Oxygen Books

Ever wanted a book that features all the best European city reading? It’s coming …

Our city-pick series was born on the slopes of the Acropolis ...

True, but very hot.

We wanted a guide book that featured a selection of the best writing on Athens … with a special focus on modern writing and writing in translation.

We searched the bookshops in Athens and London but couldn’t find anything.

So … Oxygen Books’ city-pick series came about.

So far we’ve been to Berlin, Paris, Amsterdam, Venice, Istanbul, Dublin, New York, St Petersburg, and our home city, London.

Kate Mosse has called us ‘brilliant’, The Times ‘superb’, The Sydney Morning Herald ‘sublime’.

The Bookseller wondered why no one had come up with the best writing on favourite world cities before.

We wondered too.

But now city-pick is spawning progeny.

Not born on the slopes of the Acropolis this time, but on our kitchen table.

(Sorry, make that during our Shoreditch start-up’s deep think-tank explorations after warm-up exercises with our TED presenter.)

Why not a book giving the low-down on the best books on all our favourite European cities?

Why not?

The Rough Guides are great but the book recommendations are at the back and often list-like and a bit short.

Trip Advisor and Goodreads are fine too but it is sometimes difficult to get a proper handle on things.

And none of them tend to be very helpful on more recent novels in translation that everyone going to these cities could be reading.

We’d already written a series for Guardian Travel on the best books on all kinds of popular cities, which seemed a good start.

Prefer your history in the form of a pub crawl story? – we’ve got one (on Prague).

Wish you could have sat down to dinner in Paris with Picasso, Proust, Stravinsky and James Joyce – all at the same table? … Or what it’s like to be really poor in the City of Light? We’ll direct you to the experience in words.

A taste for vampire books and going to Venice? We even have one of those.

We’re passionate about the range and variety of writing about cities.

It’s why we’re currently working on our new book, Reading Europe (provisional title).

Our Arts Council work with loads of book groups and library users have shown us there’s a hunger out there for world writing – and writing about the world.

We’ve already made so many amazing discoveries reading for this book. Step forward please some of our favourites – Marseille’s Jean-Claude Izzo, Prague’s Bohumil Hrabal, and Paris’s Laurence Cossé.

And that’s just for starters.

There are literally hundreds of writers as excellent as these who’ll be included in the book.

Essential reading for your next European city-breaks or for your armchair staycation?

We think so.

And if you've already enjoyed our city-pick series, this could definitely be a book for you!

The world's your oyster - don't miss world writing speed dating at Barking's Readfest 2015!

 

Love reading books about foreign countries? Like to find out more about the amazing treasure trove of world writing on offer? Going abroad and looking for a book set in that country?

If so, then you won’t want to miss a fascinating afternoon set up by the organisers of the Year of Reading Dangerously project (who also run Brentwood travel publishers Oxygen Books) and Barking and Dagenham Libraries as part of the Readfest 2015 festival.

‘We love reading books by UK and American authors but over the last couple of years have seen our horizons broaden to take in more books in translation from other countries’ says project manager Heather Reyes. ‘Our project is very much geared to showing the wealth of reading available from other countries and helping people to find the world writing titles that suit them.’

‘Readers can look forward to an entertaining afternoon of exciting book speed-dating, readings, discussions and other activities to give them a real taste of what’s on offer when it comes to some of the very best novels in translation.’

A Year of Reading Dangerously is an Arts Council funded project working across Essex and London boroughs that includes a touring exhibition, author events, book group sessions and a special website.

Tea and refreshments

www.ayearofreadingdangerously.com

www.oxygenbooks.co.uk

Saturday 26 September, 2.30 – 4.30pm. Free. Barking Learning Centre, Barking IG117NB  Tel: 0208 724822

 

Strange Meetings II Julian Barnes, the Northern Line and me

 

                                                                           Julian Barnes

Goodge Street tube station.  The first time we'd ever joined the Northern Line there. The Northbound  platform. Bizarrely, as the train doors opened, my sister-in-law - a wonderful  actress with a rich voice - stepped out onto the platform, looked at us as if it  were the most normal thing in the world to see us there, and said (rather  loudly), 'Julian Barnes is in that carriage', and walked on.

