Edinburgh International Book Festival
11-27th August 2001

Book Festival

Vivien Devlin curls up in a comfy armchair to read all about the novelists and poets, crime writers and children's storytellers who will be making their way to Edinburgh for the Book Festival in August, 2001.

Introduction to the Book Festival

" A book is like a garden in the pocket"
is a Chinese proverb - it is a simple but a wonderfully evocative phrase; like beautiful, colourful, scented gardens, books of all kinds delight the eye, inspire, relax the mind, give pleasure and insight - they are filled with colour and life which conjure up all the senses. And when a festival devoted to the celebration of reading and writing books takes place in a garden, it's a perfect relationship - literary gardens of the imagination within a real garden of grass, trees and flowers.

The Charlotte Square Gardens in the centre of Edinburgh has been the ideal site for the Book Festival since the start in 1983. For two weeks in August, a white tented village blossoms forth; some tents are bright and airy temporary bookshops, filled with novels, biographies, poetry and children's stories, other marquees are theatres for readings, talks, discussions and performances of poetry and music.

SpiegeltentThere is also the magnificent 1930s Belgian Spiegeltent, with its stained glass, mirrors, polished wood seating booths, circular dance floor, and performance platform. This is the ideal meeting place at the Festival, the social centre, with an all-day café and bar. From breakfast time to early evening there will be special events, entertainment, readings and live music.

For smaller book lovers, there is a special Children's tent with picture books for babies, and the Beatrix Potter reading corner for the older ones. There is a full children's programme with many free storytelling events.

The Edinburgh International Book Festival is the largest and most exciting and popular celebration of the written word in the world. It is simply unique.

This year around 100,000 book-lovers will have the opportunity to meet 430 authors from 20 countries, who will be taking part in over 500 readings, talks conversations and debates.

Whatever your taste in reading - science fiction, travel, sport, comic novels, crime, history, poetry or politics, there's sure to be a writer for you.

Fiction From Around the World
Many of the world's most renowned writers from across the Commonwealth, United States, Caribbean as well as from Scotland and Ireland, will gather in Edinburgh this summer. From Canada, Margaret Atwood, winner of the Booker Prize in 2000, for The Blind Assassin, and Michael Ondaatje, author of the best selling novel The English Patient, whose new novel Anil's Ghost is set in his native land, Sri Lanka, will both be taking part in Meet the Author sessions to discuss the ideas and inspiration behind their fiction.

What people said about "The English Patient" :

" A magic carpet of a novel that soars across worlds and times, as rare and spellbinding a net of dreams as any that has emerged in recent years"
   Time magazine

"Profound, beautiful and heart-quickening"
   Toni Morrison

Other highlights include Louis de Bernieres, the phenomenally successful author of Captain Corelli's Mandolin, recently (and controversially) adapted for the cinema screen.

Doris Lessing won the prestigious David Cohen British Literature Prize which recognises and honours a writer's lifetime achievement. Her new novel, The Sweetest Dream is set during the social change of the 1960s, a turbulent time of feminist debate in Britain and political unrest in South Africa.

"I have sticking power, which is just as important as literary talent. I just got on with the work. I simply have to write".
    Doris Lessing, Chicago Tribune,

Two leading Australian writers, Peter Carey and David Malouf will be discussing the writing behind their new books - respectively, The True History of the Kelly Gang, about the outlaw, Ned Kelly, and Dream Stuff, Malouf's new collection of poetic short stories.

"She understood as women often do more easily than men, that the declared meaning of a spoken sentence is only its overcoat, and the real meaning lies underneath its scarves and buttons." Peter Carey, Oscar and Lucinda

"Autobiography is an awkward form - it's difficult to be honest, not because you're hiding something but because you start self-dramatising."   
David Malouf

A very special event will welcome the heavyweight of world literature, V. S Naipaul, award winning author of A House of Mr. Biswas and In a Free State. In his first visit to the Edinburgh Book Festival he will be reading from his forthcoming novel, Half a Life, to be published in September.

"I am the kind of writer that people think other people are reading."   
V. S Naipaul

Amongst a host of popular novelists, others include Kate Atkinson, David Lodge, Pat Barker, John Banville, Dorothy Dunnett, and Nick Hornby.

Next page Ideas, Debate and Philosphy > Page 1, 2, 3.


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