forties I was 53 at the time who is
reunited with an old fame, after believing
him to be dead. The book then goes on to
play out why he faked his death, why he
left her to bring up a child on her own and
where hes been all this time. Thats how I
brought Jack into my world.
I had never experienced the drama of
the story, but as the narrative unfolded,
Jack became everything that I wanted him
to be. He gave me romance, he gave me
excitement, he gave me intrigue. Was he like
my husband? My husband has always been
very good to me but there wasnt really
any resemblance. Jack was tall and had hair
(my husband is bald and not tall), but Jack
wasnt the Paul Newman or Robert Redford
type either, really. There was just something
in his eyes they were kind and he was
just strong and very gentlemanly. All I
wanted was to be held by him, to be loved
by him.
Writing and being with Jack was like
being a teenager again. I lost seven stone
typing up I Promise not because I was
stressed, but because I was so excited. I
didnt watch television, I did no housework
at all, I didnt even want to eat. I just wanted
to be on the computer, to be in his world.
The only negative thing at that point was
that my hair started falling out my body
just went into shock after losing so much
weight. People who hadnt seen me for six
months started asking if Id had a gastric
bypass, but what could I tell them? That
Id fallen in love with the character from a
book? One of the worst things was the fear
that people wouldnt believe how real it all
was for me. I was honest with my friends,
but I couldnt share how I really felt.
Everybody seemed to think
that my feelings were just a joke I even
received a wedding invitation To Carolynn
and Jack once. I laughed along with it at
When Carolynn Green starting writing her debut novel, she had no idea that she would fall in love with the dreamy
protagonist she had conjured up from her imagination, or that he would have such an effect on her real life.
As told to Kitty Knowles
I
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65
IN PERSON
66
IN PERSON
the time, because I knew people just didnt
get it. But then, if I was them, I doubt I
would have understood either...
One of the best things about Jack
was that he made me feel sexy again.
Honestly, I cannot explain how good he
was in bed. Theres nothing too racy in the
book, though. The sexiest moment has
got to be just before they decide to sleep
together again for the frst time: he gets in
the shower and she sees him to me that
moment was unbelievable and then it was
like I was taking Jack to bed for the frst
time. It was brilliant. My husband was never
jealous: he was always supportive, and even
got to reap the benefts of my relationship
with Jack in our day-to-day life.
Writing with Jack let me be that sexy
person I wanted to be in my fantasies
and in real life. I felt confdent, I could
dress how I wanted, and I would go out a
lot more because I just felt so good about
myself. It got to the point that when I went
to bed with my husband, in my head I was
actually going to bed with Jack. One night, I
actually called out the wrong name but to
be honest I think my husband loved it. He
was just happy that I was so happy.
The best time was when my husband
took our daughters away on holiday over
Christmas. It was just me and the two dogs
and three wonderful weeks with Jack. I
could stay up writing until maybe 2am or
3am it didnt matter. I didnt think I was
being selfsh; at that time everyone else just
seemed non-existent. I was too absorbed
to feel guilty and I felt Id earned the right
to be where I wanted in my life wherever
that was.
* * * * *
A
s my feelings developed it
did begin to freak me out. I
stopped noticing the distinction
between reality and the book.
There was one chapter where Jack had to
confess that he had been with somebody
else, but I couldnt fnish it because I had to
leave for work. All day people kept saying
to me: Whats the matter? You look really
down today. But the thing was, I didnt
know if Jack still loved her. I couldnt bear
it. I had to get back to fnish that chapter
to relieve my own feelings thats how sick
it was. There were also times where Id be
driving back from work, but instead of
coming home, Id be coming back to him.
Id be talking to myself talking to him
and giving the answers back to myself. He
knew exactly what to say, of course, even
though he didnt exist. I began to think I
might get lost in this other world and never
come back. It sounds awful, but there were
Before I could even
fnish the frst chapter
Jack had taken over my
life. I knew it was love.
I didnt want to be with
anyone else
66
67
IN PERSON
times when if you had said to me, If you
cross over, you can have him, I would
have. I knew I had to break away from him.
After fnishing I Promise, I really pined
for Jack; it was like I was lovesick. I tried
so hard to hang on to him, but things that
were changing in real life kept pulling me
away. My mother was diagnosed with cancer
and had to move in with me, my daughter
had her frst baby and she needed me. I was
confronted with the reality that Jack simply
was not real. There was nothing that Jack
could do to help me in those situations. It
was a very sad time because I knew I was
losing him.
On a bad day I can still feel a little
resentful towards my family for dragging
me away, but on a good day I am very aware
that it wasnt reality and I had to let it go.
Maybe it was my family needing me that
saved me. I dont know how far I would
have gone, and I am probably lucky that I
never had the chance to fnd out.
Six months on, I started my second
book, and although I took Jack into it, it
wasnt the same. Life wasnt perfect in that
story, we did fght and we did row. The
characters grew up and had grandchildren;
they grew old together and died. Killing
them off was horrible, I felt like I had to
grieve for them in real life. It was one of
the hardest things I have ever done, but it
provided some closure. I could still cry now
just thinking about it. I am writing a third
book now and have found a character for
it, but hes no Jack. I dont think I could
ever have that connection with any other
character again, but I have learnt a lot
about myself from it. I also feel a greater
respect for mental illness, its like there is
a borderline, and I can see now how very
easy it is for people to fip over it and never
come back.
It makes me feel proud to be a
published author. I left school at 15 and
would never in a million years have thought
that I could have written a book. When I
read my books over and think: I did that,
it feels great. Sometimes I cringe because
its every part of me all my little fantasies
rolled into one but mostly its just such a
pleasure to re-read. I pick it up because I
just love it. I love him, and always will.
67
CHAPTER FIVE
IN TRAVEL
70 When Life Gives you Lemons
72 No Port of Call
75 Go in Peace
76 Ruin among Ruins
69
70
IN TRAVEL
M
y mother is on the foor,
surrounded by house deeds.
