Harvill Secker

Mar 26, 2024 | insidestory.org.au | Nicholas Shakespeare |Harvill Secker |Patrick Mullins

Shakespeare famously concluded that a rose by any other name would smell as sweet. But what about fictional characters? Would Arthur Conan Doyle’s Baker Street detective have won as many fans if Conan Doyle had trusted his main character’s original name, Sherrinford Hope? Would the world-in-the-balance quest that underpins The Lord of the Rings have been taken as seriously had J.R.R. Tolkien stuck with Bingo Bolger-Baggins?

Jan 22, 2024 | rte.ie | Elaine Feeney |Harvill Secker

How To Build A Boat by Elaine Feeney (2023), published by Harvill SeckerWhat it's about? Neurodivergent thirteen-year-old Jamie O'Neill wants to build a perpetual motion machine so that he can reconnect with his mother who died giving birth to him. His mission ends up transforming the lives of his teachers and, in the process, that of a community too. Feeney's own son provided the genesis for the novel. Why you should read it?

Oct 5, 2023 | thebookerprizes.com | Harvill Secker |Yoko Ogawa |Stephen Snyder

Skip to main content In 2020, The Memory Police was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize. Written by Yoko Ogawa, one of Japan’s greatest writers, and translated by Stephen Snyder, it’s a haunting fable about the power of memory and the trauma of lossTo the people on the island, a disappeared thing no longer has any meaning. It can be burned in the garden, thrown in the river or handed over to the Memory Police. Soon enough, the island forgets it ever existed.