John Baker’s Blog

Graham goes to see Jack; they talk about a new development in his relationship with Ann. Jack advises him:
‘Well, there’s always one solution . . .’ Graham sat up straighter in his chair. This was what he’d come for. Of course, Jack would know what to do, would know the right answer. That was why [...]

Lebanese author Rawi Hage, writing in his third language, has won the €100,000 Impac Dublin literary award for his novel De Niro’s Game.
The Guardian reports:
Hage, now 44, started working as a novelist relatively late, having trained as a photographer. “Someone told me I should be writing,” he says, after which he started writing a short [...]

In 1909 the Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to the Swedish novelist Selma Ottilia Lovisa Lagerlöf “in appreciation of the lofty idealism, vivid imagination and spiritual perception that characterize her writings.”
She was the first woman writer to be awarded the prize.
At the Nobel Banquet that year she said:
Deep within me, however, was a wondrous [...]

Reads like this:
In Dublin a week later, that would be September 19th, Neary minus his whiskers was recognized by a former pupil called Wylie, in the General Post Office, contemplating from behind the statue of Cuchulain. Neary had bared his head, as though the holy ground meant something to him. Suddenly he flung aside his [...]