             We stepped in. My husband said, 'What did she say?' Still taken aback by  such an unlikely encounter with a close relative, I didn't think to whisper my  reply. 'I think she said Julian Barnes is in this carriage.' We were already  starting to sit down on the two empty seats of a foursome just inside the  doors.

             Yes, Julian Barnes was in that  carriage - and, yes, he was sitting right in front of us.

             I'm not sure who was the more embarrassed, him or me. I screwed my legs  carefully sideways to avoid touching knees with one of my literary heroes ...  who screwed his neck round to the left to avoid catching my eye and was thus  forced to endure a journey looking at his own reflection in the train window as  there was, of course, nothing but the black side of the tunnel beyond  it.

 

I told the story to my Eng.  Lit. class at the time as I had taken the bold - and, in retrospect, possibly  unwise - step of choosing Barnes' novel Flaubert's Parrot from that year's list  of set texts. A personal indulgence.

             Most of them - sorry, Mr Barnes - hated it. Only the brightest loved  it.

             Convinced that, if they met the author and heard him talk about the book  himself, it would change their attitude, I managed to wangle an event for the  Essex Book Festival at which Julian Barnes would speak, using our capacious  school hall as a venue. Great!

             When I announced this to my 'Parrot' class and possibly exaggerated my  excitement (in order to stir up theirs), a couple of big, 'naughty' girls whose  apparent excess of hormones coloured everything with sex, decided I must fancy  'Julian' (as they'd taken to calling our distinguished author) and threatened to  reveal this when they met him. Add to this the fact that the festival organisers  insisted I be the one to introduce and interview him, and you can imagine my  feelings as the event approached.

             Obsessively re-reading all of Barnes's books, I spent many, many hours  planning my introduction and the interview questions.

             Waiting in the room set aside for 'receiving' him, I was, for the first  time in my life, almost vomiting with nerves. At one point I thought I was going  to pass out. And the wait was prolonged because a hold-up on the M25 meant he  didn't arrive until five minutes before the event was due to start.

             It went well, I'm told - I don't remember much about the event, once it  started. My students sat demurely in their reserved seats at the front, were  impeccably polite, and asked interesting questions (mainly pre-prepared) during  the Q and A at the end. And even the hormone brigade were too awed by the  presence of a living, breathing 'celebrity' to come out with anything as  unseemly as the word 'fancies'.

             And I have a lovely photo (taken for the local paper) of my A level class  arranged around a kindly, smiling Julian Barnes.

 

Last time I saw this  particular literary hero of mine was at the National Theatre, coming down the  stairs after a performance of the same play we'd just seen. He was not  smiling.

             He was with friends, but it wasn't so very long since his beloved wife  had died with devastating speed from a brain tumour. One of the hardest things  about being famous must be having your griefs played out in public.

             Our glances caught - his with a glimmer of recognition of a face, but  certainly not recalling his last encounter with it in such a different context.  He quickly looked away. I did the same.

 

(Postscript: all the class  passed the exam - some with top grades.)

Heather Reyes is the author of the novels Zade and Miranda Road and two books about reading, An Everywhere: a little book about reading and Bookworms, Dog-Ears & Squashy Big Armchairs: A Book Lover's Alphabet.  Her new novel, Perfectly Fine, is out in July and her short story collection, Talking It Over With Genghis Khan, is published in October. She is also the editor of Oxygen Books' city-pick series of urban travel anthologies.

 

Strange Meetings 1: On meeting Doris Lessing in the National Theatre toilet

                                                                     Doris Lessing

 

I have a great affection for  a particular set of ladies' loos in the National Theatre - the location of a  lovely literary memory: a smile (just to me) from Doris Lessing.

             She was coming out, I was going in. Maybe I smiled first, I don't know.  All I do know is that suddenly a lady as small and round as my grandmother was  giving me the kind of luminous smile that originates from an habitual generosity  of spirit. The memory of such a smile can be - and I'm not being sentimental - a  source of strength.

             A while later, during a particularly difficult time, I was invited to the  Independent Foreign Fiction Prize event. As if my need for that smile had  conjured her, there was Doris Lessing again. The event was crowded: we were both  heading for the same small gap to make our way somewhere (to and from the loo  again, maybe?!). The polite convent school-girl still huddling at my heart stood  aside to let her through. She smiled. I smiled ... and only just stopped myself  throwing my arms around in a great big hug. (Part of me thinks she probably  wouldn't have minded.)

