Latest news with #Hamnet
See - Sada Elbalad
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- See - Sada Elbalad
"Knives Out 3", "Hamnet", "Roofman" Among TIFF Premieres Added to Lineup
Yara Sameh 'Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery,' the third murder mystery in director Rian Johnson's hit series, will have its world premiere at this year's Toronto International Film Festival. The movie and several others, including Chloe Zhao's Shakespearean drama 'Hamnet' and Channing Tatum's action comedy 'Roofman,' have been added to the lineup. Johnson's two prior whodunnits in the trilogy, 2019's 'Knives Out' and 2022's 'Glass Onion,' also had their world premieres at TIFF. Daniel Craig will reprise his role as Benoit Blanc, the sleuth with a distinctly Southern drawl, in 'Wake Up Dead Man,' alongside the new ensemble of Josh O'Connor, Glenn Close, Josh Brolin, Mila Kunis, Jeremy Renner, Kerry Washington, and Andrew Scott. 'Roofman,' based on the true story of a former Army ranger and professional thief who finds a hideout inside a Toys 'R' Us, will also host its world premiere in Toronto. Meanwhile 'Hamnet,' a fictionalization of the life of William Shakespeare's son led by Paul Mescal and Jessie Buckley, will have its Canadian premiere at TIFF, meaning the film will first screen at another festival before making its way to the Six. Other new additions to the TIFF lineup include Nicholas Hytner's 'The Choral,' Agnieszka Holland's 'Franz, Neeraj Ghaywan's 'Homebound, Paul Greengrass' 'The Lost Bus,' Rebecca Zlotowski's 'A Private Life,' HIKARI's 'Rental Family,' Peter Ho-Sun Chan's 'She Has No Name," and Clement Virgo's 'Steal Away.' 'Since its inception, TIFF has championed global cinema that opens our eyes and brings us together,' said TIFF's chief programming officer Anita Lee. 'We are delighted to share 11 more titles from our gala and special presentations programs that showcase the remarkable originality and excellence of today's most exciting and acclaimed directors. These films reflect a sweeping range of voices and styles that embodies the spirit of TIFF and our commitment to a public audience.' The festival's 50th edition will take place Sept. 4–14. 'John Candy: I Like Me,' a documentary about the late comedian from director Colin Hanks and producer Ryan Reynolds, will open the festival. Steven Soderbergh's 'The Christophers' and Nia DaCosta's 'Hedda' were also previously added to the docket. In keeping with tradition, TIFF is expected to slowly reveal the rest of its lineup over the next month or so. See the full list of new titles: Galas: The Choral | Nicholas Hytner | UK World Premiere | Gala Presentation Homebound | Neeraj Ghaywan | India North American Premiere | Gala Presentation Hamnet | Chloé Zhao | UK Canadian Premiere | Gala Presentation A Private Life | Rebecca Zlotowski | France North American Premiere | Gala Presentation Roofman | Derek Cianfrance | USA World Premiere | Gala Presentation She Has No Name | Peter Ho-Sun Chan | China North American Premiere | Gala Presentation Special Presentations: Franz | Agnieszka Holland | Czech Republic/Germany/Poland World Premiere | Special Presentation The Lost Bus | Paul Greengrass | USA World Premiere | Special Presentation Rental Family | HIKARI | USA/Japan World Premiere | Special Presentation Steal Away | Clement Virgo | Canada/Belgium World Premiere | Special Presentation Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery | Rian Johnson | USA World Premiere | Special Presentation read more New Tourism Route To Launch in Old Cairo Ahmed El Sakka-Led Play 'Sayidati Al Jamila' to Be Staged in KSA on Dec. 6 Mandy Moore Joins Season 2 of "Dr. Death" Anthology Series Don't Miss These Movies at 44th Cairo Int'l Film Festival Today Amr Diab to Headline KSA's MDLBEAST Soundstorm 2022 Festival Arts & Culture Mai Omar Stuns in Latest Instagram Photos Arts & Culture "The Flash" to End with Season 9 Arts & Culture Ministry of Culture Organizes four day Children's Film Festival Arts & Culture Canadian PM wishes Muslims Eid-al-Adha News Israeli-Linked Hadassah Clinic in Moscow Treats Wounded Iranian IRGC Fighters News China Launches Largest Ever Aircraft Carrier Sports Former Al Zamalek Player Ibrahim Shika Passes away after Long Battle with Cancer Videos & Features Tragedy Overshadows MC Alger Championship Celebration: One Fan Dead, 11 Injured After Stadium Fall Lifestyle Get to Know 2025 Eid Al Adha Prayer Times in Egypt Arts & Culture South Korean Actress Kang Seo-ha Dies at 31 after Cancer Battle News "Tensions Escalate: Iran Probes Allegations of Indian Tech Collaboration with Israeli Intelligence" News Flights suspended at Port Sudan Airport after Drone Attacks Arts & Culture Hawass Foundation Launches 1st Course to Teach Ancient Egyptian Language Videos & Features Video: Trending Lifestyle TikToker Valeria Márquez Shot Dead during Live Stream
