What's new...

Appearances:

I'm in Malta at the University of Malta in August and later in the year I'll be at book festivals in Mantova and Matera, then in the US for the Boston Book Festival and the Words & Music festival in New Orleans.

Go here for details

The Jewish Quarterly is carrying an article that I wrote for them on the city of Brno.

Two events at the West Cork Literary Festival over, the second one with writer and adventurer extraordinary Tim Severin. Both events seemed to go very well and the rain did nothing to dampen the enthusiasm of participants.

Today the Guardian carries a review of the audio version of the The Glass Room. Sue Arnold thinks the book "much, much more than a historical novel – it's a brilliantly plotted, beautifully told story about love, cruelty, betrayal, survival and, above all, the complexity and power of sex" and Jefferson May's "cool, understated reading... perfectly pitched".

The audio book, 15hrs unabridged, is available from Whole Story Audio, £24.99

An interview with me from Radio Prague (in English) is now available on the Radio Prague website. You can listen to it or read the transcript.

Always the bridesmaid, never the bride: The Glass Room failed to win either the Walter Scott Prize or the Wingate Prize.

The unabridged audio book of The Glass Room is available now. Check it out and hear an excerpt here.

There's also an interview with me, and some photos of Brno and things, on Pamela Johnson's excellent website Words Unlimited.

At the Hay Festival I was interviewed by Jame Naughtie about The Glass Room. At Charleston Ed Hollis (The Secret Lives of Buildings) and I managed an entirely spontaneous double act on architecture and its significance that seemed to make the audience happy.

Today a visit to Brno, and more particularly, the Tugendhat House which is in the midst of restoration work. A thrilling experience to see the building stripped down and people at work on returning it to its former splendour. You can see Czech TV coverage of our visit here (scroll down for the video). Better if you understand Czech but at least you can see something of what the house looks like at the moment. The evening before, I was interviewed on Czech TV late night news. Again, it's in Czech. Again, you'll have to scroll down for the video link.

A film contract for The Glass Room has just been signed with Rudolf Biermann's production company IN FILM Praha. That's just the beginning of the beginning. The next step will be getting a screenplay done.

From Monday 10 May I'm in the Czech Republic on a week-long book tour of the country. I'll be in various places throughout the week but the high point will probably be Tuesday 11 when I'll be seeing round the Tugendhat House (currently closed to the public for restoration) and taking part in a press conference with the mayor of Brno.

The paperback edition of The Glass Room came out two days ago, and today there's a good review in the Observer - the one major newspaper to miss reviewing the book when it first came out. "Mawer's finest work so far" is James Purdon's opinion.

The paperback edition of The Glass Room (Abacus) comes out on Tuesday and there's a brief review in today's Sunday Telegraph. Ophelia Field thinks that "Written so intelligently and seriously that it avoids all traps of sentimentality, it explores the impossibility of perfect vision even as the author displays his own."

Another shortlist. The Glass Room is on the shortlist for the Jewish Quarterly Wingate Prize, winner to be announced in June.

Stop Press! The Glass Room is on the shortlist for the brand new Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction. The winner will be announced on June 19 at the Borders Book Festival in Melrose. There's a certain déjà vu about the shortlist which, besides The Glass Room, contains two others from the Man Booker shortlist. At a cool £25,000 for the winner, the Walter Scott immediately goes into the top ranks of British literary prizes. Of course there are other ways by which such prizes may be ranked. The Goncourt is worth a mere €10...

The Glass Room paperback gets a review in today's Independent. Published by Abacus, it is due on the shelves on 22 April.

"This extraordinary book..." The Glass Room is reviewed in today's The Boston Globe. Read the full review here.

Restoration work on the Tugendhat House in Brno has just begun, with the removal of furniture from the living room and the cladding of the onyx wall and the chrome pillars. See pictures and get a progress update here

The Glass Room is still on the NY Times bestseller list - for the third week now.

An interview with the browser.com is online, and The Glass Room was on the NY Times bestseller list for the second week running...

The Glass Room has made the New York Times bestseller list for trade paperbacks - at number 29.

The Glass Room is to be published in French by Éditions Le Cerche Midi. That makes 14 different language rights so far.

My Guardian article on Theo van Doesburg (friend of Piet Mondrian and mover and shaker on the Avant-Garde in the 1920s) is online. It was in the print edition of the Guardian on 23rd January. If your interest is stirred, visit the exhibition at Tate Modern which starts on 4th February and runs until 16th May. The seriously eccentric Theo van D. is worth knowing about.

The discussion of The Glass Room went pretty well on the Diane Rehm Show on National Public Radio. You can catch up with it here. It features Ron Charles of the Washington Post, the architect Susan Piedmont-Palladino and attorney Bernard Lambek, who just happens to be the grandson of Greta Tugendhat. A measure of the effect of the show is that immediately following it The Glass Room shot up to #27 in the Amazon.com sales rank, and #5 in the literary fiction rankings.