No, I dont think I can
live here. Its a bit too
English. This might be the tenth Spanish
town she has visited, all of which have been
rejected over the years as too small, too big,
too busy, too quiet, too windy, too touristy,
too unfriendly, too far from the coast and -
God forbid - too full of English people.
Before Spain, she considered France
(the people are a little rude), Cyprus (too
much construction), Portugal (it closes
for the winter), Greece (too fnancially
unstable). She hasnt considered Italy,
thought (I just dont see what all the fuss
is about). But then she may be put off
after my uncles twelve-month stint living in
an abandoned farmhouse in Tuscany. Like
so many others, he was swept away by the
romance of vineyards and rolling hills, but
soon came to understand the reason why
most tax offcers do not typically spend
their weekends sweating over donkey-
powered olive-presses.
Im visiting my parents near San
Pedro on the south coast of Spain. They
are members of the Place in the Sun
generation, readers of feel-good travel lit
which emerged by the plane-load in the
late 90s just around the same time that
Easyjet opened the gateway from Essex to
cheap Europe. Of course, this is something
which hugely irritates my parents if only
the continent could remain a secret to the
uncultured and spray-tanned.
My parents are patient, open-minded
people except when it comes to house
hunting abroad. Theyre well travelled and
have lived in less than perfect places all over
the world, but this time its the real-deal.
This time its settling into a rheumatism-
free future and it must be nothing less than
perfect. For this never-ending quest I
blame Kirsty and Phil, glossy property
magazines and a carefree attitude to my
inheritance money. I also blame Chris
Stewart and his lemons.
Its been 15 years this month since
Driving Over Lemons was frst published.
To date, its sold over one million copies,
become an international bestseller and, for
a time, was the most popular travel book
sold on Amazon. The easy-reading, can-do
attitude towards moving abroad has no
doubt contributed towards the swathe of
760,000 Brits who have made the move to
Travel writer Chris Stewart
has injected Brits with
optimism. But living abroad is
not always the sunny option
Words: Rachael Pells
when life gives you
L E M O N S
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71
IN TRAVEL
Spain, for better or for worse, over the past
thirty years.
I had bought a farm that I would have
hardly dared look at over the fence before.
In a matter of minutes, I was transformed
from an itinerant sheep-shearer and
tenant of a tied cottage beneath an airport
landing path in Sussex, into the owner of
a mountain farm in Andaluca, writes
Stewart in his book.
Buy a farm in the southern valleys of
Spain? Of course you can! Stewart does it
and hes a real person. Sure, the locals wont
despise you for pushing up property prices
and giggling with glee at their charming
peasant ways. Mockery aside, the novel is a
delight to read. Stewarts intricate detail and
ingrained wit provide the perfect summer
escapism. The problem is that for most,
escapism is what it should remain. One
public post on TripAdvisor is titled: Is
Orgiva as great as Driving Over Lemons
makes it sound? Tricia from Bristol
seems positively outraged as she writes: I
spent a couple of weeks in Orgiva, highly
infuenced by Chris Stewarts books
Frankly, I fnd Spain, or what Ive seen of
it after admittedly only two visits, as little
more than a massive quarry.
What Stewart and his fellows have
taught people like my parents, is that you
can fnd perfection and live an idyllic,
stress-free life abroad. Never mind that it
takes Stewart three years to sort out the
plumbing in his run-down Las Alpujarras
farmhouse he writes about it all in such
a charming way that all that toil and lack
of basic amenities just seems like a bit of a
laugh. But the cold-weathered reality is that
many Brits who move abroad return home
after just a few months.
A lack of work along with threats
from the Spanish government to demolish
British-built homes in Spain, helped
contribute to the return of over 90,000
ex-patriots to the UK last year. Catriona
Hogan, Managing Director of Viva Spain
properties, says: People leave for various
reasons some left when the job situation
became an issue for them, especially those
who didnt speak Spanish as it became
harder to fnd work, and they either
returned to the UK or went elsewhere
abroad to fnd it.
A few just dont get on with the
lifestyle or dont manage to make the social
connections that make them feel at home
here. There will always be those who dont
fnd living abroad to be exactly what they
had hoped.
Despite a dramatic fall in the expatriate
community, Hogan is not concerned
about business. We saw a lot of people
leaving Spain during the recession, due
to the increasing diffculty in fnding
work here, however there is still a good
population of British residents enjoying the
Spanish lifestyle. Real estate agents such
as Viva anticipate a replenishment of the
community following the dramatic fall in
house prices.
It may now be more diffcult for
the Chris Stewarts of the UK to forge
a working lifestyle in Spain, but cheaper
housing, a warmer climate and slower pace
of life will always attract those of a retiring
age to the continent.
For my parents, the quest to fnd
perfection provides as much of a hobby as
it does the end result. Theres never going
to be such a thing as perfect, I say to my
mother as we sit on an Andalucan balcony.
But looking out towards the shadow of
northern Africa on such a beautiful, warm
evening, this place surely seems close to
it. Of course not, she replies, glancing
at my copy of Driving over Lemons, Im
certainly not looking for my romantic,
rustic farmhouse to sweat over. But like
Chris Stewart, I am an optimist.
Speaking about his novel, Stewart says:
If the book has a message which I hope
it does then it may be that laughter is the
best way to cope with adversity. Looking
beyond the inevitable language, monetary
and cultural challenges of chasing a dream
abroad, perhaps this is what the Stewarts of
the literary world have created: a generation
of optimists. And thats not such a bad thing.
I blame Kirsty and
Phil, glossy property
mags and a carefree
attitude towards my
inheritance
72
IN TRAVEL
noPORTof CALL
In The Missing Head of Damasceno Monteiro a little mans cause is
fought by a philanthropic lawyer, but in the face of social injustice who
can the citizens of Porto turn to today?