Yahoo
7 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Emmys 2025 nominations: Best prediction scores by Gold Derby experts, editors, and users
Congratulations to Gold Derby user Ryan Lapierre for scoring 83.6 percent in predicting the 2025 Emmy nominees on Tuesday morning. The top scorer tied with four other people for the overall lead but has the better point tally of 106,020 thanks to his use of the two Super Bets (500 points each). Almost 8,300 people worldwide predicted the Emmy nominations, with our top scorer correctly calling 117 of 140 nominee slots in the 25 categories, including such long shots as Colman Domingo of The Four Seasons, Natasha Rothwell of The White Lotus, and Rashida Jones of Black Mirror. More from Gold Derby 'Knives Out 3,' 'Rental Family,' 'Hamnet,' 'Roofman' to kick off Oscar campaigns at Toronto Film Festival 'Awards Magnet': Our instant 2025 Emmy reactionsYou can see how your score compares to all others in our leaderboard rankings, including links to each participant's predictions. To see your scores, you need to be signed into the site. Then go to the User menu in the top right corner of every Gold Derby page. Use the drop-down menu to "view profile," then look for the links to your "award show scores." For our nine Gold Derby editors predicting, Debra Birnbaum is in first place with 82.1 percent correct. In second place is Matt Noble with 80 percent correct. Denton Davidson is next with 79.3 percent and then Chris Beachum and Marcus James Dixon with 76.43 percent. Rob Licuria follows with 75.7 percent and then Kevin P. Sullivan with 73.6 percent. Ethan Alter is next with 71.4 percent. Mia McNiece did not complete all categories for 11.4 percent. See editors' scores. Of the 27 experts who predicted, Birnbaum is tied at the top with Marcus Jones (Indiewire) with 82.1 percent. Scott Mantz (KTLA) is in second with 81.4 percent and then Tariq Khan (KSDK) with 80.7 percent. We have a three-way tie at 80 percent with Joyce Eng (Entertainment Weekly), Wilson Morales (BlackFilmandTV), and Matt Neglia (Next Best Picture). Tied at 79.3 percent are Pete Hammond (Deadline) and Christopher Rosen (The Ankler). We then have Clayton Davis (Variety) and Eric Deggans (NPR) at 77.9 percent. Ben Travers (Indiewire) is next with 77.1 percent and then Gregory Ellwood (The Playlist) and Matt Roush (TV Guide) with 76.4 percent. The next spot is held by Dave Nemetz (TV Line) with 75.7 percent, followed by Jazz Tangcay (Variety) with 75 percent. No other experts completed all of the categories or nominee slots. Susan King (freelance) and Lynette Rice (Deadline) are at 73.6 percent. Shawn Edwards (WDAF) is at 69.3 percent and then Thelma Adams (freelance) and Anne Thompson (Indiewire) at 68.6 percent. Keith Simanton (IMDb) finishes with 63.6 percent and then Kate Erbland (Indiewire) with 62.9 percent. Kristen Baldwin (Entertainment Weekly) has 72.9 percent, and then Matt Brennan (Los Angeles Times) at 61.4 percent. The final two slots are held by Peter Travers (ABC) with 52.1 percent and then Mary Murphy (freelance) with 22.1 percent. See experts' scores. Best of Gold Derby Everything to know about 'The Pitt' Season 2, including the departure of Tracy Ifeachor's Dr. Collins Everything to know about 'Too Much,' Lena Dunham's Netflix TV show starring Megan Stalter that's kinda, sorta 'based on a true story' Cristin Milioti, Amanda Seyfried, Michelle Williams, and the best of our Emmy Limited Series/Movie Actress interviews Click here to read the full article. Solve the daily Crossword
Yahoo
7 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
‘Knives Out 3,' ‘Rental Family,' ‘Hamnet,' ‘Roofman' to kick off Oscar campaigns at Toronto Film Festival
The sleepy 2026 Oscar race is about to get a wakeup call, courtesy of Benoit Blanc and the Toronto International Film Festival. Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery, the anticipated third installment in Rian Johnson's wickedly delicious mystery series starring Daniel Craig, will have its world premiere at the film festival — a traditional launchpad for Academy Award contenders. The sequel, whose starry cast also includes Glenn Close, Josh Brolin, Mila Kunis, Jeremy Renner, and Kerry Washington, was one of 11 official selections unveiled Wednesday, all of which have Oscar aspirations. More from Gold Derby Emmys 2025 nominations: Best prediction scores by Gold Derby experts, editors, and users 'Awards Magnet': Our instant 2025 Emmy reactions Those include: The Choral: Set against the backdrop of WWI, Ralph Fiennes stars as a tough choir director mentoring a group of enlisted British teens in the Nicholas Hytner film. Franz: Oscar nominee Agnieszka