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Zadie Smith will be giving the first glimpse of her long-awaited new novel NW, poet Alice Oswald will put on a rare performance of Memorial, her reimagining of the Iliad, and authors from Irvine Welsh to Joyce Carol Oates will debate the key issues facing modern literature at this summer's Edinburgh international book festival.
From talks by former prime minister Gordon Brown and former hostage John McCarthy to the reminiscences of Seamus Heaney and Andrew O'Hagan about their journeys together through Scotland, Wales and Ireland, 800 authors from 44 countries will appear in 750 events at this year's festival. A lineup featuring eight Booker winners, including Hilary Mantel, John Banville and Anne Enright, will also incorporate Nobel laureates, politicians and poets.
Will Self, Pat Barker and James Kelman are all launching their new books in Charlotte Square Gardens this August, as is Ian McEwan, whose latest novel, Sweet Tooth, is the story of the daughter of an Anglican bishop who enters the intelligence service.
Smith, who has not published a novel since 2005's On Beauty, will give a sneak preview of NW, about four people who grew up on a council estate in north-west London. "It's a fantastic year for British fiction," said festival director Nick Barley.
Smith will also be discussing the state of Britain today on a panel with Alistair Darling and Paddy Ashdown, while McEwan will be interviewing Scotland's first minister Alex Salmond about his life beyond politics. Debate will likewise rage at the Edinburgh World Writers' Conference, a major programming partnership between the Edinburgh International Book Festival and the British Council. The event will mirror the notorious 1962 Edinburgh writers' conference, where authors including Norman Mailer and William S Burroughs thrashed out the relevance of literature.
Fifty writers – US author Nathan Englander, China's Xiaolu Guo and Norway's Dag Solstad among them – will spend five days discussing the theme of writing as an essential component of society. Carnegie medal winner Patrick Ness will explore censorship today, Egypt's Ahdaf Soueif will ask if literature should be political, and Welsh will debate the concept of a national literature.
"It might well be as feisty as the first conference," said Barley, referring to the infamous showdown in which Hugh MacDiarmid denounced Alexander Trocchi as "cosmopolitan scum". "The questions asked are just as relevant today. We chose the authors attending because they are brilliant writers with strong opinions about the world and the novel, so we've got Ahdaf Soueif, who has been so heavily involved in the Arab spring, talking about politics and literature. I know it will be a passionate and immediate response, from someone who is living through revolution as we speak. And there's [Israeli novelist] Aharon Appelfeld, a man who survived the Holocaust and whose life experience has informed his writing."
Broadcasters James Naughtie and Sue MacGregor will be curating their own series of events at the festival. Naughtie will look at modern Britain along with Smith and others, while MacGregor will consider the information age on a panel including Prue Leith, Sarah Hall and AL Kennedy. "I'm delighted by a new bookish challenge – exploring how we deal with the information age, when ideas good and bad, current events, and whole books can be flashed across the universe in a nano-second," said MacGregor.
A host of other leading authors will join the lineup, including Howard Jacobson, poet Ruth Padel, Louise Welsh and AN Wilson, as well as Youssef Ziedan, winner of the international prize for Arabic fiction, and Dutch author Herman Koch with the first English translation of his bestselling novel The Dinner. Debut writers are also in strong supply, including the actor John Gordon Sinclair, and audiences are being invited to vote for their favourite first novel. Children are well catered for, with the festival hosting the launch of the final Artemis Fowl novel by Eoin Colfer and a peek at Jacqueline Wilson's retelling of E Nesbit's classic Five Children and It. New children's books from David Walliams, crime writer Val McDermid, Mackenzie Crook and DJ Simon Mayo will also be presented at the event, and children's laureate Julia Donaldson and War Horse author Michael Morpurgo are both set to appear.
"Last year, our theme was revolution," said Barley. "Now the question everyone is asking is: 'Where did revolution take us?' My feeling is that, following a time of revolution, we need to take stock. So the theme of the debates is 'rethinking' – looking again at ideas we thought were clear in our minds, like democracy.
"This is a year for taking stock about what matters to us in a time of uncertainty, doubt and data overload. It is also, of course, a time when Scotland is preparing to make a big decision about its own future. All this and more will be discussed, deliberated, considered, broadcast live online via the Edinburgh World Writers' Conference, and disseminated around the world. We look forward to a lively, informed and informative debate."
Comments
21 June 2012 10:28AM
Oh good. More promotion of anodyne writers who really don't need it. And Wilson. Yes, you. Leave Nesbit alone.
21 June 2012 11:57AM
Is The Guardian the sponsor again this year?
21 June 2012 12:53PM
I thought On Beauty was a really tired and average book that psuedo-intellectuals thought was great.
21 June 2012 1:07PM
"Great". If Zadie Smith wrote about a killer robot, it would spend the whole time in the corner complaining about the plight of immigrants in Brixton. While its big family did 'wacky' and 'eccentric' things.