Novelist Colm Toibin has won the Sunday Times Award for Literary Excellence.
At the New York Times, David Streitfeld reports on how many illegitimate versions of George Orwell’s books for sale on Amazon have revised (if not butchered) the author’s original language. Homage to Catalonia, a memoir of the author’s experience fighting in the Spanish Civil War, has become, in one case, Homepage to Catalonia. Does Amazon care? Not much. The company said in a statement that "'there is no single source of truth' for the copyright status of every book in every country.”
Kenneth P. Vogel and Jeremy W. Peters have reported that a network of Trump allies have banded together in an effort to “discredit news organizations deemed hostile to President Trump by publicizing damaging information about journalists.” In retaliation against reports considered critical of Trump, the group has already released damaging information about journalists at CNN, the Washington Post, and the New York Times.
Edna O’Brien talks to Sean O’Hagan about Girl, her novel about a young Nigerian woman who escapes from Boko Haram, and looks back at her long career. According to O’Haban, “Truth-telling of a kind was what fired her early books—The Country Girls (1960), Girl With Green Eyes (1962), Girls in Their Married Bliss (1964)—and fuelled her reputation for scandal in her homeland. The novels articulated what, until then, had remained relatively unspoken in staunchly Catholic Ireland: female sexual desire, active and acted upon.” O’Brien, now eighty-eight, says that integrity is one of her highest ideals: “I want to go out as someone who spoke the truth.”
Book deals: Dean King has sold Guardian of the Valley, his book about John Muir’s efforts to save Yosemite, to Scribner for a reported mid-six-figures and Mitch Jones has sold his book on Senator McConnell—titled Mitch, Please!—to Simon and Schuster. According to the publisher, the book will include “stories from each of the 120 counties in the state, highlighting how the five-time senator and current senate majority leader has failed Kentuckians, economically and socially, over the last three decades.”
