Category Archives: Everyone

One of the tings I enjoy about the LBF is visiting stands from many of the European countries – Bulgaria, Poland, Estonia, etc. Aside from a great selection of titles in their own language, there’s also lots of fascinating material in translation, particularly collections of stories and literary magazines. The collections of illustrations for children’s books is my favourite.

My first stop is always The Polish Book Institute stand – not because I speak a word of their language – but because they come armed every year with apples! Not like the grape-sized wonders we get locally, but real mammoth versions (see picture). They had some wonderful books for all ages including beautifully bound (and expensive) classics.

Twenty four Polish exhibitors were represented through their New Books from Poland 2023 and Polish Books from Children & Young Adults 2023 catalogues. They were also celebrating the 100th anniversary of Wladyslaw Reymont’s winner of the 1924 Nobel Prize for Literature. Best known for his award-winning four-volume novel The Peasants.

The longlist of nominations for this year’s International Booker Prize – the most prestigious award given to authors of the best English-language books – includes a collection from Polish writer Urszula Honek. Her short stories White Nights, translated by Kate Webster, was promoted at LBF in 2022. The final 13 were selected from among 149 books written in 32 languages. White Nights is a series of thirteen interconnected stories concerning the various tragedies and misfortunes that befall a group of people who all grew up and live(d) in the same village in the Beskid Niski region, in southern Poland.

Some years ago I reported on the plight of small publishing houses who were finding it tough, gruelling, even – none more so than the wonderful Holland Park Press. The company publishes literary fiction and poetry, with special emphasis on bringing the work of Dutch authors to the English language market.

As I reported: the desire to keep publishing placed a heavy toll on them. Now, years later, Holland Park are still in there fighting. Check out their site. The books are not expensive and, who knows, might introduce you to a whole new world of fiction in translation. It would be a tragedy to lose them.

Just for the record I have no links with HPP. I just love their spirit and their books!

It was published in 2008, won the CILIP Carnegie Medal in 2010 and is a darkly, funny tale.

I’ve just finished Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book featuring the story of Nobody Owens – a normal boy, known to his friends as Bod, who lives in a graveyard. Brought up and educated by ghosts, he is initially prevented form leaving, because the real danger to his life exists in the ‘real’ world outside the graveyard. For anyone who feels at home with stories of ghosts, vampires, witches and werewolves, then this is must. Bod is very much at home in the graveyard. His parents, Mr & Mrs Owens are there – both dead of course, so at least he can live at home again. Quite how this happened and how they all came to be there as a ‘family’, is the gist of the story. For a while, as Bod grows up, this is all quite normal!

I’ve had this book for quite some time, but like all of Gaiman’s stories, it’s one to savour. Beautifully, but sparsely, illustrated by award-winning illustrator and cartoonist Chris Riddell. This is another masterpiece of storytelling – a children’s (and certainly adults) classic.