Author of the Month: Gordon Burn
Selected by the Bookshop
Our Author of the Month for October is the consistently unpredictable Gordon Burn. In four novels and five works of non-fiction he explored, in extraordinary forensic detail, issues of fame, infamy and guilt as they engage and enmesh with crime, sport and popular culture. His first book Somebody's Husband, Somebody's Son deals with Peter Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire Ripper, and serial killers appear in later works, notably Happy Like Murderers about Fred and Rosemary West, and his speculative novel Alma Cogan, which features prominently the Moors murderer Myra Hindley and which won the Whitbread First Novel Prize in 1991. These were books he found it traumatic but essential to write, just as they are essential but traumatic to read.
A prize in his honour was launched in 2013 ‘to reward fiction or non-fiction written in the English language, which in the opinion of the judges most successfully represents the spirit and sensibility of Gordon's literary methods: novels which dare to enter history and interrogate the past...literature which challenges perceived notions of genre and makes us think again about just what it is that we are reading.’ This year’s winner will be announced on 13 October.
From the publisher:
It seemed the case of the notorious Yorkshire Ripper was finally closed when Peter Sutcliffe was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1981. But in the early 1980s, Gordon Burn spent three years living in Sutcliffe’s home town of Bingley,…
From the publisher:
‘Extraordinary, funny, tender, poetic . . . The story that emerges is Britain’s.’ Times Literary SupplementWith a new introduction by George ShawIn a forensic dissection of Britain’s souring landscape Gordon…
From the publisher:
Winner of the Whitbread Best First Novel of the YearIn his classic debut novel, Gordon Burn takes Britain’s biggest selling vocalist of the 1950s and turns her story into an equation of celebrity and murder. Fictional characters…
From the publisher:
‘One of the landmark novels of the last decade.’ GuardianFeatures a new introduction by William BoydNorman Miller used to be one of Fleet Street’s finest. Now he’s a middle-aged, burned-out hack with a gift for…
From the publisher:
In Born Yesterday: The News as a Novel, by Gordon Burn takes on real news stories in an ambitious and innovative novel.Born Yesterday does what the media do every day: blurring the boundaries between what is real and what has…
From the publisher:
‘A classic.’ Frank Keating, Guardian‘Unputdownable.’ The FaceFeatures a new introduction by Stuart EversFollowing the 1985 final between Dennis Taylor and Steve Davis, Britain found itself in the grip of a…
From the publisher:
‘Immaculately written, inspiring, sad and elegiac.’ Daily TelegraphWith a new introduction by David PeaceDuncan Edwards played his first game for Manchester United at the age of fifteen and Walter Winterbottom, then England…
From the publisher:
‘I think he’s a genius.’ (Damien Hirst, Guardian)‘The Pop artists were among the first to understand the desire of consumers to change their lives through the purchase of clean, manufactured commodities. YBA, on…
From the publisher:
Happy Like Murderers by Gordon Burn is a true crime classic, republished to coincide with the 2019 Gordon Burn Prize.In this controversial and seminal work of reportage, Gordon Burn reveals the strange inner dynamic of Fred and…
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