Author: GRB

On Tuesday night the winner of the Booker International Prize 2023 was announced – congratulations to Georgie Gospodinov & Angela Rodel, author and translator of Time Shelter. Inevitably, all our copies have immediately been snapped up but more are on the way soon once the publisher has reprinted. Place an order via our website to reserve your copy as soon as we receive stock.

We read Time Shelter for the first meeting of our new Translated Literature book club & it was a thoroughly facinating conversation about a complicated and enjoyable book. It was not the book I expected it to be – in fact throughout its 300 pages it repeatedly defied my expectations about the kind of story I thought I was reading. The book’s central obessions (and they really are obsessions) are time, nostalgia & forgetting – those most slippery of subjects. Gospodinov works across different registers, at points progressing the narrative or using one of the various rich set pieces to play out curious events, and at points it becomes a tapestry of musings while the characters and any sense of narrative simply fall away. It’s a thoroughly engrossing, challenging & enjoyable read and it comes highly recommended.

We are delighted to announce a new event:

The celebrated journalist and broadcaster, Kieran Yates is coming to Gloucester Road to talk about her essential new book, All the Houses I’ve Ever Lived In. She will be joining us at Future Leap Event Space on June 8th at 7pm.
We’ve all had our share of dodgy landlords, mould and awkward house shares. But journalist Kieran Yates has had more than most: by the age of twenty-five she’d lived in twenty different houses across the country, from council estates in London to car showrooms in rural Wales.

In prose that sparkles with humour and warmth, Yates charts the heartbreaks and joys of a life spent navigating the chaos of the housing system. Drawing on interviews with marginalised tenants across the country and the stories behind our interiors, she explores the unexpected ways we can fight back – finding beauty in the wreckage of a broken system, friendships in cramped housing conditions, and home even in the most fragile circumstances.

All the Houses I’ve Ever Lived In is at once a rallying cry for change, a gorgeous coming-of-age story and a love letter to home in all its forms.

Kieran Yates is a London-based journalist, broadcaster and editor who has been writing about culture, technology and politics for over 10 years. She’s written everywhere from the Guardian, FADER, VICE, The Independent and beyond, had an acclaimed monthly column at VICE titled ‘British Values’, was nominated for Culture Writer of the Year in 2016 and regularly hosts events and panels discussing issues across music, politics, and news.

Kieran contributed to the award-winning book of essays, The Good Immigrant in 2017 about immigrant stories in the UK, where she wrote about ‘Going Home’. In 2015 she started a fanzine called ‘British Values’, a political satire and culture magazine that celebrates immigrant communities in the UK. She is the co-author of Generation Vexed: What the English Riots Didn’t Tell Us About Your Nation’s Youth.

Tickets are £5, available here or in store.

May is jampacked with good bookish stuff in the shop. Here’s a quick roundup:

Friday evening is our Bristol launch for David Roberts and the wonderful The Way the Day Breaks. David will be here to chat to us – it’s an informal event, so no seating or formal discussion. It’s free, just RSVP through our website here.

On Tuesday I sent out a very excited email about our new book subscription offer. In my overeagerness I sent the message before the link was fully live, so if you tried it on Tuesday before about 5:30pm, it will not have worked. Gah!

The link is now fully live so you can explore our subscription offer here. We are also offering a little temptation for anyone who would like to purchase a subscription in time to receive our June book selection. We’ll put the names of everyone who subscribes between now and May 25th into a hat and draw one winner. That lucky soul will have the length of their subscription doubled.

It’s not exactly Willy Wonka level marketing, but we’re really excited to get some brilliant books into new hands & hope this will help get that mission on its way!

Happy reading all,

Tom

We write with some exciting new developments for the shop…

Book Club

After having threatened to do so for far too long, we are at last starting a translated literature book club!

Each month we’ll meet in the shop to discuss a book that has been translated into English. Mostly these will be novels, but we’ll mix it up occasionally with short stories or non-fiction. These meetings won’t be ticketed, but you’ll need to buy the book from us in order to attend.

We’re going to start with a list of 12 people and see how we get on (we’ll also keep a waiting list for anyone who doesn’t initially make it into that 12). We don’t expect everyone to make every single meeting, but it would be lovely to have a regular crew, so please only sign up if you think you’ll be able to make the majority of meetings.

The first meeting will be on Thursday 18th May, from 6.15–7.30 in the bookshop. Future meetings will be once a month, on Thursdays, at the same time.

We’re going to start with Time Shelter by Georgi Gospodinov, translated from Bulgarian by Angela Rodel. Time Shelter is on the shortlist for the Booker International Prize 2023, and Olga Tokarczuk says it’s ‘The most exquisite kind of literature’ which isn’t a bad endorsement! For future meetings we (Gloucester Road Books) will choose a shortlist of titles and put them to the group for a vote, with the winner being read for next month’s meeting.

If you would like to join, or would like more info, drop us an email at hello@gloucesterroadbooks.com