While the economy is in freefall, the cost of living continues to rise – which is why now is the perfect time to master the art of DIY. Granta author Mark Crick is one step ahead of the game, with Sartre’s Sink, his second installment of literary pastiche for the home. Crick’s first book, Kafka’s Soup, was a critical favourite and has been translated into nineteen languages. In this exclusive video, Crick talks about the DIY tips of the world’s greatest novelists, how to inhabit another writer’s voice and why there is nothing more erotic than painting.
Mark Crick | Interview
Mark Crick
Mark Crick on the DIY tips of the world’s greatest novelists, how to inhabit another writer’s voice and why there is nothing more erotic than painting.
Longreads for the Lockdown
Thailand
Doctors, solitude and the stones within us – for fiction about isolation, it has to be Haruki Murakami. Translated from the Japanese by Jay Rubin.
Plague Diary: March
‘Things have changed without seeking permission.’ A plague diary of this March, by Gonçalo M. Tavares, translated from the Portuguese by Daniel Hahn.
A Coup
‘Our view of the morning’s entertainment was restricted by the width of the door frame.’ Bruce Chatwin writes about his imprisonment during a coup in Benin.
The Leech Barometer
‘A leech bodes this: you will, sooner or later, overflow yourself. ’ Rebecca Giggs on leeches and the borders of the human body.
The Lost Performance of the High Priestess of the Temple of Horror
‘Her eyes fluttered open and I felt like I was at the edge of the mouth of a cave, with every intention of jumping in.’ For pure escapism, lose yourself in the nineteenth-century Paris of Carmen Maria Machado.
