This Brutal House
Niven Govinden‘s This Brutal House (Dialogue Books) is published on June 6th. Niven will be discussing his new novel with Isabel Waidner and Amelia Abraham at the London Review Bookshop on Friday June 7th. Book here.
Music for Reading and Posing: a Soundtrack Guide to This Brutal House
The obvious thing would be to create a Spotify playlist, but I’m not a basic bitch. I wasn’t writing This Brutal House with one particular track in mind, more a mash-up of the street styles of that era: rare groove, electro, hip hop and Chicago. I hope something in these tunes will allow the book to resonate even more strongly; for while This Brutal House is a story of protest, chosen family, silence and redemption, its fierceness should be undeniable. Turn these up and flex.
Niven Govinden on the music that influenced his brilliant new novel, This Brutal House, out on June 6th.
Two Men in the Fog
I would spend hours trying to perfect the handwritten cursive Cyrillic. My name ‘Ellie’ was transformed into a word with loops, curves and embellishments; calligraphy that was euphemistic of everything I aspired to be. Is your handwriting style a psychological self-portrait? I felt I had a second chance. Cyrillic enabled me to manipulate my self-image, in a way that could be true to ideals I desired, with a focus on a new vision of beauty. And so, in the madness and confusion of my school life, I could finally see my own worth on paper in front of me, in my transformed Cyrillic and Russified name.
By Ellie Holbrook.
Paris Does Not Exist
Stewart Home‘s still got it. His essay, “Paris Does Not Exist”, appears on p. 264 of We’ll Never Have Paris.