 

Returning from a wet couple  of days in Aldeburgh, at Ipswich we picked up the London-bound Norwich train. It  was packed. Damp, bedraggled in an ancient cagoule and scruffy jeans, I was  reduced to propping myself up right by the loos.

             There'd been a big literature festival in Norwich so it wasn't really  surprising that I was suddenly confronted by Margaret Drabble. Small and neat, I  was an oversized, shabby scarecrow beside her. She needed the loo but seemed  unsure how the automatic doors worked. My outer voice said, 'You need to press  that one', while my inner voice was saying, 'Oh, how lovely to meet you. I  really admire your work and all you stand for ... and, what's more, through  writing, I know your daughter ... and I went to your house once for a party  ...'

             Surely she wouldn't have believed me: that soggy, straggled-haired being  reduced to standing by the loos a writer? A fervent reader? PhD in experimental  literature? ... Or, as a writer, would she look past the surface of things and  ...

             But I don't suppose she thought anything about the woman who said, 'You  need to press that one.'

             She thanked me, and gave me a lovely smile,  anyway.

 

Heather Reyes is the author of the novels Zade and Miranda Road and two books about reading, An Everywhere: a little book about reading and Bookworms, Dog-Ears & Squashy Big Armchairs: A Book Lover's Alphabet.  Her short story collection, Talking It Over With Genghis Khan, is published in October. She is also the editor of Oxygen Books' city-pick series of urban travel anthologies.

 

The day I had my 'Pink Period' in Spare Rib ...

 

 

Some time last year, I received a letter from the British Library. I knew their envelopes well and wondered which of our Oxygen Books titles I'd forgotten to send them (publishers have to send copies of everything they bring out to all six UK deposit libraries).

                Instead, it was a letter that sent me hurtling into both a personal and collective past.

                I was being asked, as a one-time contributor to the feminist magazine Spare Rib, to give permission for my work to be digitised as part of a project to make all 239 issues of that historically significant magazine available as a digital archive. And yesterday - 29 May 2015 - I opened the Guardian to find the whole of page 7 given over to the news that all 21 years' issues - from 1972 to 1993 - are, indeed, available as an on-line resource.

                The Guardian reproduces 10 of the 239 covers and their tone and spirit immediately conjured up that time, in the early 80s, when, 'emerging' writer that I was, I found the courage to send a short story to Spare Rib.

                The much older me cringes slightly on re-reading it - it was called 'Pink Period' - but I suppose it's an honest snap-shot of me at the time ... and the times in me.

                My writing has changed a lot over the years - years in which I have been a partner, wife, mother and granny and loved every bit of all of it - but I've remained a declared feminist throughout and retain an odd affection for 'how we were' in those ardent, energetic, campaigning, humorous Spare Ribdays.

                I remember being ludicrously excited to have a story in a 'proper' magazine - not just, as previously, in those "little magazines" where the typing was sometimes a bit crooked (it was pre-word-processor days)  and each copy was stapled by hand. Having a story in Spare Rib spurred me to write more short stories, even while trying my pen at various (unpublished, I hasten to say) novels.

                And the writing of short stories has remained a habit, whatever else I've been working on at the time. So it's probably thanks to the Spare Rib editors that I have a collection of short stories coming out - Talking it Over with Genghis Khan - at the beginning of October this year. No, it won't include 'Pink Period' (I really have moved on a bit since then!) - though strangely enough many of the stories' titles feature colour.

                It took someone else to point out to me that the spirit of those Spare Rib days had found its way into my second published novel, Miranda Road - set mainly in the 1970s and 80s. The novel is written in the alternating voices of mother and daughter who, among other things, embody the feminist and so called 'post-feminist' perspectives. Again, it took someone else to suggest that I was partly writing about the two sides of myself - the ardent believer in gender equality and the happily cake-baking mother.

                A kind of schizophrenia? No. Thanks to the tireless work of other women I've had a choice of being either, neither, or both. On the penultimate page of Miranda Road I give the following words to Eloisa:

                                                I think my mother would have liked me to have had a big career - a  more

                                                demanding one, anyway (as if motherhood isn't!). Have I disappointed

                                                her feminist hopes? I don't know. ... the important thing to me is that

                                                I've had a choice. She gave me that. Choosing is freedom, no matter

                                                what it is you choose.'

