Brannavan Gnanalingam writes about the overwhelming whiteness of English literature as taught in New Zealand – and throws down a challenge to the gatekeepers, including the Spinoff. UK newspaper the Daily Telegraph caused a stir in October with a front page story about a black Cambridge student who had “force[d] Cambridge to drop white authors”. The Telegraph‘s … Read more
Marion McLeod is baffled and somewhat bored to sobs by the eagerly awaited second novel by Indian superstar novelist Arundhati Roy. It’s 20 years since Arundhati Roy published her first novel, The God of Small Things, and won the Booker. She was the first Indian actually resident in India to do so. A few months … Read more
Half a million people attended last week’s literary festival in Jaipur, India. Half a million! There was anti-Muslim debate, a famous author described Trump as America’s “dick pic”, and police roamed around in camel-coloured berets. Sam Gaskin reports. In Jaipur’s historic pink city, people pick their way through narrow lanes littered with Nestea paper cups … Read more
Giovanni Tiso on American writer Jhumpa Lahiri’s new book, written in Italian, and put back into English by Elena Ferrante’s translator. What? In “Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote”, Borges tells the story of a man who embarks on a project to rewrite Don Quixote word for word, not merely as a copy, … Read more