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73
IN TRAVEL
W
hen Firmino, a young
journalist working for
the tabloid newspaper O
Acontecimento, is asked
to investigate a murder in Porto, he is
reluctant to leave his native Lisbon for the
provincial city in the north. A rookie like
him, I arrive in Portugals second city with
excitement. There is no crime awaiting me,
but the conclusions I draw by the end of
my weekend are similar to those of Antonio
Tabucchis protagonist in The Missing Head
of Damasceno Monteiro.
Tabucchis book might be classifed as
a crime story, but there isnt much mystery
or suspense in it Firmino fnds out that
the people responsible for the murder are
corrupt policemen pretty early on. But the
questioning of social injustice is whats
most important about the novel: how little
men end up quashed by authority and dont
have the voice to speak up.
Grundnorm, thats what Don
Fernando, the lawyer who helps Firmino,
calls it. In English: basic norm. A concept
created by philosopher of law Hans Kelsen,
explaining the underlying basis of all legal
systems, the frst principle and origin of all
rules. Authority incarnated.
The Portuguese are not foreign to
rebellion it was only 1974 when they got
rid of a 50-year long dictatorship with what
made history as the carnation revolution.
But when it comes to the events of the last
few years the fnancial crisis, austerity and
the bailout fnding a single entity to fght
against is harder. Few things leave people
feeling more powerless and lost than not
knowing where to direct ones rage. The
banks? Government? Capitalism at large?
The European elections spoke volumes:
whether angered by what the right-wing
parties deemed uncontrollable immigration
or exasperated by austerity, citizens are
angry. Portugal was one of the countries
most affected by austerity measures
imposed by the Troika and Porto was one
of the most strongly impacted areas.
Even in the centre of the city, its
diffcult not to notice. Derelict buildings sit
next to the swankiest hotels. But for those
who cant content themselves with some
poverty-peeping, and want to dig deeper
into how the recent economic hardship
has really affected Porto, three young
unemployed architects have organised what
theyve baptised The Worst Tours. A few
miles away from the pretty bits, theres a
whole new dimension to unsavoury decay:
destitution is splashed onto the onlookers
faces in full-blown austerity porn.
I meet my guide, Pedro Figueiredo in
Praa Marqus an unremarkable square
just outside the centre. He asked us to
meet him here to show us a cuboid cement
structure. A lot of people think its a public
toilet, but actually until a few years ago
it used to be a local library, he explains.
After central government cut the budget
for culture to 0.5 per cent, a lot of similar
institutions have had to bite the dust. In
the 80s, Porto used to have 16 cinemas.
Now weve got two.
This isnt too surprising, really: in lean
years, culture is the frst thing to go. But
its when we reach the ilhas that The
Worst Tours reaches its genuine worst.
The ilhas are housing complexes organised
around a narrow corridor, where each living
unit is minuscule and faces the internal
passage. They were built after the Industrial
revolution, close to the towns factories, to
house the workers. It was an expression
of capitalism in its purest state, says
Figueiredo. Workers would be paid a daily
wage, and would also have to pay rent every
day sometimes to the same person whod
just given them the money. Closed off by
an entry gate, the ilhas extended at the back
of the pretty houses covered in colourful
azulejos, the typical Portuguese tiles, safely
hidden from middle class eyes.
When the centre of the city became
more sought after, the inhabitants got
pushed out to the suburbs, in popular
housing that Figueiredo calls a grotesque
imitation of Le Corbusier. They were
just blocks with no communal space, which
separated communities and ultimately
made people regret leaving their ilhas, he
explains. Some of the ilhas were destroyed
to make space for new houses, but as many
as 700 are still scattered around the city.
10,000 citizens still live in them but nearly
half of them are empty. So many houses
around the city are on sale, but nobody
can afford to buy them, so they just stay
empty, Figueiredo tells me. Never mind
how low the price is: 30 per cent of the
total houses in Porto are unoccupied. Sale
signs depressingly adorn most balconies on
the streets.
Local government is so anxious about
squatters taking over the properties that
many of these houses are actually walled up
with cement blocks. Its in these stark grey
blocks that the Grundnorm appears to
me at its bleakest. Many houses without
One of
Portos
abandoned
ilhas near
the citys
centre
IN TRAVEL
74
people, many people without a house, says
a red graffti on one of the closed off doors
at the entrance of the old, uninhabited
ilha: its an angry cry at its most futile, quite
literally screaming against a wall.
* * * * *
D
amasceno Monteiro is a little
nobody who gets caught up in
a drug-smuggling ring and
could as well have been one
of the residents of these ilhas. He has a
philanthropic lawyer fghting for him. In
todays Porto, the Bloco de Esquerda, the
political party who signed the graffti, has
embarked on a series of socialist-inspired
social battles but its electoral support
dropped by six per cent to a meagre four
per cent at the last European consultations.
But then, even Don Fernando, Monteiros
lawyer, cant defeat the Grundnorm
machine and loses his case against the
powerful Guardia National.
What is left for the Portuguese who
dont want to give up? Emigrating seems
the easiest answer, one that many have
opted for. Some 200,000 Portuguese leave
the country every year, Figueiredo tells
me the equivalent of the whole city of
Porto moving away. Emigration is at
the same levels as during the civil war,
when people would go to the colonies, like
Angola, he says. After growing for many
decades, Portos population count is now
back to early 20th century levels, Figueiredo
explains. He and his colleagues on The
Worst Tours have made a conscious
decision to stay, but its not easy. Even when
he was being paid, Figureido never earned
more than 7,50 euros an hour about 6.
Plans to increase the national minimum
salary from 485 euros to 500 euros a month
have been halted. The average worker
takes home about 700 euros a month a
pensioner about 470 euros. Thats why
they spend all the time in the squares, he
says, pointing at some white-haired men
playing cards, they havent got the money
to do anything else.
Our worst tours experience fnishes
in the city centre, in the elegant Avenida
des Aliados. Here, a few beacons of social
privilege stand out. A dishevelled building,
just taken over by the millionaire who owns
the hop-on hop-off tourist bus group,
is soon going to be turned into a luxury
hotel. These are the only renovations that
work in Porto right now stuff for wealthy
tourists, Figureido says, disappointed.
