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| In this email…
* Booker Prize Winner 2024
* Signed copies of Led By Donkeys
* Reminder of our last few events of this year
Congratulations to Samantha Harvey for winning the 2024 Booker Prize for her extraordinary novel, Orbital. |
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| A few weeks before Orbital was selected for the Booker long list this summer, we chose it as one of our monthly fiction subscription titles. We were delighted to see it progress from the long list to the short list, and we were deighted again when it won the Booker Prize itself last night. There have since been lots of people saying lots of lovely things about the book, and Harvey herself has been wonderful to listen to about writing during lockdown, obsessing over the video feed from the international space station and about the sheer unreality of hearing her name called.
I’m delighted for her, and for this book, all anew. I’m a staunch advocate for books that are brief and intense. An idea sustained brightly for 130 pages is a wonderful prospect, and if it manages to subtly reorder my brain in the duration of those 130 pages, then so much the better. Here is the introduction I wrote back in August for subscribers who received Orbital from us, and if you’d like to explore our fiction subscription offer, you can do so here.
I knew as soon as I had finished Orbital, or perhaps even before then, that I would be desperate to make sure it would be as widely read by our customers as possible. It is one of those books that is just not like the others.
Six astronauts orbit the earth in a spacecraft, they will traverse the planet sixteen times in the space of 24 hours. They watch as light and darkness chase each other across oceans and continents. They have a perspective their minds were not made to perceive. Surrounded by the vast, sublime indifference of space, protected only by a metal carcass from being instantly crushed, they go about the minutiae of their routine. They eat, brush their teeth, record data, and they stare with bewildered tenderness at Earth, which seems so present and so implausible. They are a community unlike any other, and also each alone in a way that will be impossible for them to convey to their loved ones when they eventually return to them. I felt something like a sense of vertigo while reading Orbital, caught somehow between claustrophobia and agoraphobia, combined with a sense of almost painful beauty. It is a book that offers a very physical reminder of our human smallness and briefness.
We have copies of Orbital in stock as of this morning, with more arriving this afternoon & tomorrow, so we should be able to keep it in stock pretty consistently while the publishers scramble to reprint. You can pop in for your copy or order from our website for home delivery or collection in the shop. |
| We were very pleased to receive a visit from James Sadri last week, who kindly signed our stock of Led By Donkeys on behalf of the collective. We had a wonderful time doing the bookselling at their exhibition at 17 Midland Road last month, which was a roaring success, and we’ll continue to encourage this record of their exploits out into the world. If you’d like a signed copy you’re welcome to drop in or order from our website. |
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| It’s been a year filled to bursting with literary events here. We’ve hugely enjoyed bringing exciting writers to Bristol to discuss their work, and celebrating some of the increidble talent we’re lucky enough to have on our doorstep.
We have two events left with tickets still available, both of which we are enormously looking forward to.
On Thursday 21st November we’ll be welcoming Ashani Lewis to the shop to talk about her new collection of stories, Everest. Lewis is an early career writer whose novel, Winter Animals, was only published in February so she is proceeding apace! Tickets (including a reduced price student or NHS option) are available from our website. |
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| Our final event of this year on Wednesday 27th November will be a discussion to celebrate the launch of issue 8 of Tolka Journal, with readings and discussion from contributors Ralf Webb and Noreen Masud, alongside Tolka editor Liam Harrison.
Tolka is a Dublin-based biannual literary journal of non-fiction, publishing essays, reportage, travel writing, auto-fiction, and the writing that falls in between. They publish and promote work that is formally promiscuous and which does not fall into fixed categories. Tolka have published writers such as Brian Dillon, Mark O’Connell, Claire-Louise Bennett, Eimear McBride, Max Porter, Niamh Campbell and Nidhi Zak/Aria Eipe.
This will be fascinating, and a perfect way to sign off our events programme for the year. Get your tickets before they go! |
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