Books

Will Sergeant failed his 11-plus school exam in Liverpool, UK, and was dumped with the other thickies at a secondary modern school, where the careers master wanted him to train to be a welder. No one, including Sergeant himself, suspected that instead of being ...

There is not one but two mysteries for we amateur sleuths to ponder here: first, Simenon’s actual plot, involving the obligatory killing and the natural question of whodunnit, and second, how this brand-new translation differs so much from Penguin’s earlier one (in a positive ...

War throws up no end of horrors, and among the worst must be to fight it from within the claustrophobic confines of a tank (or submarine) that might well be blown to bits any second. Much-published historian James Holland tells the harrowing tale of ...

South African author Damon Galgut has won the Booker Prize for his ninth novel, “The Promise”, about a family in crisis following the death of the mother, after his third shortlisting since 2003. The Booker carries a £50,000 prize.

On a couple of occasions when I needed a new stereo outfit in Newcastle, NSW, Australia, in the 1980s-90s I would head down to the hi-fi shop with my copy of Echo and the Bunnymen’s “Porcupine” album and ask the salesman to play the ...

Dinner had been good. Margaret sat with her book on her lap and watched her husband digesting, an operation to which he always gave much time and thought. As she watched he put his cigar down without looking and used his free hand to ...

British literary translator Len Rix was presented with the Hungarian Golden Cross of Merit in London on Monday for his work in translating Hungarian literary classics into English.

The Collegium Hungaricum cultural institute in Berlin will host Europe's first literary translation festival featuring round table discussions, workshops, concerts and a photo exhibition on the weekend, the institute said on Wednesday.

All 75 of the “Maigret” novels that Georges Simenon wrote between 1931 and 1972 stand on The Budapest Times bookshelves but only one of his 28 short stories about the Detective Chief Inspector of the Police Judiciaire at the Quai des Orfèvres in Paris. ...

As is often the case in a history of cinema, Haydn Smith opens up with Auguste and Louis Lumière’s short films that they unveiled to startled audiences in Paris in 1895, the first real moving pictures to be seen by a paying public. How ...