PalFest in print
The remarkable Palestine Festival of Literature celebrates its 10th anniversary this week, but the fun will not end tomorrow. Next month, Bloomsbury will publish This Is Not A Border, an anthology of "reportage and reflection" from the festival. Edited by PalFest co-founders Ahdaf Soueif and Omar Robert Hamilton, it features poems, stories and essays from a wide range of writers, including Mohammed Hanif, Teju Cole, Claire Messud, Suad Amiry and Pankaj Mishra.
Winter is coming. Still...
The six-year wait for the next instalment in George R R Martin's A Song Of Fire And Ice saga continues. We were promised The Winds of Winter would be published this year but fans looking forward to it – rather than the next season of the TV adaptation (which has now overtaken the source novels) – might have been slightly perturbed by the announcement last week that Martin is now working not only on a new TV sci-fi series called Nightflyers (a 1980 novella), but also ideas for four Game of Thrones TV spin-offs. Best not hold your breath for that new novel, then...
life goes on...
Next month marks the 15th anniversary of the publication of Yann Martel's wonderful Booker Prize winner Life of Pi, and publishers Canongate are celebrating with a new audio edition narrated by British comedian and actor Sanjeev Bhaskar, best known for the TV comedies Goodness Gracious Me and The Kumars at No. 42. "Whether you're listening in your car or at home, I wish you luck and fortitude with Pi and Richard Parker and I hope you reach the coast of Mexico," Martel told The Bookseller.
*