Festival Books
Telephone Booking Fringe 0131 226 0000 International Festival 0131 473 2000 Book Festival 0845 373 5888 Art Festival 07500 461 332 DAVID MCKEE Discussing the inner monster
‘They’re like my children,’ smiles David McKee, the creator of such long- adored characters as Mr Benn, King Rollo and Elmer the Patchwork Elephant. ‘You love them equally and they all demand attention at different times.’ The legendary storyteller and illustrator now calls the south of France home, but he is looking forward to his Edinburgh visit, despite admitting to a lack of preparation. ‘I really enjoy these events because I do so few of them,’ he says. ‘A lot of it revolves around the kind of questions people ask and thankfully I’ve been around so long that even if I haven’t prepared anything, I can come up with something because really what we’re talking about is my life. In fact I always say I don’t have a job, I have a way of life.’ His two appearances feature a live
drawing class for children and a masterclass for adults, giving a well- rounded insight into his career, which has been hugely appreciated by young and old over the years. ‘It’s funny, but a lot of adults just don’t get the meanings in my work,’ says McKee. ‘One of my grandson’s favourite books at the moment happens to be Not Now, Bernard and he said to his dad the other day, “the monster is Bernard really, isn’t it?” And I thought, it’s amazing; he’s three years old and he understands so much more about the monster within us than many adults can even comprehend.’ (Camilla Pia) ■ 22 Aug, 2pm, £4; 5.30pm, £10 (£8).
DAVID MITCHELL Dreaming up the non-existent
David Mitchell isn’t known for his simple approach to storytelling. His most recognisable work, the Booker- shortlisted Cloud Atlas, was described as having a ‘Rubik’s cube structure’. Ambitious and unconventional, it For everything you need to know about all the Festivals visit www.list.co.uk/festival
22 THE LIST 19–26 Aug 2010
ALICE THOMPSON The Edinburgh novelist gets used to the spotlight
‘It’s a great honour to be asked to appear at the Edinburgh Book Festival,’ says Alice Thompson. ‘It’s like being knighted.’ And no one deserves it more than this Edinburgh-based author. Her fifth and most recent work, The Existential Detective, finds her courageously grappling with the crime fiction genre for the first time, and cleverly subverting it in her trademark spooky and surreal manner. Reactions to the novel so far have been hugely positive, but as she prepares for her forthcoming festival appearance, Thompson is as humble as ever. ‘I’m overwhelmed. I’ve never had such a positive response to one of my books. I’m still recovering from the launch a week ago. The room was full of goodwill with people even standing and sitting on stairs. My agent lobbed some awkward questions at me and then it was the audience’s turn; that kept me on my toes. A wonderful, unforgettable evening.’
A detective story ‘for people who have an imagination and enjoy being confounded’, The Existential Detective has been programmed for discussion alongside Italian scribe Paulo Giordano’s best-seller The Solitude of Prime Numbers, and the authors will be delving into both books at this highly anticipated joint event. Each work explores themes of memory, childhood, family and loneliness. ‘We both write about loss, but his prose is more transparent while mine is more metaphoric,’ says Thompson. ‘I never know what the response is going to be to my novels when I read them out loud. I’m always aware of the rhythm of sentences when I write but it’s very different actually reading them out to strangers; it can feel like a kind of literary striptease. It’s always odd being in the spotlight for a writer. You spend years alone in a garret and then suddenly you’re briefly thrust out into the limelight.’ Something tells us Alice Thompson is going to have to get used to it. (Camilla Pia) ■ 25 Aug (with Paolo Giordano), 7.30pm, £7 (£5).
melted genres of airport page-turners, sci-fi nightmare and historical memoirs. ‘Gardeners have got a compulsion to get outside and get earth on their hands,’ the author explains, matter-of-factly. ‘IT people feel compelled to make things happen through digital code. And writers, our compulsion is to dream up the non- existent. It’s simply what we do.’
Mitchell’s latest novel, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, is dreamt up on the man-made island of Dejima, an 18th century trading post outside Nagasaki. Mitchell stumbled on a Dejima museum while working in Japan during the 90s, and immediately thought the island – ‘a patch of land no bigger than Trafalgar Square’ – would make a perfect claustrophobic backdrop. The main
character, de Zoet is a strait-laced accounts clerk. While trying to tiptoe neutrally through the corrupt dealings of sailors and power-hungry officials, he falls in love with a disfigured woman, Orito. Mitchell paints the picture in frilly,
fact-dripping detail, but it’s his translation of body languages – the micro-gestures that start and end wars, or make or break marriages – that sets him apart. ‘There is always more to people than there appears to be, and thank heavens for that. It’s good when fiction reflects that. When it doesn’t, you’ve got two dimensionality and cliché. How dare I expect people to spend time and money if that’s what they’re getting?’ (Claire Sawers) ■ 22 Aug, 11.30am, £10 (£8).