Book-buyers

About five years before he wrote his first novel, Killing Floor, Lee Child, whose real name is Jim Grant, began to think seriously about writing. At the time he worked as a presentation director for Granada Television in Manchester, England-an "air traffic controller for the broadcast airways" is how he describes it.  Read more

Do you find it as obvious as I do that Don DeLillo richly deserves to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature? And right away, as in this year?  Read more

Simon Armitage pogos to neo-punk, Anne Enright craves for Cary Grant, The Seventh Seal cheers up Julian Barnes, Diana Evans works out to hip-hop and Jeanette Winterson talks to herself ... writers reveal how they're surviving the corona crisis

I have a bias toward the private investigator novel, most of it driven by the imagery of classic film noir-shiny-wet pavements, sinewy cigarette smoke curling upward, vintage cars with fat white-wall tires, hard kisses that dip-to-black. The guys wearing sharp-creased fedoras and baggy-legged pants. The women with lipstick pouts, seamed stockings, and hats cocked to the side.