Search results for ""author andrew o'hagan""

From the author of Mayflies, an irresistible, unputdownable, state-of-the-nation novel - the story of one man's epic fall from grace.May 2021. London.Campbell Flynn - art historian and celebrity intellectual - is entering the empire of middle age. Fuelled by an appetite for admiration and the finer things, controversy and novelty, he doesn't take people half as seriously as they take themselves. Which will prove the first of his huge mistakes.The second? Milo Mangasha, his beguiling and provocative student. Milo inhabits a more precarious world, has experiences and ideas which excite his teacher. He also has a plan.Over the course of an incendiary year, a web of crimes and secrets and scandals will be revealed, and Campbell Flynn may not be able to protect himself from the shattering exposure of all his privilege really involves. But then, he always knew: when his life came tumbling down, it would occur in public.

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How much do we keep from the people we love? Why is the truth so often buried in secrets? Can we learn from the past or must we forget it? Standing one evening at the window of her house by the sea, Anne Quirk sees a rabbit disappearing in the snow. Nobody remembers her now, but this elderly woman was in her youth a pioneer of British documentary photography. Her beloved grandson, Luke, now a captain with the Royal Western Fusiliers, is on a tour of duty in Afghanistan, part of a convoy taking equipment to the electricity plant at Kajaki. Only when Luke returns home to Scotland does Anne's secret story begin to emerge, along with his, and they set out for an old guest house in Blackpool where she once kept a room.

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** Pre-order Andrew O'Hagan's new novel Caledonian Road now **'A beautiful, elegiac work . . . This should be required reading for everybody.' Ian RankinShortlisted for the Booker Prize, Our Fathers is a powerful reclamation of the past from one of Britain's most accomplished literary novelists.Hugh Bawn, modern Scottish hero and legendary social reformer, lies dying in one of the high-rise tower blocks he helped establish. His grandson Jamie comes home to watch over him, and it is Jamie who tells the story of their family, of three generations of pride and delusion, of nationality and strong drink, of Catholic faith and the end of the old left. It is a tale of dark hearts and modern houses - of three men in search of Utopia.

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One of the most original, moving and beautifully written non-fiction works of recent years, The Missing marked the acclaimed debut of one of Britain's most astute and important writers.In a brilliant merging of reportage, social history and memoir, Andrew O'Hagan clears a devastating path from the bygone Glasgow of the 1970s to the grim secrets of Gloucester in the mid 1990s.'A triumph in words.' Independent on Sunday'The Missing, part autobiography, part old-fashioned pavement-pounding, marks the most auspicious debut by a British writer for some time.' Gordon Burn, Independent'A timely corrective to the idea that nothing profound can be said about now.' Will Self, Observer Books of the Year'His vision of modern Britain has the quality of a poetic myth, with himself as Bunyan's questing Christian and the missing as Dantesque souls in limbo.' Blake Morrison, Guardian

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An utterly unique take on the most extraordinary period of the twentieth century, from one of Britain's most exciting literary writers.In November 1960, Frank Sinatra gave Marilyn Monroe a dog. His name was Maf. He had an instinct for the twentieth century. For politics. For psychoanalysis. For literature. For interior decoration. This is his story.Maf the dog was with Marilyn for the last two years of her life. Not only a picaresque hero himself, he was also a scholar of the adventuring rogue in literature and art, witnessing the rise of America's new liberalism, civil rights, the space race, the New York critics, and was Marilyn Monroe's constant companion.Maf was very much a real historical figure, with his license and photographs sold at auction along with Marilyn's other person affects. Through his eyes we get an insight into the life of Monroe herself, and a fascinating new angle on the most talked-about decade of recent times.

