No more sleeps

Good evening, sports fans. And what a balmy evening it was. The skies cleared, the air thickened and you dear Bathonians swarmed like happy mozzies to the Guildhall to feast on literary veins. A-hem.

Yes, today was a treat. Despite an inevitable draw on the cards in the Windies, England have at least produced a batting performance worthy of a national team. Liverpool, bless them, all but gave up the title ghost at the Riverside. Good old pog-faced Southgate. Rugby? Okay. Today we're Scottish. Pass me the Highland Park, old boy! Don't mind if I do. And another? Ho ho.

But hang on. I've got to at least attend one event at the Lit Fest if I'm to write this blog. And so it is that, at 5.30 your time, Mr B's Blogger finds himself not in front of the goggle-box enjoying O'Driscoll's finest, but instead at the Guildhall awaiting an audience with Auschwitz survivor, Thomas Buergenthal, to celebrate the launch of his new book, A Lucky Child: A Memoir of Surviving Auschwitz. It chronicles his youth under the long, dark shadow of the Nazi regime. A sombre first night then, eh.

Well. No. The atmosphere is as warm as the room. Friendly. The familiar voice of Kirsty Lang (something about it reminds me of washing up). And here to the stage is a chipper old chap who joins our Kirsty on the comfy brown leather sofas. He could your grandpa. Genially he describes fleeing to Poland from the family home in what is now Slovakia. Random killings in the ghetto. The visas that would take them to England on the day that Hitler decided he had other ideas for the Buergenthals (on the day the family were due to ship out, the Nazis invadde Poland). And then Auschwitz. Inmate number B2930 at 10 years old. The Angel of Death. The sounds of screaming through the night. Kirsty Lang tells us that although it is primarily a very optimistic book, it frequently moved her to tears. You aint kidding, missus.

But the atmosphere, as I say, is warm. He talks of a personal battle with the Nazis, a 'wonderful game of staying alive.' Chuckles abound from the audience. 'I won and you lost,' he points at Hitler. The broken innocence of a childhood spent avoiding Dr Mengele and starvation produced this bitter sweet view of his formative years.

Recently we've had gushy Kate in the big shiny rendition of The Reader. We've had Daniel Craig as Partisan and Tom Cruise bashin' the Nuzzies. In modern popular fictions, the Jews in Nazi Germany are sweetly victims or they are action heroes in bristling technicolour. But here is a man who was a child, in his mother's words, a lucky child. (The story goes that a fortune teller told her that although bad times were ahead, Thomas would come out the other end okay.) Importantly, the Holocaust is by no means gone from living memory. Before it is resigned to history, or more worryingly, story and myth, personal accounts of this dark moment in humanity are vital to our understanding of what happened, and vital to what Buergenthal admits he pointedly turns his attention away from - Holocaust deniers. 'They're trying to kill us twice,' quoth he. Yes.

Questions from the floor then. Asked what he most enjoyed once free and reunited with his mother, Mr Buergenthal replies resoundingly 'sports!' With no religious instruction available, he was allowed to play football and go running.

Afterwards, Herr B tells me that he'd very much enjoyed Kirsty Lang's interviewing. She'd brought the best out of him, so he says. I'm only glad I wasn't interviewing him. I completely forget to ask him which team he supports.

Mr B's - the official bookseller of the Bath LIterature Festival 2009

If you've liked anything you've seen today, including A Lucky Child, remember that Mr B's can supply all your bibliotherapy needs: http://www.mrbsemporium.com/.

Good night for now - Match Of The Day calls.

Sam 'The Uncommon' Reader

Two more sleeps until the Bath Literature Festival 2009!

Now boys and girls, I'm sure you're as excited as I am in knowing that this year's Literature Festival is nearly upon us. As of this Saturday, we'll be keeping you up to date DAILY with a super-dooper blog written lovingly by our very own friend Sam, so keep-a-readin' to make sure you're on top of it all. It's mayhem here at the Emporium; we're printing, carting, reading, writing, drawing, cutting - not to mention sweating, bleeding and crying to deliver you the best festival yet.

In the last few days before it all kicks off I thought I'd cease all the rushing, have a cup of tea and tell you what's going down over the next few days of "debate, discovery, passion and inspiration." One of Saturday's highlights sure to set your ears aflame is the Big Bath Read and who have they got talking? Only tip-top titan-of-an-author Jonathan Coe! He'll be at the Guildhall between 4 and 5 discussing his most recent novel The Rain Before it Falls (sponsored by Mr B's and our friends at the soon-to-open Jika Jika Cafe). Not only can you listen and join in the hearty debate, but the following day you can hear the music that inspired the title, Flautist Theo Travis, playing to extracts of the novel at 4:30pm.

Sunday also brings many a literary delicacy for you to enjoy. If you fancy a bit of demonic, Dali-esque satire, then come along and see political cartoonist Gerald Scarfe and admire the work from Monsters: How George Bush Saved the World and Other Tall Stories. Inspired by greed, hypocrisy, power and arrogance, Scarfe tells the tales of Bill Clinton (and how he Did Not Have Sex With That Woman) Margaret Thatcher and John Major in a mad lampoon-athon of a book.