Holland directs this episodic biopic of writer Franz Kafka (German actor Idan Weiss), from his birth to death. Hamnet: Nomadland Best Picture winner Chloé Zhao returns from her ill-fated excursion into the Marvel Cinematic Universe with a historical indie drama based on Maggie O'Farrell's 2020 novel about Agnes (Jessie Buckley) and William Shakespeare (Paul Mescal) grieving the death of their son, Hamnet. The Lost Bus: Paul Greengrass' tense based-on-a-true-story drama stars Matthew McConaughey as a driver trying to get a school bus full of children and their teacher (America Ferrera) out of burning Paradise, Calif., during the Camp Fire in 2018. Rental Family: Hikari , who helmed multiple episodes of the Emmy-winning Netflix series Beef, directs this dramedy starring Oscar winner Brendan Fraser as a struggling American actor hired by a Japanese "rental family" company to pretend to be part of strangers' lives. Roofman: Channing Tatum and Kirsten Dunst star in this Derek Cianfrance film about a real-life ex-Army officer-turned-criminal who hides from authorities in the walls of a Toys R Us. Steal Away: Clement Virgo directs this psychological thriller starring Angourie Rice plays a teenager who forms an unhealthy obsession with a refugee (Mallori Johnson) taken in by her family. The 50th Toronto International Film Festival runs Sept. 4-Sept. 14. The full schedule will be revealed Aug. 12. Below are the galas and special presentations announced so far. Galas (in alphabetical order) The Choral | Nicholas Hytner | U.K. World Premiere | Gala Presentation Homebound | Neeraj Ghaywan | IndiaNorth American Premiere | Gala Presentation Hamnet | Chloé Zhao | Premiere | Gala Presentation A Private Life | Rebecca Zlotowski | FranceNorth American Premiere | Gala Presentation Roofman | Derek Cianfrance | USAWorld Premiere | Gala Presentation She Has No Name | Peter Ho-Sun Chan | ChinaNorth American Premiere | Gala Presentation Special Presentations (in alphabetical order): Franz | Agnieszka Holland | Czech Republic/Germany/PolandWorld Premiere | Special Presentation The Lost Bus | Paul Greengrass | USAWorld Premiere | Special Presentation Rental Family | Hikari | USA/Japan World Premiere | Special Presentation Steal Away | Clement Virgo | Canada/BelgiumWorld Premiere | Special Presentation Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery | Rian Johnson | USAWorld Premiere | Special Presentation Best of Gold Derby Everything to know about 'The Batman 2': Returning cast, script finalized Tom Cruise movies: 17 greatest films ranked worst to best 'It was wonderful to be on that ride': Christian Slater talks his beloved roles, from cult classics ('Heathers,' 'True Romance') to TV hits ('Mr. Robot,' 'Dexter: Original Sin') Click here to read the full article. Solve the daily Crossword
New Statesman
04-07-2025
- Entertainment
- New Statesman
Ignore the pessimists – we are living through a literary golden age
Photo by Adam Hirons / Millennium Images, UK Literary culture is dominated by pessimists. They claim that the English novel is in a slump, the media is dying at the hand of tech oligarchs, and that culture is in a repetitive doom-loop. Every film is a sequel. Students don't read anymore. A generation of graduates are illiterate. Marshall McLuhan was right. There is a lot of truth in this perspective. Survey data shows there really has been a decline in reading this century. Studying literature at university is in steep decline. No-one doubts that there is a preponderance of screen time instead of book time. It is heartbreaking to see children still in their buggies addicted to tablets. Somedays, I feel the pull of the pessimistic argument. What was the last English book that was as good as Piranesi or An Inheritance of Loss? Why do we not have a new Sally Rooney, or a Percival Everett every year? But I think the overall picture is more complicated. Literature is doing just fine in quality terms, but we are at a tipping point. We have a chance to change all this, and pessimism won't help. Let's start with fiction. The last few years have seen some splendid British novels: Piranesi, Hamnet, Klara and the Sun, Shuggie Bain, and the Wolf Hall books. This year I have especially enjoyed Flesh by David Szalay. And Shibboleth by Thomas Peermohamed Lambert is a very funny new novel. International fiction is thriving: South America, Ireland, Korea, Japan and France have all produced great novels recently. This year, Helen deWitt, a true genius, is publishing a new novel. In 2022, Tyler Cowen listed seventeen major novels of modern times and concluded that we are not living through an especially bad time for literature. There is also children's writing. Sam Leith wrote in 2022 'we're going through a bit of a golden age for children's fiction.' He