The tour is theoretically free, but
donations are happily accepted. I decide to
contribute 10 euros per hour of Figureidos
time more than hes ever earned as an
architect. I think of Firmino, who fghts for
justice in Porto, but gladly accepts a paid
Phd in Paris. Then I remember the novels
fnale, hanging over the lawyers decision to
appeal against his court defeat, and wonder
if his and Figureidos resilience is the only
way to slowly wear the Grundnorm down.
So many houses
around the city are on
sale, but nobody can
afford to buy them, so
they just stay empty
Graffti in Porto:
bottom left
translates to A
lot of people
without houses;
below, The Left
Bloc, Portugals
left-wing
political party
IN TRAVEL
75
GOinPEACE
H
enry Smart escaped through
the dirt, grime, and flth of
Dublins sewers. He and his
brother, hanging on to their
fathers coat collar, dodged angry policemen
and concealed themselves under a manhole
cover, hiding in the darkness of Dublins
tunnels. Eventually, the three came up
underneath a doctors offce.
The house on top of us belongs to a
doctor that can make babies disappear.
How?
Money, he said, he can do it with money.
Its no coincidence that the only
mention of abortion in Roddy Doyles A
Star Called Henry is a passing reference
in a conversation that occurs, quite
appropriately, underground. In a country
primarily of one faith, religious norms
often come to govern society.
Catholicism has long dominated Ireland,
but this infuence appears to be waning. A
number of scandals in the 90s diminished
trust in the Catholic administration,
and fewer Irish youths are identifying
themselves as Catholic. Consequentially, at
84 per cent, the number of Catholics in the
country is at its lowest yet.
Now that Catholic tradition seems to
have been watered down, a more secular
population has brought changes to the
countrys long-standing laws and beliefs.
Roddy Doyle considers himself one
of this new generation. Perhaps Irelands
most famous contemporary writer, Doyle,
an atheist, told the Guardian that he did
whatever he could to separate himself from
his Catholic roots, and that when he did,
he was nothing short of proud: I got out
of that institution and was still a living,
breathing, human being.
Despite this, his prose is heavy with
references to his Catholic upbringing: the
Booker-Prize-winning novel Paddy Clarke
Ha Ha Ha is flled with scenes of ten-year-
old Paddy cooking faux communion hosts
and aspiring to be a Catholic missionary.
In A Star Called Henry, Doyle writes:
Each day of life was a fght and a triumph,
an endless race to stay a few inches in front
of the greedy hand of God. Gods gift,
Original Sin, had to be washed away in
case God sent another of his gifts fever,
typhoid or whooping cough, smallpox,
pneumonia or rats.
Doyle sees Irelands change in the way
people take the news that hes an atheist: he
no longer has to explain why he
rejects religion, and this proves his
behaviour is becoming the norm rather
than an exception.
Catholic tradition has kept the law on
abortion untouched for many years. The
practice has been illegal in Ireland since
the Free State was born in 1922 and was
against the law long before independence
was achieved. Last year, 3,500 Irish women
travelled abroad seeking abortions. But now,
the countrys ideals are changing to refect
the inclinations of the younger generation.
Last year, the government passed a new
law allowing abortion when the mothers
life is in jeopardy, and even though the old
guard came out to protest (over 40,000
joined a demonstration in Dublin city
centre last year, in the largest public protest
in Irish history) the amendment signals a
shift, however small, in attitudes.
Theres no doubt that fewer people
are happy to acknowledge themselves as
religious, and Ireland is changing as a result
Doyle says: When Catholics are beginning
to have to explain themselves, [the faiths]
day is done. But the recurrance of
Catholicism within contemporary writing
such as his shows that such deep-buried
roots are far from forgotten.
Catholicism still has strong roots in
Ireland, but might be losing its grip
as a new generation blooms
Words: Dan McCarthy
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76
IN TRAVEL
I
n the 1950s, Mrs Stone, a rich widow
and retired American stage actress,
sought refuge from her own decaying
beauty. So she went to Rome.
Mrs Stone felt confused in the dazzle
of light on the spring walks of Rome. All
the glass windows were kept so highly
polished that one could sometimes barely
see behind them, writes Tennessee
Williams in The Roman Spring of Mrs
Stone, a novel based on his own experience
of a summer in Rome in the company of a
young Italian man.
But fast-forward to 2014 the spring
walks are less lively and the windows
havent been cleaned for years.
After reading Williams book (his frst
novel) I expected to be enchanted by a city
carved by the hands of Bernini and gilded
by the paintbrushes of Michelangelo and
Da Vinci. I expected to be charmed by a
city so full of art, architecture and sculpture
that it would seem otherworldly. And I
was mostly. But if you look a little further
than the pillars of the Pantheon, and if you
direct your eyes to the side of the Trevi
fountain, you will see the stains of a deeply
discontented people who are yearning for
change.
Graffti, a classic symbol of rebellion,
marks the walls and doors as a sign of local
dissent. Buildings stand neglected by their
inhabitants and mottled with age, refusing
to illuminate even when the sun shines
blindingly.
Rome is not well-kept. The streets
look like theyve been bombed. Only near
government buildings do the streets look
good, says Toni McCafferty, a 65-year-old
former sales assistant, who moved to Rome
with her Italian mother 45 years ago.
The state of Rome, and Italy as a whole,
is widely thought to be the result of the
former corrupt government. One taxi
driver tells me that the people lost their
faith after Berlusconis long list of offences
were revealed by the media: sex scandals,
accusations of corruption and tax fraud.
Many believe his running or running
down of the government created the
infrastructure for a future of serious youth
employment (between 15 and 24-year-
olds), which currently stands at 42 per cent,
compared with all-age unemployment at 13
per cent.
