Regular readers will know that I like both professional and recreational cycling. Many professional races (such as the Tour de France) hold events called sportives which allow recreational cyclists the chance to ride the same route as the pros. One of the longest-established of these is the sportive attached to my favourite bike race, the … Continue reading Landscape, politics and sport: the Ronde van Vlaanderen
The Nouveau Roman was a French Modernist literary movement of the 1950s whose antecedents were Joyce, Beckett and Proust. A common theme among the works produced by those writers grouped as nouveax romanistes were “discontinuity, rupture, difference and revolution”¹, and they defined themselves against “a dominant culture in thrall to a staid and anachronistic concept … Continue reading The “Nouveau Roman”: where to start?
If I could visit any place and time in history, among my choices would be Paris around 1960. It was a time of great societal tension, with events in colonial Algeria at the forefront of events. But it was the time of the nouvelle vague, the nouveau roman and jazz music, and it was a … Continue reading Other people’s nostalgia
Or, me talking about maps again. Names change as both language and places change. The village I grew up in has a name – Newburgh – which it has borne since the 12th or 13th century and clearly no longer merits. Some town names’ spelling – and meaning – alter over the centuries, but this … Continue reading A nail to hang a place on
I have four writing priorities at the moment. They are, in no particular order (and that’s the problem): this blog and my duty to you, dear reader unfinished fantasy novel, 185 MS pages after 3 years’ work pro-cycling-themed gamebook, 1st draft completed, needs reworked Robin Hood novel, completed 3 years ago and redrafted, and submitted … Continue reading Priorities
Moving the action of a European or Asian film to America when Hollywood remakes it is not unusual. Moving the location of a European novel to America when translated into English, however, is. Published in English in 2016, HEX is the story of the small New England town (where have we heard this before?) of … Continue reading Relocated in translation: “HEX” by Thomas Olde Heuvelt
Into the Gyre 