named Katherine Rundell, Piers Torday, SF Said, Jeff Kinney, Malorie Blackman, Philip Pullman, Philip Reeve and Michelle Paver. There are also writers like Alex Bell, Frances Hardinge, and Julia Donaldson. The bestselling shelves for non-fiction, however, have recently been full of trash. The recent Times list of the bestselling books of the last 50 years was, to say the least, dispiriting. But we don't lack excellent non-fiction. AN Wilson has just written a very good book about Goethe. Frances Wilson's new biography of Muriel Spark is truly excellent, as is Lamora Ash's compulsive book about Christianity, and Helen Castor's new biography of Richard II and Henry IV. Rural Hours by Harriet Baker remains underrated despite winning the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award. There is also Question 7, by Richard Flanagan, The Marriage Question by Clare Carlisle, Parfit by David Edmonds, What We Owe The Future, by Will MacAskill. We should also be optimistic about the breadth and variety of what is happening online. Naomi Kanakia, an American novelist turned Substacker, has just had her work profiled in the New Yorker, along with John Pistelli, another Substacker whose new novel Major Arcana is a weird and wonderful account of modern culture. Kanakia has written about the many fictional experiments happening on Substack. Several critics and essayists have emerged on Substack whose work is interesting and original, people like Henry Belger, alongside the established writers like BD McClay. Hollis Robbins is an original and daring academic voice writing about AI. Closer to home, AN Wilson, England's last great man of letters in the George Henry Lewes manner, has a Substack too, which I read religiously. Subscribe to The New Statesman today from only £8.99 per month Subscribe On any given day you can read first-rate nonfiction online in places like 'Construction Physics', 'Works in Progress', and from writers like Paul Graham, Noah Smith, and Scott Alexander. In Britain, there is excellent work being done by Saloni Dattani about science and Alice Evans about demography and women's rights. Are you not fascinated to know that Starbucks is a bank? Do you not admire Amia Srinivasan, Sophie Elmhirst, and Sam Knight? We have seen the tail end of a golden age of obituaries, too, notably at the Economist and Telegraph as well as at the New York Times. It is like the days of the periodical and Grub Street and the Westminster Review. This online culture has real signs of growth. There are now five million paying subscribers on Substack. Library apps like Libby are going through a small boom. BookTok is making all sorts of unexpected books, including classics, into bestsellers. In 2017 the UK publishing industry had revenues of £4.8bn. Now it is £7bn. There are far more independent bookshops now than in 2016 – 1,052 compared to 867. What we are starting to see, I think, is a tipping point. The decline of literature is coming to an end. The bounce back might be starting from a low point, but it's very real. On Substack, Beth Bentley has written about the popularity of reading in modern culture. Gen Z read more books than their elders, she reports. There are plenty of other signs that the decline is over. Celebrities and influences are running book clubs. One X user reported their builder listening to George Eliot on the scaffolding. Naomi Kanakia recently wrote about the growing fandom for literature on Substack among people who are disconnected from literary discourse and find it all bewildering. The fact is that the common reader is still out there. And they can be found in increasingly unlikely places. The Silicon Valley entrepreneur Patrick Collison said at the end of 2024 that he had read ten classic novels: Bronte, Dickens, Mann, Flaubert, Melville, Eliot, James, Conrad, Woolf, Grossman. Inspired by this, Matthew Yglesias started reading classic fiction too, finishing all of George Eliot's novels in the first three months of 2025. Kyla Scanlon recently used The Screwtape Letters to analyse the economy. This energy for literature is spreading. Many of my most enthusiastic readers are from Silicon Valley or other non-literary areas. They are reading Tolstoy and Shakespeare. If I want to talk about Iris Murdoch, I am usually better off at a party of STEM and policy nerds than a literature gathering. Indeed, it is only when I meet literary people that the mood starts sinking. One English literature lecturer, who I encountered at a party recently, has only read 12 of Shakespeare's plays (one third of the total works). Another professor has seriously argued that Taylor Swift is the literary equivalent of Mary Shelley. The editor of the New York Times book review section hasn't read Middlemarch and doesn't plan to. An academic at St Andrews published a piece saying that she thought it was better for students to read fewer books. 