With Berlusconi out of the picture, the
youngest president since Benito Mussolinis
dictatorship is attempting to fx Rome and
renew hope in the people. While most
seem to generally appreciate the efforts of
39-year-old Matteo Renzi - he has installed
an 80 monthly beneft for low-earning
Italian graffti
that reads:
The future is
no longer what
it used to be
Rome will forever be
known as the Eternal
City, but corruption
in government and
economic downturn is
starting to compromise
the citys beauty
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IN TRAVEL
workers - they see politicians tax evasion
as a persisting problem, costing them
extortionate amounts in tax.
The recession must also be held
accountable for the current employment
situation, though. Italy, like many other
European countries, could not lower the
value of its currency, causing the gross
domestic product to drop by fve per
cent. Small enterprises, which made up 95
per cent of the countrys production and
accounted for 50 per cent of the countrys
employment, had to cut their costs.
Feeling indebted to their oldest employees,
owners chose to let go of the youngest
ones, making way for widespread youth
unemployment.
And so, jobless and aimless, the youth
are frequently bidding Rome farewell, and
embracing a new life in Germany, Britain,
France and the US. Despite Italy having
the third largest higher education system in
Europe, in the past decade, almost 400,000
graduates have left, while only 50,000
qualifed foreign people have moved to
Italy. People move [away] because they feel
theyre better off elsewhere, and they tend
to fnd out its true, whether being a waiter
or a university professor, says Donato
Mancini, a 23-year-old who was born and
raised in Rome and is now about to move
away in order to start a flm production
internship in New York.
Mancini says that Italy does not buy
into the culture of short-term contracts,
something that Renzi has addressed by
vowing to extend minimum contracts to
help combat unemployment.
On top of the economic and political
factors, some believe that Italys mindset
is to blame for the employment prospects
for young people. In Italy, the mentality
is still old, says McCafferty. Parents
wont let their children work in a shop if
theyre educated or trained to be a doctor
or lawyer. And Mancini would agree with
this. I love Rome: it is a beautiful city with
incomparable charm. It just isnt the most
progressive, forward-looking and future-
orientated place in the world, he says. It
tends to be paralytic.
But despite the circumstances, Romans
still hold a deep affnity to their city, such as
Gianni Depero, a taxi driver. He says that
Italians are very patriotic. People do want
to stay in Roma because it is very beautiful
and we love Roma! Yet he admits: You
can only stay if you have money.
To encourage the youth to make a life
for themselves in Rome and to increase
job prospects, Mancini says that the
government needs to lower taxes, cut
spending on unnecessary corporatism,
encourage start-ups by cutting licensing
costs and also boost entrepreneurship
through more accessible loans.
Williams once wrote about a vibrant
and youthful Rome: Each spring morning
when she came out on her terrace, the
intricately-woven and gold-dusted web
of streets in which the domed churches
stood like weaving spiders, seemed to
have lost more gravity, to be foating
gradually, weightlessly upward into the
blue-gold warmth of the days, all serenity,
all buoyancy, and making no effort. Such a
thing is possible only in youthful conditions
which Mrs Stone had now passed.
Mrs Stone went to Rome to fnd youth.
While the city remains beautiful, it is no
longer enticing enough, and the youth are
leaving in search of a better tomorrow.
Rome is a city with
incomparable charm.
It just isnt the most
progressive
CHAPTER SIX
IN ENTERTAINMENT
81 Playlit
82 Brave New Film
79
80
To write is to forget.
Literature is the most
agreeable way of ignoring
life. Music soothes, the
visual arts exhilarate,
and the performing arts
entertain. Literature,
however, retreats from life
by turning in into slumber.
- Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet
81
IN ENTERTAINMENT
(1). Bob Dylan Vomit Express
Known to be inspired by the Beat Generation writers, Bob
Dylan befriended Allen Ginsberg and together they wrote
Vomit Express. Dylan also dedicated a performance of
Desolation Row to his pal the evening after the poet died.
(2). Kate Bush Wuthering Heights
Not a feeting allusion, but a full-blown homage to Emily
Bronts classic. The intensity of Bushs stare during her
windswept dance as she sings: Heathcliff! Its me, Cathy,
come home is almost as haunting as the gothic tale itself.
(3). Jay Z 100$ Bill
Jay Z created the whole soundtrack for Baz Luhrmanns 2013
flm adaptation of The Great Gatsby. The track starts with a
solemn monologue from Leonardo DiCaprio, the flms lead,
before Jay Z roughens up the track with gritty rap.
(4). David Bowie 1984
Bowies high-paced disco track was originally intended for
a stage adaptation of George Orwells dystopian novel.
Juxtaposed against the funky bass riff, hides Bowies warning:
Youll be shooting up on anything, tomorrows never there.
Beware the savage jaw of 1984
(5). Kanye West Robocop
Kanye Wests fourth studio album 808s & Heartbreak features
the song Robocop, where the rapper compares a spoiled
little L.A. girl to Stephen Kings menacing character Annie,
from Misery. The manic lyrics against a whimsical tune
produce an unnerving and oddly sinister track.
PLAYlit
(6). Regina Spektor Poor Little Rich Boy
Youre reading Fitzgerald, youre reading Hemingway,
Spektor sings in one of her many lit-inspired tracks this one
refers to Fitzgeralds own The Rich Boy. Sophocles, Ezra
Pound and Virginia Woolf also get a mention in her work.
(7). Fat Boy Slim Weapon of Choice
The track tells us to walk without rhythm, so you wont
attract the worm after Frank Herberts Dune, in which the
planets natives have to develop an irregular walking style, so as
to avoid giant worms living under the ground. Of course.
(8). Nirvana Scentless Apprentice
Kurt Cobains choked screams of anger could well be
Grenouilles last words in the orgy-cum-mass-murder scene
at the end of Patrick Sskinds novel Perfume, the explicit
inspiration for this track.
(9). Jefferson Airplane White Rabbit
Listening to this track at Woodstock in 1969 must have felt
a lot like suffering an extreme case of Alice-in-Wonderland
syndrome, so called because sufferers experience spatial
distortions and hallucinations a bit like falling down the
rabbit hole. Or maybe it was just the LSD.
