Umberto Eco

Jean-Claude Carrière

Jean-Philippe de Tonnac

Polly McLean

'The book is like the spoon: once invented, it cannot be bettered' - Umberto Eco. These days it is impossible to get away from discussions of whether the book will survive the digital revolution. Blogs, tweets and newspaper articles on the subject appear daily, many of them repetitive, most of them admitting ignorance of the future. Amidst the twittering, the thoughts of Jean-Claude Carrière and Umberto Eco come as a breath of fresh air. This thought-provoking book takes the form of a conversation in which Carrière and Eco discuss everything from how to define the first book to what is happening to knowledge now that infinite amounts of information are available at the click of a mouse. En route there are delightful digressions into personal anecdote. We find out about Eco's first computer and the book Carrière is most sad to have sold. And while, as Carrière says, the one certain thing about the future is that it is unpredictable, it is clear from this conversation that, in some form or other, the book will survive.

This is Not the End of the Book

Atiq Rahimi

"A young woman sits at her husband's bedside, twisting her worry beads, reciting prayers. Once the local hero, renowned for his exploits as a soldier, her husband lies slack-mouthed, emaciated, staring vacantly at the ceiling of a small blue room. Shot in the neck by a fellow soldier after responding violently to a slur on his mother's honour, he has been silenced not by an enemy bullet but a petty squabble. The passage of time is measured out by the sound of his breathing, the slow progress of the drip that keeps him alive and the intermittent calls to prayer that reverberate in the streets outside. Consumed by her vigil and the routine of washing her comatose husband and changing his drip, the woman has sent her two girls to stay with her aunt, and the heavy silence begins to suffocate her. As one day drifts into another, her desperation for any sign of life from her husband becomes acute. Abandoned by her own family and his, is this room to be her final resting place? Even as her mind appears to unravel, so it becomes intensely clear-sighted. Now is her chance - her first ever - to speak without being censored, interrupted and criticised, to spill out the secrets she's kept loc

Polly McLean

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