Monday's offerings include not only Chinese Poetry and an extensive workshop on how to edit your own writing for publication (listen up all Creative Writing Students!) but also, at 7:30pm the Guildhall, award-winning journalist, documentary filmmaker and all round hilariously witty man, Jon Ronson. He'll be reading from his side-splittingly funny new book, What I do: More True Tales of Everyday Craziness. As a fan, with his old Guardian column ripped out and stashed in an old trunk, I can recommend this event wholeheartedly. Also, you might be interested to know that his previous black comedy offering, Men Who Stare at Goats - a romp of a read about conspiracy in Iraq - is being made into a Hollywood movie, starring none other than Ewan Mcgregor, Jeff Bridges and George Clooney!

Right, where are we? Tuesday. Yes. Well, Tuesday provides us with a fascinating talk by Yasmin Hai and Ziauddin Sardar, authors of Balti Britain: A Journey Through the British Asian Experience and The Making of Mr. Hai's Daughter, respectively. An absolute plethora of culture and identity, wit and religion not to be missed.

Anyway, enough yapping from me. If that all sounded pretty peachy to get you started, then keep clicking on trusty Sam's blog to stay in the know for all 9 days of Lit Fest. See you at the Festival and please do comment at will with your festival experiences and comments. We'd love to hear from you!

Mr & Mrs B's Battle of the Classics

Mr & Mrs B's Battle of the Translated Classics - Andric vs Alain-Fournier

Coming up with a reading strategy is always fun in the New Year but when you are a bookshop owner it presents a real challenge. Where to start with book group books, advance reading copies, brand new, fab looking titles, kids' books etc....and by the end of the year we never seem to have read enough of the classics. So this year, we have a new "classics with a twist"plan. In between the regular book group reads and contemporary titles, we (i.e. Mr & Mrs B) will each read a classic translated fiction title starting with surname "A" and working down the alphabet. And we'll let you know what we thought of them - warts and all - right HERE.

Ivo Andric vs Alain-Fournier

First up for Mr B was Ivo Andric "The Bridge over the Drina"

(Harvill, £10.99. Originally Published in 1945 in Serbo-Croat).

In 25 words: Stone bridge built by C16 Turkish Grand Vezir stands witness to 350 years of Balkan upheaval in fascinating history lesson cum epic multi-character novel.

In more than 25 words: This incredible novel is splattered with eye-opening (and often head-losing) stories illustrating the tension between Bosnians and Serbs and the Turks and then Austro-Hungarians that ruled over them during the second half of the last millenium. A biographical novel of a bridge built at the town of Visegrad by a Bosnian-born Grand Vezir in memory of his last journey from his homeland from which he was plucked by the Turks as a young boy.

Beginning with the long and bloody construction of the bridge and then moving fitfully forward through 350 years, Andric introduces us to an endless stream of sometimes loveable, sometimes roguish Visegrad residents (often cleverly linking back to their descendents who we may have encountered in previous chapters). The bridge often looms large in the stories - a Turkish bride leaps from it to avoid marriage; a comically-described gambler loses his biggest bet (and possibly his marbles) on it; the new governing forces of the Austro-Hungarian empire are met by the town's elders for the first time on it; drunks teeter across its parapet and innumerable people end up impaled, beheaded or even pinned-by-the-ear to it.

Through these vignettes of life in Visegrad and on its stone bridge across the Drina, you gradully gain an understanding of the region's tumultous history right up to the outbreak of WW1 following the Archduke's assassination in relatively nearby Sarajevo. For me the most remarkable aspect of the novel is the multitude of perspectives that Andric gives you on the momentous events taking place in the big and scary world outside Visegrad, as he shows us those events through the eyes of Turks, Serbs, Bosnians and Austrians and Jews, Orthodox Christians, Catholics and Moslems.

Andric won the Nobel Prize for this novel and it really wider recongition as a genuine C20 classic here in the UK.

- v. -

First choice for Mrs B was Henri Alain-Fournier "The Lost Estate (Le Grand Meaulnes)"

(Penguin, £8.99. Originally published in 1913 in French).

Among the reviews which paper our downstairs toilet at Mr B's is an article all about this book which few English people seem to have heard of, but which to French people is as famous as "Great Expectations" is to us British. It is billed as one of the defining coming-of-age stories of French literature and the introduction draws parallels with The Great Gatsby. Every time I visit the toilet I am reminded of it and, bring half-French, feel it my duty to give it a go. felt it remiss of me not to have read it and was excited at the prospect.

The narrator is a teenage schoolboy in a French provincial town at the end of 19th Century. His routine life is turned upside down with the arrival at the school of the charismatic, larger than life Augustin Meulnes. The "Great Meaulnes" disappears one evening, returning a few days later telling of a mysterious, candlelit wedding party in a crumbling estate, with costumed guests and an impossibly beautiful girl. As Meaulnes tries to reconstruct a way back to the dreamy lost estate, he manages to alienate his schoolmates and then the visit of a strange gypsy and his friend lead to some sinister goings-on.

I won't give away any more of the plot here. It is a story of nostalgic longing for the past. On the one hand, Meaulnes' yearning to relive his magical experience means he can't move on with his life. On the other hand, he is desperate to escape his adolescence, with all its emotional constraints.

It is an intriguing read which I enjoyed immensely although I must say I think I came at it with my expectations perhaps too high. The atmosphere he creates around the lost estate and the sense of wistful longing I found superb. However it lacked the intensity of other French novels I have read. Although I found it a good translation, perhaps it is a book which should be read in the original if at all possible since its strength lies in the prose and not the plot.