21ST-CENTURY NOVEL: Notes from: The Edinburgh World Writers’ Conference

Contemporary creative writers reflect on the past, present and future of the novel. In 2012-2013, a year-long conversation between writers took place at 16 literary festivals around the world, from Jaipur to Krasnoyarsk, and from Melbourne to Berlin. Distinguished novelists such as Irvine Welsh, Ahdaf Soueif and Ali Smith shared their thoughts on various aspects of contemporary literature – the challenges it faces and the directions it is taking. This book is in part an anthology of the best of those accounts and also an overview of the lively wide-ranging global debate that the authors’ views engendered among the many writers who took part. It adds up to an arresting and thought-provoking picture of the state of world literature today.