FESTIVAL BOOKS WEEK PLANNER
All events at Charlotte Square Gardens and priced £10 (£8) unless stated. Compiled by Brian Donaldson.
THURSDAY 23
Martin Palmer & Jean Sprackland The popularity of nature writing keeps rolling on especially with the likes of this pair getting involved. Palmer’s Sacred Land is an enlightening travelogue while Sprackland’s Strands features a year in the life of a beach. 11am. Ian McEwan A Booker winner is among us as McEwan treats us to a new work, Sweet Tooth, featuring a woman drawn into an undercover existence. 3pm. Sadakat Kadri Sharia law really gets under some people’s skins and Kadri is here to try and debunk some of the more wilder myths. 4pm. Jeremy Vine The popular broadcaster (and brother of one-line japester Tim) is in town to mark 25 years at the BBC. 6.30pm. AN Wilson With The Potter’s Hand, Wilson has penned a novel which in part pays tribute to the country’s most famous company in that field, Wedgwood. 7pm. 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. Alan Warner The Oban-born writer returned to the fiction fold with a bang earlier this year as The Deadman’s Pedal careered into view, recalling the 1970s in a West Coast port. 8.30pm. FRIDAY 24
Helen FitzGerald & Herman Koch Two contemporary writers start off the day with some thought- provoking fiction. Scotland-based Australian FitzGerald produces another tense thriller with The Donor while Spain-based Dutchman Koch’s The Dinner sets his action in a restaurant among troubled couples. 10.15am. Howard Jacobson Another former Booker scribe shows up with a new book. This time it’s Zoo Time, which asks some pretty tough questions of modern existence, in particular, the role of the internet. 3pm. Final Whistle with Dan Freedman Now we know we’re truly in the realms of fiction as Scotland have come close to winning the World Cup with our national hero Jamie Johnson moving on to play for Barcelona. 4pm, £4.50. Carol Ann Duffy Our Poet Laureate drops in to read from her new collection, The Bees, accompanied with some woodwind instrumentation from John Sampson. 4.30pm. Simon Armitage Modern-day penniless troubadour Armitage went walking the Pennine Way, albeit in the wrong direction, stopping off to read, literally, for his supper. Walking Home details how he got on and what he learned along his journey. 7pm. Alistair Darling Britain’s former Chancellor has wandered back into the public eye recently to enter the Scottish independence debate (he’s pretty much against it) but for this event, he’ll be chatting to James Naughtie about a life in politics. 8pm. Mark Billingham & Christopher Brookmyre Billingham and Brookmyre might sound like a firm of 106 THE LIST 23 Aug–20 Sep 2012
can we?) will be discussing technology and comas, among other things, as he launches The Umbrella, his new novel which has already done some pretty good pre-publication business by sitting around on the Booker longlist. 9.30pm. SUNDAY 26
Ruth Padel With her latest book, The Mara Crossing, the poet takes on the tough subjects of migration and immigration and turns them into powerful vehicles for great poetry. 10.15am. Brita Granström & Mick Manning This author-illustrator partnership join forces to make their contribution towards the Dickens bicentenary celebrations. 10.30am, £4.50. Susannah Clapp The renowned critic and Angela Carter’s literary executor talks about her friend’s legacy. 3.30pm. Polly Toynbee & David Walker This pair wrote plenty about the last Labour government but are now turning their analytical gaze onto the Tory-LibDem coalition to discuss how they’re really getting on a couple of years down the line. 3pm. Peter Ackroyd The great chronicler of London, Dickens and general Englishness is delivering the second part of his History of England this summer and in this one he concentrates on reformation. 6.30pm. Teju Cole & Jeet Thayil Two highly innovative writers get together with new books in tow. Cole’s Open City tracks one man’s journey from Nigeria to the USA while Thayil’s Narcopolis is set in an opium-infused Bombay. 7pm, £7 (£5). Ben Masters & Simon Rich Here’s another pair of young literary turks with talent to burn. Masters’ Noughties looks at students seeking meaning and a focus for their lives while Rich’s What in God’s Name? introduces us to an angel who reckons it’s high time they were considered for a promotion. 8.30pm, £7 (£5). MONDAY 27
Kathy Lette The cheeky antipodean cultural commentator gets back into the fiction game with The Boy Who Fell to Earth, featuring Lucy and her autistic son, Merlin. 11.30am. Angus Roxburgh Vladimir Putin is back in the news after the imprisonment of punk feminist group Pussy Riot, and Roxburgh, one of Putin’s former employees in his PR department, is here to offer more than an insight or two into Russia’s leader. It’s all there in The Strongman. 2.30pm. John Man The prospect of a modern- day ninja might seem a bit screwy but John Man has gone in search of the people who claim to have descended from the legendary 15th century Japanese warriors. There’s even a month-long festival dedicated to them these days. 4pm. Lone Frank Consumer-led genomics is a hot science topic right now and the author of My Beautiful Genome is on hand to weave a path through the main issues. 5.30pm. John McCarthy To launch the new Frederick Hood Memorial Lecture, the BBC journalist and former Beirut hostage describes how he put his life back together after his release. 8pm. Ken MacLeod & G Willow Wilson Dystopian visions and futuristic imaginings are the order of the day for MacLeod with his new disturbing sci-fi affair, Intrusion, while Wilson give us Alif the Unseen, in which a hacker uncovers an ancient and highly sought- after document. 8.30pm.
ALAN WARNER The author of Morvern Callar has returned to that story’s faux-Oban (Fauxban?) locale for The Deadman’s Pedal, a 1970s coming of age tale set against the backdrop of union strife on the railways. Hear Warner discuss it in this Book Festival event chaired by David Robinson. ■ 23 Aug, 8.30pm, £10 (£8).
estate agents, but they are not that. Instead, the pair churn out bestselling and critically applauded crime novels. There will be much wit abounding too, given the evidence of Brookmyre’s appearances in various media while Billingham used to be a stand-up comedian before turning to crime (fiction). 9.30pm. SATURDAY 25
Wilbur Smith Making his EIBF debut is a man who sells many, many bucketloads of each new adventure novel set in Africa. His new one is Those in Peril, a typical thriller about the heir to an oil fortune and some mean pirates. 10am. Celebrating 75 Years of the Hobbit The Chair of the Tolkien Society, Lynn Whitaker, provides a fun event for all young (and not so young) fans of the Hobbit with trivia, quizzes and anecdotes about the creator’s author. 2.30pm, £4.50. Jeremy Paxman One of the true news heavyweights of our time, Paxo is
here to chat about the British Empire. 3pm. James Tait Black Prize The winners of the best fiction and biography are awarded the oldest literary prize in the country here and will follow in the footsteps of Cormac McCarthy, James Kelman, Muriel Spark, Evelyn Waugh, Siegfried Sassoon and DH Lawrence. 6.30pm. William Fotheringham Belgian cyclist legend Eddy Merckx is quite probably the best bike-man the sport has ever seen. While he won more than four times the number of races which Lance Armstrong was victorious in, his story is full of injury, controversy and tragedy. 6.45pm. Zadie Smith With NW (reviewed on page 38), Smith will be looking to cement the reputation she established from even before the publication of her debut, White Teeth. Here she chats with James Naughtie about her London and life. 8pm. Will Self One of the country’s truly idiosyncratic literary figures (we can’t call him an enfant terrible any more,