(10).Bruce Springsteen The Ghost of Tom Joad
This acoustic album was based on John Steinbecks novel, The
Grapes of Wrath. Forever a champion of the workingman,
Springsteen published 12 songs about the experiences of
tenant farmers during the Great Depression, including a full
stanza devoted to Joads Ill Be There speech.
Musicians love a bit of collaboration, and literature always makes for good inspiration.
Heres our pick of the 10 best lit-tunes
Got a favourite #LitTune of your own? Share it with us @In_PrintMag
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IN ENTERTAINMENT
I
n 1980, a television adaption of Brave
New World novel premiered, opening
with a scene of stiff actors, dressed
in tight yellow nylon, speaking with
American accents in the new World State.
Needless to say, it wasnt faithful to Huxleys
vision of dystopian London.
Written in 1932, Brave New World is
one of the most infuential novels of the
20th century and has become, along with
George Orwells 1984, a staple of dystopian
literature. Already adapted twice for screen,
rumours are spreading that Huxleys novel
is soon to receive the Hollywood treatment
again, as Ridley Scott, the director behind
Prometheus and Gladiator, has signed up
to lead the project. From 1955s Kiss Me
Deadly, a flm noir based on a novel by
Mickey Spillane and Mike Hammer, to the
recent, I Am Legend, adapted from the
Richard Matheson novel in 2007, Sci-f
novels have long been successful on-screen
. Suzanne Collinss The Hunger Games
flms ruled box offces when landing at
the cinema. But whats their formula for
success? Do sci-f novel adaptions always
make good flms?
Liesel Schwarz, the South-African born,
London-based author of the Chronicle of
Light and Shadow series, says they do: I
think that if one were to draw up a list of
the highest grossing flms of all time, then
there will be a fair number of both Science
Fiction and Fantasy flms on it. I would
say that Sci-Fi novels tend to adapt to flm
extremely well. The highest grossing sci-
f-novel adaptation of all time, according to
IMDB, is I Am Legend, which raked in over
270 million. Digital revolutionary Jurassic
Park, adapted from Michael Crichtons
novel, made close to 170 million in 1993,
making it the top grosser for that year.
As science fction is always set within
an imagined or alternative world, Schwarz
says, a flm may rely a lot on special affects
and CGI to produce a picture as close to
the page as possible. I do think that with
the technological advances in areas such
as animation and image generation, the
production value of science fction flms
tends to have a lot to do with whether or
not they succeed, she says. Often one
of the biggest sources of criticism is the
quality of the CGI. And with improving
visual affects, Schwarz hopes that sci-
f will circle back into style. In recent
years, so-called hard science fction has
perhaps been less popular than fantasy, with
Tolkien and flms about comic superheroes
dominating the scene. Perhaps the tide is
changing. It certainly seems so, with flms
like Prometheus, Gravity and now a Brave
New World on the horizon.
Sci-Fi novelist Christopher Nuttall has
published ten novels through Amazon
Kindle Direct Publishing as well as one
other, The Royal Sorceress, published by
Elsewhen Press last February. In terms
of a smooth transition between book
and flm, he is less optimistic. The more
complex a sci-f fantasy story is, the poorer
the adaption to the big screen, he says.
Starship Troopers is a wonderful book at
base, its a work of philosophy rather than
a straight adventure. But it translated to the
big screen very poorly.
Nuttall says that attempts to modernise
a story or change its location, prevent a
flm from fully succeeding in its adaption.
The War of the Worlds has never been
produced properly; both movie versions
were set in America, with more advanced
human defences and poorer storylines.
It would, I suspect, have worked better
if set in its own time. Doctor Who and
Torchwood have also suffered from this.
The new Brave New World project
seems to have all the potential to present
its audience with a world as close to A.F
(After Ford) as you can get. London as you
might be able to get. But a third adaption
of a novel might suggest that the story has
to change in order to make it stand out
from the previous adaptations certainly a
huge responsibility for Scott. Still, Nuttall
believes that if a director stays true to a
flms basic ideas but isnt afraid to change
things on the peripheral, like time period
or setting, then flms can work almost as
well as the book.The better movie and
TV adaptations either went back to frst
principles or carefully thought through the
adaptation to make it workable. Both The
Demon Headmaster and The Worst Witch
translated well for their time, because the
directors werent afraid to alter the plot
while staying true to the basic idea. Huxley
fans, watch this space.
The project seems to
have all the potential
to present its audience
with a world as close
to A.F. London as you
might get
Brave
N E W
Film
Rumours are circulationg that
Ridley Scott will be making the
third flm adaptation of Brave New
World. But how well does Sci-Fi
translate from text to screen?
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IN ENTERTAINMENT
Lab-grown
humans: just
one of Huxleys
ideas. Radical
in 1932, it
eventually
became a reality
CHAPTER SEVEN
IN ART
86 Visualise This
88 Cover Reboot
85
86
IN ART
V I S U A L I S Ethis
S
ome sentences crawl over the page,
others are straight, interspersed
and gappy. Some pages are left
totally blank, or empty except for
a few poignant words. The occasional
graphic image crops up every now and
again. Each is a design decision intended
to enhance the context behind the novels
words or narrative.
These innovative editions are created
by handpicked design studios who toy
with typography, colour and image. The
publishing house has come a long way
since the release of its much-celebrated
frst publication The Life and Opinions of
Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, in 2010. They
have since created Tree of Codes, the most
recent novel from Jonathan Safran Foer, re-
imagined Marc Saportas 60s book-in-a-box
Composition No.1, and published Kapow!,
a novel by Adam Thirlwell. For their latest
project, however, Visual Editions has
returned to its roots to reimagine another
classic Miguel de Cervantess 1605 novel,
Don Quixote. We asked founders Anna
Gerber and Britt Iversen how they are
approaching their latest challenge.
What what made you choose Laurence Sternes
1759 novel for your frst redesign?
