FESTIVAL BOOKS WEEK PLANNER
All events at Charlotte Square Gardens and priced £10 (£8) unless stated. Compiled by Brian Donaldson.
THURSDAY 16 Sam Bourne Sam Bourne (the literary stage name for journo Jonathan Freedland) tackles some dark WW2 terrain about Britain and America in his latest thriller, Pantheon. 1.30pm.
Anjali Joseph & Nikita Lalwani An excellent double bill here with Joseph discussing Another Country, a novel set in London, Paris and Bombay, while Lalwani’s The Village focuses on a scheme for crime rehabilitation in India. 3pm, £7 (£5). Philip Ardagh & Axel Scheffler The new creation of Ardagh is the slightly off-putting Grunt family, illustrated to icky perfection by Scheffler. 3.30pm, £4.50.
Peter May & Yrsa Sigurdardottir Lewis and Iceland are the bleak but beautiful landscapes explored in the fiction of, respectively, May and Sigurdardottir as we hear about their latest offerings, The Lewis Man and The Day is Dark. You can probably work out which title belongs to which author. 6.45pm. Ruth Rendell The Grand Dame of English crime fiction (though PD James’ fans might have something to say about that) is here with The Saint Zita Society, a novel about a rather strange gardener. 8pm.
FRIDAY 17
Peter Millar Cuba is still beyond doubt one of the most fascinating nations on this planet, and Millar tracks its past and ponders its future in Slow Train to Guantanamo. 11am.
Pat Barker She might have a new book out in the shape of Toby’s Room (see next issue for our review of that), but Parker is taken back by critic John Mullan to the early 90s and the launch of her almighty Regeneration trilogy. 1pm. Michael Gerard Bauer With Don’t Call Me Ishmael, Aussie author Bauer tackles bullying in a sensitive but highly amusing way. 4.30pm, £4.50.
Denise Mina Is she the First Lady of Scottish crime fiction yet? Getting there, certainly, with Gods and Beasts the latest addition to that increasingly impressive oeuvre. 7pm. Grant Morrison With Supergods, Morrison produced not only an incisive and detailed history of comics, but put his own fascinating lifestory slap bang into the middle of the book. 9.30pm.
SATURDAY 18
Joanna Nadin Meet the gaffe-prone Penny Dreadful (aka Penelope Jones) whose accident-ridden exploits have been put into print by Nadin through books such as Penny Dreadful Cooks Up a Calamity and Penny Dreadful is a Complete Catastrophe. You get the idea. 10.30am, £4.50.
The Story of the BBC in Scotland Limmy’s Show and Chewing the Fat are just part of the story, people. We travel back to 1923 here, the year when it all started. 11am.
Hari Kunzru & Yiyun Li The crossing of boundaries, both physically 30 THE LIST 16–23 Aug 2012
of Leningrad and Stalingrad hook up to reflect on some epochal and tragic events. 3.30pm.
Ruchir Sharma Where should we be looking in the world for the next economic miracle? Morgan Stanley market analyst Sharma has a surprise or two up his sleeve on this topic. 5pm. Chris Mullin What are the main challenges facing this generation and can politicians be trusted to deliver the goods? The former Labour cabinet minister responds in the affirmative. 6.30pm.
Kim Newman The horror buff and media commentator swoops into Charlotte Square to chat about his vampire books. 8.30pm. WEDNESDAY 22
Stef Penney Returning to the city of her birth, Penney brings her bestselling books with her, the latest of which is The Invisible Ones, in which a father hires a PI to seek out his long-missing daughter. 11.30am.
Steve Benbow & Alys Fowler These two are not afraid to get their hands dirty with Fowler looking at where we should forage to get our food while Benbow is worried about the bee population in Britain. 3.30pm. Ian McEwan with Alex Salmond You probably never thought you’d see these two guys in a room together, but this is the Book Festival after all. Literature and politics might well be touched on. 6.30pm.
