Dirty Realism is the term critics use to describe the writings of Marek Nowakowski. He writes about people “on the margins” — drunkards, pimps, criminals, cat torturers, anal rapists and so on — Polish writers seemingly unable to discern the vast mass of people that lie in between the intelligentsia and the dregs. One collection […]
Lydia Davis is a rare talent. A writer whose work is challenging, stimulating, innovative, and, taken at face value, short. Very short – some stories in her collections span no more than two lines. Literature, though, (thankfully) is not judged on word counts, and the depth achieved so compactly by Davis is, no doubt, envied […]
Just as the hysterical claims that the Sheffield outfit has already surpassed The Beatles in musical achievement have the paradoxical effect of making me never want to hear another track from the ‘world-beating album‘ by the Arctic Monkeys, so the assertions that David Foster Wallace is the best writer of his (our?) generation have ensured […]
It’s virtually impossible to pigeonhole author Michel Faber, as his new collection of short stories The Fahrenheit Twins ably demonstrates. A collection of seventeen wildly different stories that change genre almost as often as location. From the Scottish highlights through to humid Jakarta; from biting social satire through to science fiction. It should come as […]
