thegreglowe.com

To say that disgraced politician cum author, Lord Jeffrey Archer, is a controversial character is an understatement. He has been imprisoned for perjury and perverting the court of justice; breached parole conditions; stolen coats in Canada; been accused of insider trading and ripping off charities; and was implicated in Simon Mann’s planned coup in Equatorial […]

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South African author and playwright Athol Fugard’s recently-published novel Tsotsi, is a compelling and brutal tale that follows the life of the story’s eponymous protagonist. Set in Sophiatown — a black township in Johannesburg that was razed in the 1950s to make way for homes for the whites — Fugard uses the oppression of the […]

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U-THANT’S GRANDSON SPEAKS: The family’s ardent love for Burma lives on Despite being born in New York in the 1960s, Thant Myint-U’s memories are of a childhood steeped inBurmese culture. Life in his maternal grandfather U-Thant’s house in Riverdale, just outside of Manhattan, was a stark contrast to the icy, snowy winters and bright lights […]

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It’s Friday afternoon, and after a particularly busy week, with only a few things to wrap up, I try and scratch off the last important thing on my list of things to do – interview author/journalist Tom Hodgkinson. First I try his London office a number of times, only to get the following answer-phone message: […]

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Life is full of paradoxes for dissident Chinese author Ma Jian. Creative exile in England allows him to write more freely about his homeland. his banned status in China boosts his sales in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore, and creates a sales angle for his books in English. read more…

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Gazing at the wonders of Southeast Asia, through the words and experiences of an author, provides a unique opportunity to explore this diverse region. Those who write in English have particular influence in their capability to inspire the world’s biggest book buying market to venture to distant shores. However, the occidental view is not without […]

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Four times Booker Prize nominee and one time winner – Schindler’s Ark, 1982 – Thomas Keneally intelligently investigates the dehumanizing effect of transforming real people into the homogenous, singular entity of “asylum seekers” in his book The Tyrant’s Novel. The story revolves around the protagonist Alan Sheriff, a refugee locked up in a detention centre […]

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Punctuation vigilante Championing the rights of the apostrophe to exist may not seem a likely way to gain literary stardom, but author Lynne Truss has done just that with her book Eats, Shoots And Leaves, writes Greg Lowe.

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Francois Bizot spent 90 days in a Khmer Rouge death camp, saw the fall of Phnom Penh, and was inspired to write his account by John Le Carré. He tells Greg Lowe how it feels to have your life saved by a murderer.

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Not many punk rockers will tell you it was a copper that made them what they are today, but bestselling British author Ian Rankin is an exception to this rule. He owes his livelihood to one Detective Inspector John Rebus, a hard-nosed Edinburgh cop who works on instinct, plays by his own rules, and is […]

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