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'A stunning novel.' Graham Norton** Pre-order Andrew O'Hagan's new novel Caledonian Road now ** Winner of the Christopher Isherwood PrizeShortlisted for the Portico PrizeA Guardian, Spectator, Sunday Times, Financial Times and Evening Standard Book of the Year'Funny, passionate, heartbreaking.' Tracey Thorn'Life-enhancing.' Scotsman'Unforgettable.' Cólm Toibín'Spectacular.' Books of the Year, Spectator'An incredible book . . . about men and how important friendship can be to men.' Douglas Stuart'My god this is gorgeous. Wild, wise, wonderful . . . Absolutely brilliant.' Russell T DaviesEveryone has a Tully Dawson: the friend who defines your life.In the summer of 1986, James and Tully ignite a friendship based on music, films and the rebel spirit. With school over, they rush towards a magical weekend of youthful excess in Manchester played out against the greatest soundtrack ever recorded. And there a vow is made: to go at life differently.Thirty years on, the phone rings. Tully has news.

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From the author of Mayflies 'There is no page on which there is not something surprising or quotable or pleasurable of thought-provoking.' Hilary Mantel'One of the few truly essential works of fiction to emerge from this country during the past 20 years or more.' John Burnside, Daily TelegraphLonglisted for the Booker Prize, Be Near Me is a brilliantly moving story of art and politics, love and change, and the way we live now.When an English priest takes over a small Scottish parish, not everyone is ready to accept him. He makes friends with two local youths, Mark and Lisa, and clashes with a world he can barely understand. The town seems to grow darker each night. Fate comes calling, and before the summer is out his quiet life is the focus of public hysteria. Meanwhile a religious war is unfolding on his doorstep . . .

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In The Secret Life: Three True Stories, Andrew O'Hagan issues three bulletins from the porous border between cyberspace and the 'real world'.'Ghosting' introduces us to the Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, whose autobiography the author agrees to ghostwrite, with unforgettable consequences.'The Invention of Ronald Pinn' finds O'Hagan using the identity of a deceased young man to construct an entirely new one online, leading him on a journey into the deep web's darkest realms.'The Satoshi Affair' chronicles the strange case of Craig Wright, the Australian web developer who may or may not be the mysterious inventor of Bitcoin, and who may or may not be willing, or even able, to reveal the truth.

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Andrew O'Hagan's second novel, winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, is a powerful tale about society, celebrity and self-destruction.Maria Tambini is a thirteen-year-old girl with a great singing voice. Growing up on a small Scottish island, she is ready for the big time and keen to escape her ordinary life. When she wins a national TV talent show, she becomes an instant star, yet all the time 'the girl with the giant voice' is losing herself in fame and in a private battle with her own body. Can Maria be saved by love or is she destined to be consumed by celebrity, by family secrets, and by her number-one fan?'Enormously impressive, frequently curious and consistently ambitious.' Sunday Times'What he manages brilliantly is allowing us only restricted access to Maria's mind, so that the reader is put in something like the same relation to her as the sharkish agents and managers who suck her dry.' Guardian'Such command, such grace, and such compassion.' New York Review of Books

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A stunning collection of reportage from an acclaimed journalist and novelist hailed by the New York Times as 'the best essayist of his generation'.As he grew up, Andrew O'Hagan witnessed the decline of Britain and the rise of America, the end of British industry and the rise of Blair and the tabloids. This collection of essays tells the story of that period in our cultural and political life.Through the reported essays that first made O'Hagan's name, it is a book filled both with personal story and the power of documentary witness. Opening with a major personal piece examining the journey of Britain and America since the closing of the Thatcher years, it concludes with a piece of reportage telling the story of a British and an American soldier who died in Iraq on the same day in 2006. A fascinating, important and timely collection from a hugely important essayist.