On Wednesday 27 January The Diane Rehm Show on National Public Radio will feature The Glass Room. Listen to it live on any one of these stations, or on the internet.

Romanian rights to The Glass Room are being sold to Art Grup Editorial, and some stray questions are answered on the New York Times website.

Books of the Year: 11 writers and critics in 8 different publications have picked THE GLASS ROOM as a best book of 2009, and it’s back in the top 50 Hardcover Fiction Bestsellers. Read what they have to say here.

"This stirring historical novel" says the upcoming New Yorker of December 21 reviewing The Glass Room.

Slate Magazine's Emily Yoffe makes The Glass Room her best read of 2009. And Boyd Tonkin, who reads an awful lot, has it amongst his best fiction books for Christmas in today's Independent.

The Sydney Morning Herald has published a good review of The Glass Room. Stella Clarke thinks it "a joy, suggesting the transcendence in art of the worst ruinations of time and history". She finds that "the storytelling is characterised by lucidity and understated elegance" and "speaks gently and insightfully about its intriguing subjects".

Both Sadie Jones and Melissa Katsoulis have chosen The Glass Room as Book of the Year in the Sunday Telegraph.

Genevieve Fox's Book Club in the Daily Telegraph seems to have liked The Glass Room, and The Economist has chosen in as one of its novels of the year.

The Prague Post, the Czech Republic's English language newspaper, features an interview with me about The Glass Room.

Jane Shilling chooses The Glass Room as her book of the year in today's Daily Telegraph.

Jeremy Paxman and Peter Conrad have chosen The Glass Room as book of the year in today's Observer. Pleasing, because the Observer was the one major newspaper not to review the book when it first came out. And The Glass Room also appeals to Dr. Anna Grmelová, a professor of English at Charles University in Prague. You can find her thoughts in an interview on the Prague Radio website. At the same website there's also an interview I gave in October.

The Glass Room is to be published in Spanish by Tusquets Editores.

Both Rachel Cooke and Alison Roberts include The Glass Room in their "best books of the year" in the London Evening Standard.

First major US book review for The Glass Room, in the Washington Post today. "The Glass Room works so effectively," Ron Charles says, "because Mawer embeds... provocative aesthetic and moral issues in a war-torn adventure story that's eerily erotic and tremendously exciting."

The Glass Room is BBC Radio 4 Book at Bedtime from Mondy 9th to Friday 13th and Monday 16th to Friday 20th November. Greta Scacchi is reading it. If you can't hear it as it is broadcast, you can always catch up with the listen again feature on the BBC Radio 4 webpage.

The Glass Room is now out in bookshops in the US. Published by the Other Press. You can also see a brief video clip of the author reading from the book and discussing it. This was done by the BBC for Newsnight Review and the Man Booker Prize event.

The Glass Room is to feature as a BBC Radio 4 "Book at Bedtime" from 9th to the 13th November, with Greta Scacchi reading.

The US edition of The Glass Room is available now, published by The Other Press. Its actual date of publication is 27 October.

An interview with Radio Praha of Czech Radio can be heard, and read, here. If you want to see the BBC Newsnight Review piece on The Glass Room, then you can watch it here.

So it didn't win. Hangover, then...

Yesterday a signing at Hatchards and the Shortlist event at the Queen Elizabeth Hall before an audience of 900. Today the Man Booker Prize dinner at the Guildhall.

Tomorrow...? A hangover, probably.

Last night BBC2's Newsnight Review ran a big item on all the Man Booker shortlisted books. In a discussion afterwards the studio pundits decided, as more or less everyone except the bloggers has already decided, that Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall will win. Today there's a major feature on me in the Guardian by Sarah Crown. It's good - I don't mean complimentary, I mean interesting and accurate.

There was an interview with me on BBC Radio 4's Today programme this morning. Hear it on the internet at the Today website here (scroll down to 8.23)

It looks as though there is going to be a Chinese translation of The Glass Room. Publishers will be Shanghai 99.

The US deal has been confirmed. The Glass Room will be published in the United States by Other Press.

The Polish rights of The Glass Room have just been sold to Swiat Ksiask, who have published my previous books in Polish. And there's a US deal in the pipeline. Watch this space...

Writing in today's Independent, Boyd Tonkin seems to think that a copy of The Glass Room should be sent to the Palace as an education in the ideals of modernist architecture...

Kinneret-Zmora are acquiring the Hebrew rights to The Glass Room. US interest has finally woken up with a number of publishers in the running. Watch this space...

The Glass Room is on the shortlist for the Man Booker Prize, announced at 11 am today. Open the champagne!

