LooseLeaves: Ireland may be coming down with events commemorating the fast-approaching centenary of the birth of Samuel Beckett (April 13th) but there's a plethora of activities celebrating the occasion abroad too - particularly in the English city of Reading.
Home to a major archive of Beckett material, much of it donated by Beckett himself, the University of Reading is mounting a biographical exhibition, built from its collection. Called Samuel Beckett - The Irish European, it opens at the Museum of Reading on March 25th and runs until June 25th.
The collection's co-ordinating body, the Beckett International Foundation, has also planned a number of events: an exhibition of the work of John Haynes, photographer at the Royal Court Theatre from 1970 to 1994, who had unique access to Beckett and to his productions; an adaptation of Beckett's novella First Love; and an evening of Beckett readings, recitals and performances by people who have been involved in Beckett films and productions, presided over by director Anthony Minghella. There will also be talks by Beckett biographer James Knowlson and by Sir Peter Hall, who started his career directing the first London production of Waiting for Godot at the Royal Court in 1955. Another highlight will be John Banville's talk about Beckett's late prose writing. See www.beckettfoundation.org.uk.
Bubbly fiction shortlist
Trust a champagne house - in this case Taittinger - to be associated with something classy, in this case the influential London-based Independent Foreign Fiction Prize. Six novels feature on the shortlist, which is dominated by books from eastern Europe: Fatelessness by Hungarian Imre Kertész (Harvill) - a survivor of Auschwitz and Buchenwald, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2002 - translated by Tim Wilkinson; Mercedes-Benz by Pawel Huelle, translated from Polish by Antonia Lloyd Jones (Serpent's Tail); The Ministry of Pain by Dubravka Ugresic, translated from Croatian by Michael Henry Heim (Saqi); Out Stealing Horses by Per Petterson, translated from Norwegian by Anne Born (Harvill Secker); The Door by Magda Szabó, translated from Hungarian by Len Rix (Harvill Secker) and This Blinding Absence of Light by Moroccan Tahar Ben Jelloun, translated from French by Linda Coverdale (Penguin).
Summing up the events of recent history that thread through these books, one of the judges, Boyd Tonkin of the Independent, said: "Whether directly or obliquely, the bloody traumas of Europe in the last century still exert an irresistible grip on many of the finest minds in fiction today."
The winner will be announced in May with author and translator getting £5,000 (€7,285) each and - wait for it - a limited edition magnum of Taittinger.
Book early for Heaney
As publication of his new collection District and Circle gets nearer (April, Faber & Faber), there will be a number of chances to hear Seamus Heaney read from the new book. It will undoubtedly be a case of book early if you want to hear him at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin on Sunday, April 9th, at 8pm. Tickets cost €10 from the Abbey box office on tel: 01-8787222. He will be among more than 40 writers taking part in the 21st Cúirt International Festival of Literature in Galway from April 25th to 30th. Tickets are available from tel: 091-569777. Heaney will read also at the opening of the Strokestown International Poetry Festival on Friday, April 28th. Gabriel Fitzmaurice, Enda Wyley, Greg Delanty, Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill, Peter Sirr, Paula Meehan and Theo Dorgan will also read during the weekend. For further details contact Paddy Bushe at pbushe@eircom.net.
Sadbh