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''Utterly awe-inspiring.'' Douglas Stuart ''Extraordinary.'' Marina Hyde''An utter joy to read.'' Monica AliMajestic.' Independent''A masterpiece.'' John Lanchester Addictively enjoyable.' GuardianPitch-perfect.' Observer** Shortlisted for the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction **From the author of Mayflies, an irresistible, unputdownable, state-of-the-nation novel - the story of one man''s epic fall from grace.Campbell Flynn art historian and celebrity pundit is entering the empire of middle age. Fuelled by an appetite for controversy and novelty, he doesn't take people half as seriously as they take themselves. Which will prove the first of his huge mistakes. The second? Milo Mangasha, his beguiling and provocative student. Milo inhabits a more precarious world. He has experiences and ideas that excite his teacher. He also has a plan.Over t

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'The beautiful illusion, when reading Tolstoy, is that one is looking directly at the world, as opposed to a depiction' Andrew O'Hagan from his preface to Childhood, Boyhood and YouthPublished in 1852, when he was just twenty-four, Childhood was Tolstoy's first published work, and the first of a trilogy of stories that evoke the upbringing and traditional education of a Russian aristocrat in a world that vanished with the revolution. In this self-portrait, narrated by its protagonist Nikólya, the young Tolstoy captured the textures of adolescence with a psychological insight and subtlety of analysis that look forward to his mature achievements; while his matchless objectivity - summoning the smells, sights and sounds of early childhood - is already fully present in these pages. The riverrun edition reissues the translation of Louise and Aylmer Maude, whose influential versions of Tolstoy first brought his work to a wide readership in English.

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James Baldwin's electrifying first novel.'I had to deal with what hurt me most. I had to deal with my father.'Drawing on James Baldwin's own boyhood in a religious community in 1930s Harlem, his first novel tells the story of young Johnny Grimes. Johnny is destined to become a preacher like his father, Gabriel, at the Temple of the Fire Baptized, where the church swells with song and it is as if 'the Holy Ghost were riding on the air'. But he feels only scalding hatred for Gabriel, whose fear and fanaticism lead him to abuse his family. Johnny vows that, for him, things will be different. This blazing tale is full of passion and guilt, of secret sinners and prayers singing on the wind. 'His prose hit me, almost winding me with its intensity. I'd never read a novel that described loneliness and desire with such burning eloquence' Douglas Field, Guardian'A beautiful, enduring, spirtual song of a novel' Andrew O'Hagan

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The Scottish poet Robert Burns has been idolised and eulogised. He has been sainted, painted, tarted-up and toasted. He is famous as the author of 'Auld Lang Syne', and he has long been the patron saint of the heartsore and the hungover. But what about the poems? Beneath the cult of Burns Nights and patriotic yawps, there is the work itself, among the purest and most truthful created in any age.This is a Burns collection like no other, introduced, arranged and contextualised by the award-winning novelist and essayist Andrew O'Hagan. Above all, it is an accessible edition made for the pleasure of reading that brings Burns' timeless work to full, riotous, colourful life.

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A unique insight into the ways in which one of today's leading artists is inspired by great works of the past. In 16 emphatically modern new paintings, renowned artist, Alison Watt, responds to the remarkable delicacy of the female portraits by eighteenth-century Scottish portraitist, Allan Ramsay. Watt's new works are particularly inspired by Ramsay's much-loved portrait of his wife, along with less familiar portraits and drawings. Watt shines a light on enigmatic details in Ramsay's work and has created paintings which hover between the genres of still life and portraiture. In conversation with curator Julie Lawson, Watt discusses how painters look at paintings, explains why Ramsay inspired her, and provides unique insight into her own creative process. Andrew O'Hagan responds to Watt's paintings with a new work of short fiction and art historian Tom Normand's commentary explores further layers of depth to our understanding of both artists.

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In his latest book of essays Karl Miller turns his attention to appreciate certain writers of the English-speaking modern world. A new ruralism has come to notice in this country, and the book is drawn to country lives as they have figured in the literature of the last century. An introductory essay is centred on the Anglo-Welsh borderlands. Journeys taken with Seamus Heaney and Andrew O'Hagan to this countryside, and others, are threaded throughout the book. The poets Seamus Heaney and Ted Hughes are discussed, together with the fiction of Ian McEwan, the Canadian writer Alistair Macleod, the Irish writer John McGahern and the Baltimorean Anne Tyler. Scotland is a preoccupation of the later pieces, including the letters of Henry Cockburn, a lifelong interest of the author, who is also interested here in foxes and their current metropolitan profile.

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