Christy Edwall

Dec 4, 2024 | the-tls.co.uk | Harry Strawson |Mia Levitin |Alberto Manguel |Christy Edwall

“If it keeps on rainin’”, sings Robert Plant on Led Zeppelin’s 1971 track, “levee’s gonna break.” The song is a cover of a 1929 recording by Kansas Joe and Memphis Minnie, inspired by the Great Mississippi flood of 1927; the untitled (fourth) album on which it appeared went on to sell more than 37 million copies. In the world of record-label scouts known as “song-catchers”, conjured up in Xan Brooks’s well-crafted new work of historical fiction, that is what is known as a very big fish.

Dec 4, 2024 | the-tls.co.uk | Christy Edwall

Welcome to the TLSWinner of the 2024 Niche Market Newspaper of the Year Award and proudly niche since 1902.

Feb 1, 2023 | theguardian.com | Christy Edwall

Growing up in South Africa, it seemed that most of the damp, spotted books available to me were published in Britain. They tended to be set either in gothic country houses or on the streets of London, and they left me with a very clear (if partial and fictitious) impression of the city. When I moved to Britain, I spent several days wandering around London and felt a strong sense of deja vu: a simultaneous recognition and alienation that comes from the converging of real and invented places.

Feb 1, 2023 | literaryreview.co.uk | Christy Edwall

It’s tempting to describe Christy Edwall’s bold debut, History Keeps Me Awake at Night, as a curious hybrid. The central plot involves a young woman living in London, South African-born Margit, investigating the real-life case of forty-three student protesters who, in 2014, were abducted in Iguala, rural Mexico, and never seen again. Via Margit’s lively, droll voice, Edwall weaves history, biography and philosophical enquiry into a hyper-intertextual tale.