The Scientist in Fiction: Creative or Crazed Genius? Author Sophie McKenzie is among the speakers at for this kids event which looks at the role of the scientist in stories. Why are they so often mad-eyed, wild-haired oddballs often hellbent on mayhem? 7pm, £4.50. Iain Banks With Stonemouth, Banksy sidestepped the sci-fi for a bit to give us one of his blackly comic smalltown dramas as Stewart Gilmour returns home for a funeral knowing that the past may well be about to catch up on him. 8pm.
THURSDAY 23
Kate Summerscale After the glories of The Suspicions of Mr Whicher, Summerscale returns to similar terrain with Mrs Robinson’s Disgrace. As the title perhaps implies, this is another tale of high scandal in Victorian Britain. 11.30am. Mark Haddon He may end up being best known for The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, but Haddon is making a fair old stab at besting that success. The Red House is his latest excellent work. 4.30pm.
Josh Lacey The man behind the Grk books discusses how his travels across the world have helped inform his work. 4.30pm, £4.50. Rethinking Islam Ruth Wishart chairs this event which explores the complexities and misrepresentations of the Muslim faith featuring Mustafa Ceric and Dilip Hiro. 7pm.
Joseph Stiglitz In his new book, The One Percent, the Nobel winner looks at where the main wealth exists and what we need to do to change things in order to save our economic system. 8pm.
JEANETTE WINTERSON
Published over 25 years ago, Jeanette Winterson’s ground- breaking debut, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, left the author’s many fans clamouring for more details about her unique upbringing at the hands of her fundamentalist Christian adoptive mother, fictionalised in the book. A quarter of a century later, Winterson delivered Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?, a frank, powerful memoir about her childhood and its aftermath. She discusses that book and the painful events that inspired it, with broadcaster Kirsty Wark. 20 Aug, 6.30pm, £10 (£8).
and psychologically, is the link between the new books by Kunzru (Gods Without Men) and Li (Gold Boy, Emerald Girl). 12.30pm.
Alain de Botton Is it time for atheists to stop having a go at religion? De Botton reckons so, as he explains in Religion for Atheists. 8pm. John Jeremiah Sullivan & Craig Taylor The nooks and crannies of society are the terrain which these two paddle around in with Taylor’s Londoners complemented by Sullivan’s Pulphead. 8.30pm, £7 (£5).
SUNDAY 19
Celebrating Kafka One of the authors who dominated 20th century literature is celebrated here as authors discuss his inescapable influence. 11am. Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize Event Your chance to hear some of the nominees for this prize, the winning author set to follow in the footsteps of previous victors such as Nina Bawden and Ted Hughes. 1pm, £4.50.
Anne Enright The popular Irish author is in town with her first novel (The Forgotten Waltz) since winning the Booker in 2007. 6.30pm. James Kelman with Liz Lochhead A Kelman event is always highly anticipated and this time, there’s even the added bonus of having Liz Lochhead in the same room. 8pm.
ever-growing and increasingly worrying felonious activity. 8.30pm. MONDAY 20
Joyce Carol Oates An ever-popular visitor to the festival, JCO brings us the gift of a new novel about a young academic with personal traumas lurking away in her psyche. 11.30am.
Graham Rawle & Elizabeth Reeder Desperate searches are at the heart of Rawle’s The Card and Reeder’s Ramshackle. 3.30pm, £7 (£5).
Lari Don The next book in Don’s First Aid for Fairies series gets a big launch today. 4.30pm, £4.50. Jeanette Winterson The relationship with her mother fuelled some of her fiction but the author of Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit looks at her family in more depth in her recent memoir, Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? 6.30pm.
Rodge Glass & Teddy Jamieson Herald journalist Jamieson reflects on his Northern Irish upbringing and that country’s often controversial sporting icons while Glass has delivered an intriguing novel entitled Bring Me the Head of Ryan Giggs. 8.30pm.
TUESDAY 21
Aonghas MacNeacail This popular Renaissance Man and pioneer of Gaelic literature kicks off today’s proceedings. 10.15am.
Misha Glenny Cybercrime is the subject at the heart of journo Glenny’s Dark Market as he investigates an Anna Reid with Antony Beevor An event for those with a passion for all things WW2 as the respective authors