Weve always liked to publish classics
alongside new writing and Tristram Shandy
encapsulated visual writing for us playing
with narrative forms and visuals so it
made absolute sense to let that be our very
frst book. We briefed design studio, A
Practice for Everyday Life, to breathe new
life into the books design while staying
faithful to the original spirit it really laid
the foundation for our belief that visuals
are as big a part of storytelling as text, and
that readers welcome playful storytelling.
Will your version of Don Quixote be anything
like the Tristram Shandy edition?
We have worked with different designers
for each of our books. Each text is different
and requires a different approach in relation
to the subject matter. We cant say at this
time exactly how Don will look, and just
because Shandy and Don are both classics,
it doesnt mean theyll look the same.
What drew you back to the idea of reimagining
a classic?
Weve already published two reimagined
classics Composition No. 1 was originally
published in the 60s so publishing a
classic is not something weve gone back
to, its more something we intersperse with
new writing. We always liked the mix of
the two and the possibilities which arise
when publishing new writing or reimagining
a classic.
Whats the design idea for Don Quixote?
Our plan is to send a photographer to
Spain to follow Don Quixotes route, and
hopefully capture the essence of Don
Quixote. The photographs will be an
added entry point into the text and we hope
that they will refect the modernity of the
novel and provide a window into Don
Quixotes journey.
London publishers Visual Editions push the boundaries of print with
their unconventional designs. Ahead of their release of Don Quixote,
they talk about reimagining the classics
Interview: Kitty Knowles
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87
IN ART
OVER TO THE CRI TI CS
Alex Sims, ex- English literature student who
studied Tristram Shandy
I hadnt heard of Tristram Shandy before
I studied it on my course and I was quite
shocked when I saw the marble and black
pages. It was asking to be made into a
graphic novel and I think that Visual
Editions did it well.
Their design technique, like the original
marble technique, is revolutionary in terms
of modern day print and really brings the
novel into the 21st century. The designs
are really clever and make you think: text
written sideways emphasises the fact that
the book is very digressive with no linear
plot, while other sections, like the folded
pages or varnished sweat drops emphasise
the metaphors and structures.
I hope that with Don Quixote they
experiment with the actual text, but either
way the design speaks to new audiences
who wouldnt necessarily read these classics
otherwise.
Tim Parnell, an expert in Laurence Sterne and
editor of A Sentimental Journey
Unfortunately, I found Visual Editions
Tristram Shandy quite disappointing: Sterne
uses a lot of italics, so thats what Visual
Editions do, but they also make them
pink, which is a bit unnecessary, and while
Sternes pointy hand image is placed in the
text, they put it in the margin to make it
easier to read. With Sternes marbled black
page, they decided to literalise what is an
ambiguity in the original, which doesnt
seem to add much. I suppose I am a bit of
a purist, but I am just not sure that it works.
If Visual Editions had done something
more radical I think it could have been quite
interesting, but then I dont think its aimed
at people who are into Tristram Shandy.
I have actually already given some
money towards the Don Quixote
Kickstarter because I do think that
Visual Editions have worked with some
very interesting fction, I think its a very
impressive feat to take on and its important
that they are trying to encourage a
contemporary interest in physical books.
Charlie Hocking, graphic designer at ODD
I frst heard about Visual Editions through
fellow designers. When I saw the book in
our studio, it really caught my eye, Id never
heard of Tristram Shandy before but the
design drew me in.
For me, the fuorescent orange immediately
conveyed that it was not going to be your
average reading experience: I liked the shiny
UV foil drops of sweat, the blank lines,
folded corners and the fooded orange
pages and the way font sizes or colours
helped to emphasise certain words. All
these things built up a really nice reading
pace as I found myself looking forward to
the next typographic fourish.
Ive seen the cover for Don Quixote
and Visual Editions continue to bend the
laws of book design Ive never someone
run a font around the edge of the pages
instead of placing it on the cover before.
Visual Editions are more of an art piece,
and thats why people like collecting them.
Also, they allow frequent readers to revisit
classic titles and explore them in a new way
then thats also got to be a good thing.
Above: Visual
Editions plan to
release Don Quixote
later this year
Left: Tristram
Shandy, Visual
Editions frst
reimagined classic
88
IN ART
c o v e r
R E B O O T
off. You get that moment when you fick
back to the cover and go, oh yeah, I get
this now.
Smyth has created, among other titles,
alternatives to Cormac McCarthys All The
Pretty Horses, Kurt Vonneguts Mother
Night and Truman Capotes In Cold Blood.
On my version of All The Pretty Horses
theres a lightening bolt coming down
the front of the cover. In the book this is
a key scene the actual moment where
everything changes within the story. The
cover is a nod to that. Its not a spoiler
though, which is why I wanted to include it
on the cover in some way.
Within the project Smyth has featured
many of Kurt Vonneguts works, a choice
which he says comes from his own issues
with the existing canon of Vonnegut book
designs. Hes my favourite author but I
think that 90 per cent of the covers that
have been in circulation over the last 10
years are terrible and not in touch with
his style of writing. Smyth says that his
striking version of Mother Night was
a product of luck through playing with
elements of the novel that stood out to
him.When I was reading it I just couldnt
believe in the cover on my book. For my
own sanity I had to do something that I
could reference in my own head instead.
Vonnegut is such a good writer and so
diverse, but the current covers dont work at
all in my opinion.
Through the project, Smyth is currently
working for a London publishing house on
their book covers, but has no desire to halt
his personal designwork. I plan to have a
collection of 12 in the end and Im going
to make a series of oversized postcards of
the designs once theyre all fnished. In the
meantime, you can keep up to date with all
of Smyths redesigns on his blog:
Jackfag.tumblr.com
L
ast year, London-based designer
Jack Smyth became increasingly
annoyed that the covers on his
favourite books did not match up
to the content inside. So he did something
about it and decided to design his own
alternatives. The project came from the
books I was reading in my spare time at the
beginning of last year, Smyth said. The
existing covers had some nice typography
but didnt put across the tone of the story
and didnt represent them properly. So with
every new book I read that I really liked, I
would style a cover that hinted at the certain
elements that I thought were key.
