ROBBIN YASSIN-KASSAB
the road from Damascus
published by Penguin June 2008
It is summer 2001 and Sami Traifi has escaped his fraying marriage and minimal job prospects to Damascus. In search of his roots and himself, he insteads find a forgotten uncle in a gloomy back room, and an ugly secret about his beloved father…
Returning to London, Sami finds even more to test him as his young wife Muntaha takes up wearing the hijab. Sami embarks on a wilfully ragged journey in the opposite direction – away from religion and those he loves …

Q. Could you tell me more about your writing journey…how did the idea for The road from Damascus come about? What lead you to write this story?
A. Well, I just started writing. For many years I’d failed to write because I couldn’t find a story. What I didn’t know was that the story is created in the act of writing. Or perhaps it’s pre-created, but must be uncovered through the writing. That’s what it feels like, although it doesn’t sound like a very logical explanation. In any case, the story …

Answers by Lorella Belli from The Lorella Belli Literary Agency
1. Agents sell third parties (for example book publishers) the right to produce market and publish books, not the books themselves. To put it more simply, they sell various types of rights in the intellectual property created by writers, and manage their career.
2. Most agents tend to charge 15% (20% for foreign sales or film/TV rights) of the gross amounts received for any deal they negotiate on behalf of their authors.
3. Agents shouldn’t charge any reading fees. Agents should make …

1) What made you enter the competition? Talk me through the day you found out about the competition and what your thoughts were?
The Easter holiday was extremely rainy; excellent motivation to do some writing. I entered the competition just to test my nerve. I sent it off, and thought that was an achievement in itself. When I got told I was in the top three, I was sitting marking A Level essays in my staffroom. I was overwhelmed; I couldn’t believe it.
2) Did you ever think at that point…I …

Midlands based writer Sukhraj Kaur Randhawa has triumphed over 200 aspiring writers to win the seventh Orange/Harper’s Bazaar Short Story Competition 2008.
Judge and Editor of Harper’s Bazaar, Lucy Yeomans, presented a cheque for £1,000 to Sukhraj Kaur Randhawa at the Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction awards ceremony at the Royal Festival Hall, Southbank Centre in central London. The winning story will be published in the October edition of Harper’s Bazaar magazine.
Now in its seventh year, the Orange/Harper’s Bazaar Short Story Competition forms part of the Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction …

Nikita Lalwani was tonight (Thursday, 26th June) named the winner of the £10,000 Desmond Elliott Prize for Gifted, a story about a maths prodigy growing up in 1980s Cardiff, published by Penguin Books.
Penny Vincenzi, Chair of the Judges, said:
“Gifted is a book of extraordinary range; it is touching, tender, funny and at the same time truly compelling. It covers the issues of duty and family loyalty, and the demands of an extraordinary talent, while holding at its heart the story of a young girl struggling with the agony of first …

Tahmima Anam has become the first Bangladeshi writer to win the Overall First Book Award at The Commonwealth Writers Prize 2008. The winners were announced at the Franschhoek Literary Festival in South Africa on May 18.
The Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, an increasingly valued and sought-after award for fiction, is presented annually by the Commonwealth Foundation. The Prize aims to reward the best Commonwealth fiction written in English, by both established and new writers, and to take their work to a global audience.
On recieving the award, and a prize of £5000, Tahmima …