A wee round up of recent media stuff

There’s a good story behind this photo by Marta Calvo, taken for the Spanish literary magazine, Qué Leer. on the terrace of La Central bookstore in Barcelona (it involves a few beers and a horrible reaction to one of those temporary tattoos they do you on the beach). I was over to promote the Spanish version of Peace, Love & Petrol Bombs.

Thanks also to author Christopher Burns for his kind review of The Deconstruction of Professor Thrub, in the new issue of the venerable Warwick Review:

Readers are likely to find Thrub either exciting or precious, but few will disagree that this is an ambitious, erudite work with a profound interest in the world as we find it. This interest encompasses unexpectedly vivid sensory descriptions, scenes of violence such as those found in Babel, a junction of philosophy and farce reminiscent of Stoppard, a B.S. Johnson like use of distancing, and an ongoing dialectic between Kantian and post-Kantian theories of being and action.

I’ve also been chatting with journalist Michael Donnelly, who’s recently launched an independent media venture: S:News. You can read that here.

And if you’re after Christmas presents, have a look at The Morning Star‘s review of the year’s best left-wing fiction. There are some great titles mentioned, so I’m grateful to Paul Simon for including Thrub:

As expansive in its scope and even more ambitious in its characterisation, DD Johnston’s The Deconstruction Of Professor Thrub spans poverty-stricken Belfast, the Spanish civil war and Hungary 1956. A galloping discussion of free will and skit on academic life, it’s a book that frequently explodes with raw and unexpurgated humour.