I'm delighted to say that excerpts from my first novel, The Good Thief's Guide to Amsterdam, have been included in City-Pick Amsterdam, an anthology of writing about the city of Amsterdam published by the clever people at Oxygen Books. Oxygen have hit on a brilliant concept by pulling together snippets of writing about a host of great cities - previous locations to benefit from the anthology treatment include Berlin, Paris and London, with Dublin yet to come.
Here's a snippet from the introduction to the anthology, written by Sam Garrett, award-winning translator and Amsterdam resident.
You are staring out of
the window, you are crossing a bridge, you are cycling through traffic, when
the heavens open. Amsterdam suddenly feels as right as your favourite pair of
old slippers, as heartbreakingly beautiful as that lover you once tossed aside
during an eclipse of reason.
You
wonder whether you will ever have the heart to leave this place. As the writing
in this volume proves, this same epiphany has dawned through the long years on
the likes of Charles de Montesqieu, Dubravka Ugresic, Alain de Botton, Simona
Luff, Chris Ewan and many, many more.
Blimey, I'm in some company. And there's more:
From outsiders to insiders,
from classic to cutting-edge, over seventy dazzling writers - some translated
into English for the very first time - reveal the many faces, present and past,
of this amazing city.
* Ian
McEwan describes that perfect Amsterdam moment. *Alain de Botton finds the
exotic in the ordinary *Cees Nooteboom celebrates a city of water *
David Sedaris visits Anne Frank’s House * Chris Ewan offers an
unconventional guide to the city * Geert Mak shows us a
nation within a nation * Simon Schama evokes old Amsterdam * Dubravka Ugresic discovers a
city of exile * Doeschka Meijsing takes a swim in the canal * Geoff
Dyer spends a weekend in Amsterdam * … and much, much more
Some of that 'more' includes an excerpt from Paul Auster, one of my favourite authors. To say that hearing about all this made my day is a bit of an understatement, but even if I hadn't been so fortunate, I'd still have been certain to grab a copy as soon as City-Pick Amsterdam hit the shelves, and I hope you might feel the urge to do the same.
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