 

The only sad thing about remembering the Spare Rib years is that, despite all the optimism and the many very real advances for women, there is still a long way to go. Beneath the Guardian's feature on the digitising of the Spare Rib archive is a short article pointing out how 'austerity' is once more widening gender inequality. Women, as usual, can look forward to being the main losers under the current austerity regime - as pointed out by the organisation 'A Fair Deal for Women' (an umbrella group of eleven women's rights charities).  Come on girls! Don't stand for it! How about mustering a bit of that old Spare Rib spirit, eh?

Talking It Over With Genghis Khan, a collection of short stories by Heather Reyes is published by Oxygen Books on 7 October 2015. Heather's short stories have appeared in a number of magazines, including Fiction International and Ambit. Her National Christmas, a novel set in London's National Gallery, is published on 29 October 2015.

 

 

Are these the 10 best city novels?

Teju Cole Open City

We so agree with the Observer's Elizabeth Day that Teju Cole's Open City is one of the best city novels - in his case about his adopted city of New York.

Spoiler alert but his description of his protagonist being stuck on a fire escape high above Carnegie Hall and in a storm is probably not one to read if you have trouble with heights.

And we love her other choice for New York: Tom Wolfe's eighties nightmare Bonfire of the Vanities. Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser, which tells Chicago's story, is a book we're now determined to read too.

Then there's London: Bleak House of course and Capital by John Lanchester as well as our favourite NW by Zadie Smith.  It's lovely when a less feted part of a city - in this case Willesden - is evoked so brilliantly. Who can ever forget the church between two busy main roads where her two main characters take their children one hot and dusty summer's afternoon. It's writing of the highest degree. There's also a wonderful chapter set at a summertime party on the top of a block of flats in Soho. The character Smith depicts here is drunk and drugged and being jilted and her malaise somehow parallels the world below.

Elizabeth Day also includes Dublin (Ulysses of course), Moscow (The Master and the Margarita), Bombay (A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry) and the biggest surprise, The Dog by Joseph O'Neil set in Dubai. One wonders how many other books have been set in this high-rise desert city.

Guilty admission: we're the publishers of the city-pick urban anthology series featuring some of the (we hope) best writing on favourite world cities. It's why we wanted to see Berlin there (Paul Verhaeghen Omega Minor, read it and be dazzled), Paris of course (where do you start?), Amsterdam (H M van den Brink On the Water for the city's gentler pleasures), Joseph Brodsky for his description of the melting ice on St Petersburg's Neva.

And there are more cities. Lots more. Each with their own amazing writers to evoke the real souls of each of them in their own quirky and idiosyncratic ways.

Thank you Elizabeth Day for starting us on this journey - of seeing how city novels can take us to the very heart of a metropolis.

 

The world's their oyster: but how to bring world writing to a wider audience?#AYearofReadingDangerously

 A Year of Reading Dangerously: bringing world writing home

From Jessie Burton's The Miniaturist to Joanne Harris's Chocolat, so many of us enjoy reading novels about other countries.

 

It's this enthusiasm that has led Oxygen Books, well known for its offbeat city-pick urban travel guides, to come up with an exciting new Arts Council- funded project called A Year of Reading Dangerously.

 

The project's aim is simple: to introduce a wider public to the joys of writing in translation from a range of countries.

 

A Year of Reading Dangerously has come up with lists of the top ten guaranteed good reads in translation from Europe, Africa, Asia, the Middle East and South America.

 

'There's a real enthusiasm for reading about other countries amongst readers but often they're not sure where to start and sometimes an overemphasis on translation and winning prizes puts many readers off: they think the novels are too worthy or too heavy for them,' says project manager and Oxygen Books publisher Malcolm Burgess.

 

'We think many readers need a more 'softly, softly' accessible approach - lots of translated novels are both compelling and entertaining reads after all. We see ourselves following very much Lovereading and Goodreads rather than the top down approach and are excited that the Arts Council sees this as an exciting way ahead with our pilot project.'

 

The project includes a special touring exhibition visiting libraries across London and Essex for 2015 - 16, a website, including interviews with key translators and podcasts, visits to book groups across London and Essex, library stock promotions, bookmarks and a series of events. in which well known writers discuss their own work and books from particular countries which have inspired them.