The resulting covers are in tune with the
novels tones and key themes while staying
true to Smyths bold style. Some beautiful
covers that are kind of arbitrary can be
great, I love them, but I do like the little
hints that ultimately give the reader a pay
Jack Smyth wasnt happy with his books so he made them
better. In anticipation of his upcoming design collection,
weve secured a preview of his posters to pull-out
Words: Lou Boyd
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Jack Smyth
at his
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studio
studio, with
an arm
of Kurt
Vonnegut
tattoos.
89
IN ART
92
IN PRINT
That is part of
the beauty of all
literature. You
discover that your
longings are universal
longings, that youre
not lonely and
isolated from anyone.
You belong.
- F Scott Fitzgerald
93
IN PRINT
4th Estate Americanah, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Ace Dune, Frank Herbert Arrow Men Without Women,
Ernest Hemingway / To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee Atlantic Books The Undertaking, Audrey Magee Ballatine
Books Jurassic Park, Michael Crichton Bantam A Brief History of Time, Stephen Hawking / The Wealth of
Nations, Adam Smith Book Guild Publishing I Promise, Carol Lynn Green Canongate Canons Lanark, Alasdair Gray
Dover Publications On the Origin of Species, Charles Darwin / The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde Ecco
The Last Night of the Earth Poems, Charles Bukowski Faber and Faber A Girl is a Half-formed Thing, Eimear
McBride Gold Medal Books I Am Legend, Richard Matheson Grove Press City of Night, John Rechy Harper Brave New
World, Aldous Huxley / Don Quixote, Miguel de Cervantes / Everything is Illuminated, Jonathan Safran
Foer / Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Hunter S. Thompson / Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail
72, Hunter S. Thompson Harvard University Press Capital in the Twenty-First Century, Thomas Piketty Harvill
Press The Missing Head of Damasceno Monteiro, Antonio Tabucchi / Where Im Calling From, Raymond
Carver Hodder & Stoughton Misery, Stephen King / Starship Troopers, Robert A. Heinlein Interlink Books Sarmada,
Fadi Azzam Jaico Publishing House Mein Kampf, Adolf Hitler Little, Brown Book Group Nine Stories, J. D. Salinger
New Directions Under Milk Wood, Dylan Thomas Oxford Worlds Classics Waverley, Sir Walter Scott Penguin A Star
Called Henry, Roddy Doyle / Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha, Roddy Doyle / Politics and the English Language,
George Orwell / Such, Such Were the Joys, George Orwell / The Catcher in the Rye, J. D. Salinger / The
Shadow of the Crescent Moon, Fatima Bhutto Penguin Classics 1984, George Orwell / A Room of Ones Own,
Virginia Woolf / Alices Adventures in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll / Cannery Row, John Steinbeck / Capital,
Volume 1, Karl Marx / Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville / Hangover Square, Patrick Hamilton
/ In Cold Blood, Truman Capote / Selected Tales, Edgar Allan Poe / Story of the Eye, Georges Bataille /
The Book of Disquiet, Fernando Pessoa / The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck Perennial Classics Leaf Storm,
Gabriel Garca Mrquez Phoenix Pick The War of the Worlds, H. G. Wells Picador All the Pretty Horses, Cormac
McCarthy / American Psycho, Brett Easton Ellis / Burial Rites, Hannah Kent / How to Be Alone, Jonathan
Franzen Scholastic The Hunger Games, Suzanne Collins Sort of Books Driving Over Lemons, Chris Stewart Vintage
Perfume, Patrick Sskind Vintage Classics Chronicle of a Death Foretold, Gabriel Garca Mrquez / If on a
Winters Night a Traveller, Italo Calvino / Love in the Time of Cholera, Gabriel Garca Mrquez / Mother
Night, Kurt Vonnegut / One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel Garca Mrquez / The Beautiful and
Damned, F. Scott Fitzgerald / The Collector, John Fowles / The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone, Tennessee
Williams / The Second Sex, Simone de Beauvoir Visual Editions Composition No.1, Marc Saporta / Kapow!,
Adam Thirlwell / The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, Laurence Sterne Waking Lion Press
The Dream of a Ridiculous Man and Other Stories, Fyodor Dostoevsky Windmill Books Still Life with Bread
Crumbs, Anna Quindlen Wordsworth Editions The Interpretation of Dreams, Sigmund Freud / The Great Gatsby,
F. Scott Fitzgerald / Ulysses, James Joyce / War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy / Wuthering Heights, Emily Bront
STOCKISTS
IN PRINT
94
IN PRINT
T H A N K S TO
95
OUR KICKSTARTER BACKERS:
Ben Rosner
Brian Stuckey
Charlie Hocking
Charlotte Ryng
Laura Foster
Manjeet Sandhu
Peter Sandhu
Matt Haines
Michael Shaw
Tricia Pells
Malcolm Pells
Paddy Elson
AND FOR THEIR SUPPORT:
Margaret for teaching us English /
Eliza, Paul and Lidia for knowing what we
need at frst sight / Angela for the ruthless
corrections / Mia for more ruthless
corrections / Alex Drinkwater for the socks,
the printer and because he told us so /
Tezza / Pezza / Designer Guy 1 /
Designer Guy 2 / ELL / Croydon, the most
underrated pocket in the capital /
Ray Woolford /
Mahbub / Fit technician (especially when
playing tennis) / Jason and the DPI /
The Line Tally /
The Gannt chart / The Dulux colour charts /
Google Drive / Our parents /
The Marquis of Granby /
And last but not least, Kim and Kanye
We were inevitably Bound 2 fall in love with
books (aha honey)
all those who made this magazine possible:

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READING THE WORLD THROUGH BOOKS

POLITICS SOCIETY LIFESTYLE TRAVEL ENTERTAINMENT ART

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