Hello, again to some.

Oh, it must be about 5 months since I last posted. No reason I've been away. Accept to move house which, by the way, is harder work then I first thought. But enough moaning. It did gave me a lovely chance to build shelves in my new living room and, after packing my books away only to unpack them elsewhere, organise them. So, I've read all my stockpile of books basically. That's what I found out. I re-read a couple: The Trial (Kafka); Ask the Dust (Fante); Yellow Dog (Amis - I gave it a second chance and it still either stank or proved how stupid I am, I am unsure).

Anyway, basically, I want to read a new author and, being someone who really doesn't see the big deal with our (English) literary heritage and being more impressed with classic writers like Dostoyevsky and Gogol and modern writers like Paul Auster and Murakami, I want to read books written in English. So, after the Booker prize and I want people to recommend some authors to me. They don't have to be English. Scottish, Welsh, Irish will also do, or anyone who writes in English but isn't American. I want to read some new writers, some which hasn't been translated.

Start at the Booker Prize if needed as I haven't read any of that shortlist (though did read Saturday, which I enjoyed. Haven't read any thing by him mind).

Any help gratefully received.


<Added>

Accept? Except...

Hi James,

If you like Auster you should definitely check out Rick Moody, Purple America in particular.

David Mitchell is probably a safe bet if you haven't read any of his stuff already.

Mailman by J. Robert Lennon too.

Geoff

I second the suggestion of David Mitchell. I just finished reading Cloud Atlas and was deeply impressed by it.

From the Booker shortlist, I've only read Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go and would certainly recommend it.

By the way, have you read any Jean Rhys? If not -- do! I'm not a big fan of Wide Sargasso Sea, but I love After Leaving Mr Mackenzie, Voyage in the Dark, and especially Good Morning, Midnight. (I know she isn't a new writer, but I'm always recommending her to everybody so I might as well do so now.)

Oh, and Muriel Spark's latest novel, The Finishing School is very enjoyable. But she isn't exactly 'new'.

Jeanette Winterson? Well, she isn't particularly new either.

Oh, I know! The Scottish writer Alice Thompson. Very nice. Her novels Justine and Pharos are definitely worth reading.

And how about... okay, I'll stop now.

Fredegonde, I'm with you on Good Morning Midnight
Best new(ish) book I've read in a while is Michael Cunningham's The Hours.

Thank you all!

By the way EmmaD, if I were in your position I'd have recommended my own stuff, but then I am shallow and a charlatan (as well as a cad, perhaps even a gadfly).

Cheers all.

I'd suggest:
As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
The Tin Drum by Gunther Grass

and if you haven't read it yet - Laurence Sterne - Tristram Shandy!

James, I gather that shameless self-promotion is the only way for an author to go these days, but I'm afraid that at the moment the only way to read my stuff is

a)to look at my story Respectability in the WW archive,
b)to buy the Bridport 2004 anthology, or
c)to steal the page proofs of The Mathematics of Love from my publisher's or agent's office sometime between now and next summer.

So I'm not really in a position to try to drum up custom. But thanks for the thought!

Failing my own work, can I add

Robert Nye/The Voyage of the Destiny - not new but wonderful
Ishiguru/When We Were Orphans
Marge Piercy/Gone to Soldiers
Vikram Seth/An Equal Music

Emma

Not sure whether he's American or not (his name definitely isn't) but Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides is fantastic. He also wrote The Virgin Suicides, which was made into a dreamy but really quite good movie by Sophia Coppola.