 

These will include an evening of Russian writing with Orange Prize-winner Helen Dunmore, exploring books and writers from every country in the world with Reading the World author Ann Morgan, a celebration of Asian poetry with award winning poet Moniza Alvi and an evening of Scandinavian noir with Denmark's Sander Jakobsen.

 

www.ayearofreadingdangerously.com

 

For more information and exhibition pictures about A Year of Reading Dangerously: malcolm.burgess3@btopenworld.com; 07594490216/ 01277 263770

 

 

 

Oxygen Books awarded Arts Council grant for world writing project A Year of Reading Dangerously

Ann Morgan, Reading the World: Confessions of a Literary Explorer, Harvill Secker. See Ann on Thursday March 26 2015 in Chelmsford, Essex www.essexbookfestival.org.uk

From Jessie Burton's The Miniaturist to Joanne Harris's Chocolat, so many of us enjoy reading novels about other countries.

It's this enthusiasm that has led Oxygen Books, well known for its offbeat city-pick urban travel anthologies, to come up with an exciting  new Arts Council funded project called A Year of Living Dangerously.

The project's aim is simple: to introduce a wider public to the joys of writing in translation from a range of countries.

Working with library authorities and book festivals across London and Essex, A Year of Living Dangerously will involve an extensive touring exhibition highlighting some of the best writers from India, Africa, China, France, Turkey, South America, the Netherlands, Russia, Scandinavia and Japan.

A website, including interviews with key translators and podcasts, special bookmarks, visits to book groups across London and Essex, stock promotions and new links between cultural agencies and libraries will all help to raise the profile of world writing among general readers. 

Also, a series of events in which well known writers and commentators discuss their own work and books from particular countries which have inspired them, will make writing in translation even more accessible.

Across 2015 and 2016 these will include an evening of Russian writing with Orange Prize-winner Helen Dunmore, exploring books and writers from every country in the world with Reading the World author Ann Morgan, a celebration of Asian poetry with award winning poet Moniza Alvi and an evening of Scandinavian crime featuring a well-known Scandinavian crime writer in discussion with Professor Amanda Hopkinson.

'We want this project to entertain and enthrall our readers as we journey across the globe with them,' says project manager Malcolm Burgess from Oxygen Books. 'Writing in translation doesn't have to be heavy or worthy: in fact there's something for every possible reading taste.'

For more information about A Year of Reading Dangerously: http://ayearofreadingdangerously.com  

 To speak to the project team: malcolm.burgess3@btopenworld.com; 07594490216/ 01277 263770

 

 

Books & writers from 196 countries: you'll love Ann Morgan on Reading the World, Chelmsford 26 March

26 MAR

THU

Ann Morgan Reading the World: Confessions of a Literary Explorer

 

What happens when you set out to read a book from every one of the globe's 196 independent countries? 'Reading the World' is the extraordinary and hugely inspiring story of Ann Morgan's journey as readers, writers and translators from each country, even where little is written down or where books are censored, advise and help her. An essential event for anyone who cares about books and reading.

Read the extraordinary story of Ann's journey here

Check out the latest reviews of Ann's book in The Guardian and The Observer

And WIN a FREE copy of Reading the World here

WHEN & WHERE

Chelmsford Library
Market Road
Chelmsford
CM1 1LH

Thursday 26 March 2015
7:30pm - 9:30pm

 

• View On Map
• Download Event Poster

 

TICKETS & BOOKING

Call (01206 573948) or www.visit mercurytheatre.co.uk/event/ann-morgan-reading-the-world/

£5

www.essexbookfestival.org.uk

 

 

 

Bookworms, Dog-Ears & Squashy Big Armchairs: A Book Lover's Alphabet: 'Full of winning anecdotes ... a book to dip in and out of' The Simple Things

Bookworms, Dog-Ears & Squashy Big Armchairs, Heather Reyes, Oxygen Books, £8.99 paperback; £4.11 e-book

'Full of winning anecdotes, odd literary facts and wrong-headed publishers' rejections, including the crushing, "You'd have a decent book if you got rid of that Gatsby character", this is a book to dip in and out of. Reyes considers ancient libraries, e-books, bad sex in fiction, censorship and obscenity trials, and reveals that Batgirl was a librarian. There are reading lists, including the ten novels to read before you die, and a look at opening lines, including Daphne Du Maurier's: "Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again". The Simple Things