Hamish Hamilton News
RSS feedCustom Cars 20 January 2012
We were so impressed by this Penguin Car, customised for the Jaipur Literary Festival in India this week, that we are fantasising about an HH Van, inspired by this beauty painted for American company Design Research in the early 70s or thereabouts:
Everyone's Talking About . . . 18 January 2012
. . . Alain de Botton’s brilliant TED talk, in which he talks on the subject of his new book, Religion for Atheists, which is published later this month. Let the debate commence!
Special Guests on Penguin Podcast 18 January 2012
Brought to you by Hamish Hamilton author Hollis Hampton-Jones and world-renowned producer Roger Moutenot, here is a one-off and very atmospheric podcast featuring Holli’s novel Comes the Night.
Click here to find out more about Comes the Night and to read an interview with Hollis about writing it.
The Launching Site of Five Dials 22 18 January 2012
That’s the Five Dials laptop in the snow.
Misadventures 13 January 2012
HH novelist and poet Joe Dunthorne reminisces about his misspent gap year selling door to door in Australia in the first of a series of delightful and adventurous short documentaries called Short Cuts on BBC Radio 4. Catch it on the iPlayer here.
Weekend Listening 13 January 2012
One of our favourite books, Italo Calvino’s If on a winter’s night a traveler has been soundtracked by former Coral guitarist Bill Ryder-Jones. There is a great review over at the Caught by the River site.
Hello 2012 12 January 2012
It is a beautiful day here in London and a good time to catch up on recent Hamish Hamilton news:
Ali Smith’s wonderful There but for the was picked more than almost any other novel as a Book of the Year in the British press (ten times so far) and we reprinted three times to meet demand.
Alain de Botton’s ‘Christmas for Atheists’ in the Guardian magazine arrived in people’s homes in Christmas Eve and launched a campaign for his new book Religion for Atheists, released later this month, which includes a TED talk, a secular Sunday sermon, several interviews, many events and a soon-to-launch series of Underground posters.
Meanwhile, Alain’s Living Architecture trust combined with artist Fiona Banner and arts charity Artangel to hoist a magnificent, boat-shaped ‘Room for London’ on to the roof of the South Bank’s Queen Elizabeth Hall, where it will remain for most of 2012, housing an array of writers, artists and thinkers for overnight stays.
Stephen Daldry’s film version of Jonathan Safran Foer’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close is releasing early next month, following a barnstorming start in the US which has taken the paperback of the book to #5 in The New York Times bestseller list this weekend.
Jamil Ahmad has just been shortlisted for the Man Asian Literary Prize for The Wandering Falcon.
David Foster Wallace’s previously uncollected non-fiction has just arrived, for publication as Both Flesh and Not later this year, as have four new scenes to be included in our paperback of The Pale King this Spring.
And we are especially excited to have received from the printers our advance copies of Ben Masters’s debut novel Noughties, Neil Ansell’s Deep Country, in paperback, and Jonathan Safran Foer’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, in its film tie-in cover.
On all of which, more news soon.
5D Bound 3 January 2012
Over the holiday, we were extremely pleased to discover that one Five Dials subscriber took the time to bind the first twenty issues. The result is a gorgeous and very hefty collection of our work so far. Photos below.
An Evening for Max 15 December 2011
London’s most beautiful old theatre, Wilton’s Music Hall, was packed to the rafters last night with friends, family and fans of the late W.G. ‘Max’ Sebald, remembering his life and work ten years after his death, and celebrating the launch of our edition of his selected poems, Across the Land and the Water, translated impeccably by Iain Galbraith.
Ian Bostridge sang and Gareth Evans, who curated the evening, introduced a series of speakers and readers including, seated left to right in this photograph, Stephen Watts, Rachel Lichtenstein, Iain Sinclair, Iain Galbraith and A.S. Byatt. Pictured on the screen is, of course, Max himself.
Farewell to George 15 December 2011
We were lucky enough to launch Five Dials Number 8 from the Shakespeare & Co bookshop on the banks of the Seine. Watching over the proceedings, from his flat above the shop, was George Whitman, the longtime proprietor of S&Co, who died yesterday at the age of 98.
We’d recommend reading the New York Times obituary of this extraordinary man, who opened his shop up to more than 40,000 people passing through the City of Light, including some of the great writers of the 20th century.
We particularly liked what George said about owning such an establishment. From the Times: “As Mr. Whitman put it, ‘I wanted a bookstore because the book business is the business of life.’”
← Older News