'Reading one novel in three weeks, but reading it well,' she said, 'is a perfectly good target.' Likewise, too many of the literary pessimists I spoke to about this piece haven't read many of the modern novels they assume aren't very good. If we want the rest of the world to take literature seriously, the literati needs to set a good example. The most striking recent instance of this happened on X. When the 4Chan list of the best books they had read in the last decade was published, Zena Hitz shared it, saying: 'Don't know how to break this to you but the 4channers are running circles around the pros, academics and critics.' Her replies were plagued with literary people complaining that the 4Chan readers hadn't read enough women. The very people who believe that not enough young men are reading literature (and that this is connected to the phenomena of their voting for Donald Trump) had little more than complaints and nit-picking to offer when faced with a new constituency of readers. Whenever I talk to someone who thinks we are living in a desperately bad literary time, they usually do have a favourite living novelist, someone like Tessa Hadley or Ali Smith or Rachel Cusk. These are not writers I care for, but take note that the doomers are simultaneously admirers. English literature is in good enough shape to inspire disagreements about who the good writers really are. Pessimism about literature is probably more about the question of whether we ought to care about novels anymore. Some 20 years ago, VS Naipaul declared the novel dead. Who can doubt his reasons: 'We've changed. The world has changed. The world has grown bigger.' Terrorism, the fertility crisis, climate change, housing shortage, the fact that we cannot build basic infrastructure without years of bureaucratic delay, the financial crash of 2008, the pandemic, the rising feeling of an inevitable war we're inadequately prepared for – what has fiction had to say about the cycles of disruption in this century? Perhaps a lot of the low-beat mood among literary people is not actually about the quality of modern books, but simply about the fact that literature simply isn't as significant or important as it used to be. One reason why literary people may feel that we are not living in a great period of writing is that the writing that is truly excellent is not the sort of writing they produce. This sounds harsh, but I include myself in this assessment. So, I think the overall situation is something like this: there is still plenty of good writing, plenty of literary energy, but it is not always in the same places it used to be, and the literary establishment isn't always well aligned to its audience. We are living through a significant disruption. Instead of responding with despair, we need to adapt. This is fully achievable. As the world continues to evolve in the direction of uncertainty – caused primarily by AI and geopolitics – literature will only become more significant. It is no coincidence that people are turning back to literature now. The spread of AI will make the most 'human' activities more valuable. The returns to taste will rise. That is what literature excels at. The best work stands out all the more starkly in a world of abundant slop. We have seen this before. People decide to watch less television, scroll less social media, and read classic literature and they are amazed at the benefits. Someone somewhere is always discovering that Tolstoy is gold compared to the tinfoil of Netflix. The literati are poised on the edge of a huge social change: there is no point in asking ChatGPT to read Frederick Douglass on your behalf. Discussing those works with ChatGPT, though, is very valuable. Reading literature will also be a means of connecting with other people. We have to choose what side of this transition we are on. Do we want young people to read the Bible and Homer or do we want to complain about their choices on Twitter? Middlemarch just went viral on Substack. I see people there reading everything from the Mahabharata to JM Coetzee to Catherine Lacey. Elizabeth von Arnim was recently popular on TikTok. Can we be optimistic about that? If not, we may find ourselves left behind while literature carries on in its new forms of success. The task for those of us who care deeply about literature is to make it relevant in this new world. Even now, people are trying to find their way to books that will matter to them. Readers from unexpected places are searching for the best. If they find us too often complaining about the state of things, they will turn elsewhere. It is easy for us to see the dross that fills the shelves. But we ought to be searching as hard as we can for the best work, wherever it can be found. It is easy to regret the loss of the literary culture we all grew up with. But we are faced with the challenge of making something new. It is all too easy to see what we will lose with AI. But as Hollis Robbins told me, 'You can't be pessimistic if you fully grasp the creativity of the human mind. So much sublime work has been lost; some of it will be found. How can anyone be pessimistic when there is so much rediscovery work that AI is helping us do?' The world is full of aspiring writers. We need to raise their ambition, push them to be greater, showcase their work, be honest about their failures. Someone is always discovering Tolstoy for the first time. We ought to care a lot more about that. Patrick Collison and Matthew Yglesias and thousands of others whose names we don't know are coming to us. We need to welcome them. We need to show them what we have to offer. We need to choose between literature and politics. What the pessimists and I agree on is that this is a turning point. Where we differ is that I think we need to evangelize for the future, not decry the present. We need to read and enthuse. We need to innovate. We need to be the light that draws others in. It is time for us to shine out like a candle, to be a good deed in a naughty world. [See also: English literature's last stand] Related
Scotsman
16-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Scotsman
Edinburgh International Book Festival 2025: Fiction Highlights
Sign up to our Arts and Culture newsletter, get the latest news and reviews from our specialist arts writers Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to The Scotsman, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... It's been 12 long years since Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie last published a novel, but the reviews for Dream Count are so glowing that it seems it's been worth the wait. One of the stars of festival's Front List, she will be appearing (19 August) on stage at the McEwan Hall, when an appropriately large audience will be able to find out why, according to one review, 'nothing less than the whole female experience' is within the scope of her new book. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie PIC:Ian McEwan (no relation) is a welcome repeat visitor to the festival, and has in the past discussed the difficulty of novelists tackling such a diffuse topic as climate change. On the festival's last day (24 August) Kirsty Wark may be able to draw him out on why he has returned to the subject in his next novel, What We Can Know, out in September. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Ian McEwan PIC: Stuartfor BFI Also on the McEwan Hall stage, Maggie O'Farrell (15 August) will be celebrating the 25th anniversary of publishing her debut novel, After You'd Gone. Festival director Jenny Niven will chair the event – and might even get some of the skinny on the filming of Hamnet by Oscar-winning director Chloe Zhao, starring Paul Mescal as Shakespeare and Jessie Buckley as Anne Hathaway. Maggie O'Farrell PIC: Dasha Tenditna Back in the Futures Institute, Abdulrazak Gurnah will be discussing Theft, his first novel since winning the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2021 (10 August), while Australia's Michelle de Kretser – winner of her country's Stella award only a fortnight ago for Theory and Practice, her genre-bending 'fictional memoir' – makes her festival debut (16 August). The following day, our own genre-bender Ali Smith will be discussing her dystopian book Gliff, which de Krester herself has hailed as 'an irresistible invitation to rethink and reword our way to a truly brave new world'. What else? If you're looking for the best of Irish fiction, check out Eimear McBride (21 August) and Colum McCann (18 August); for French, see if Laurent Binet (19 August) can interest you in his epistolary detective story featuring half the artists in the Renaissance; work out if Daniel Kehlmann (9 August) deserves his reputation as the leading German novelist of his generation or why Javier Cercas (19 August) – highly regarded by our own Allan Massie – has long enjoyed similar status in Spain. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad I've only room to cram in a few more favourites, but it's impossible to leave out two great double-bills – Alan Hollinghurst appearing alongside Tash Aw (9 August) and Natasha Brown with Hari Kunzru (22 August) or last year's Man Booker winner Samantha Harvey (14 August). The festival's first Thursday is probably the best day to see Scottish writers, as Ewan Morrison, Doug Johnstone, Chris Brookmyre and Denise Mina are all there to talk about their latest novels (Brookmyre's 30th, Mina's 20th) at separate events.