Kniha Zlin, who bring out the Czech language translation of The Glass Room next month, will also be publishing a Czech translation of Mendel's Dwarf.

Strange man reads from The Glass Room while standing on the fourth plinth of Trafalgar Square. It's literature, but is it art? Gilly Cooke took the photo...

The Glass Room appears to be sold out... and it's being reprinted.

Booker listing has certainly done something for sales. From the doldrums of 135,000th on the Amazon sales ranking The Glass Room shot to somewhere under 200th. It's now reprinting.

The Glass Room has made the Man Booker Prize longlist, announced today. Previously (1997) Mendel's Dwarf reached the last ten, but that was in the days before the longlist was made public, so this is a big moment.

The Glass Room is featured in the Daily Mail's Ultimate Holiday Reading List. "...(a) gripping portrait of a home, a country and its people. Exhilarating and utterly absorbing." said Amber Pearson.

In today's Sunday Telegraph, Melissa Katsoulis has included The Glass Room in her recommended summer reading. "Truly stunning", she calls it. "A spectacular edifice of a novel, as tightly structured as it is beautifully written."

A new online literary journal called The Literateur has just launched. Find it at www.literateur.com, along with a review of The Glass Room, which the reviewer considers an "excellent new novel", talking about the "taut, precise writing" and finding moments when the book is "piercingly intense in its use of language". "...Mawer creates in the ‘Landauer House’ an almost perfect realisation of its multiform inhabitants’ actions and motivations, as well as of the political and social changes unravelling around them."

All of this is flattering enough. At bit harder to take is the accusation that the ‘Note on Pronunciation’, ‘Author’s Note’ and ‘Afterword’ are there to "to force the work into being a viable pseudo-historical document". Not true, I'm afraid. The Notes on Pronunciation are there to help the reader with... er, pronunciation (of unfamiliar Czech words); while the Afterword is there because it's a shame that a reader without German might miss the expanded meaning of the compound word Glassraum; and the Author's Note is there precisely to make it clear that this is neither an historical document nor (a far greater danger) a roman-à-clef, but rather a work of fiction.

I will be giving readings at two places at the end of the month: Topping Books in Ely on Tuesday 31st March, and The Grammar School at Leeds on Thursday 2nd April. Click on the links for more details. All are welcome.

In June I am due to speak on Gregor Mendel and the beginnings of quantitative genetics at Bristol University. More details later.

Giovedì 5 marzo, La Casa di Vetro, l'edizione italiana di The Glass Room, è pubblicata da Neri Pozza. Già ci sono interviste, su Venerdì di Repubblica il 6 marzo e su D Repubblica di oggi. Anche la rivista Flair prossimamente dovrebbe averne una.

Anita Brookner reviews The Glass Room in the Spectator, and finds it "informed by exceptional intelligence" and "definitely Bookerish". And Caroline Moore, writing in the monthly Standpoint, finds it "delicately subtle" yet "magnificent", while February's Literary Review thought it an "engrossing novel of ideas".

The Independent finds The Glass Room a "...thrilling and satisfying conceit..." while the Times Literary Supplement thinks it "...a compelling work of fiction."

Time Out has made The Glass Room its Book of the Week. Here are extracts from the review...

The Sunday Times reviews The Glass Room. It has also picked up good reviews in City A.M. and the Irish Sunday Business Post

"...a carefully constructed book, beautifully written." The Economist reviews The Glass Room. And so did the Lancashire Evening Post, on the 18th January.

"...a thing of extraordinary beauty and symmetry." Another excellent review of The Glass Room, from the Guardian. Read the whole thing here.

"Exciting, profoundly affecting and altogether wonderful." Another great review of The Glass Room, this time in the Daily Mail. And a rather lukewarm one in the Times. You can't win them all...

"...a passionately detailed portrait of individuals struggling to snatch order and happiness from frightenng, irrational times." Read an extract from the review in the Sunday Telegraph.

"... a fiction of many remarkable qualities..." Read the excellent review of The Glass Room by Jane Shilling in the Daily Telegraph.

The Glass Room comes out this month. It has already had its first review in the Financial Times.

Greek publishers Modern Times are purchasing the Greek translation rights of The Glass Room.

The Brazilian publishers Grupo Editorial Record have bought the Brazilian Portuguese translation rights of The Glass Room. Meanwhile the Frankfurt Book Fair is looming, where Jessica Craig of United Agents will be representing the book.

It does seem that the Mendel's Dwarf film project has received new impetus following the involvement of Jason Gould of Barwood Films and Endeavor, the front line talent agency. Watch this space...

The Czech rights of The Glass Room have been bought by Czech publishing house Kniha Zlin. This sale is a something of a triumph, giving a seal of authenticity to a book that is largely set in the former Czechoslovakia. All this good work with translation rights is down to Jessica Craig and Lettie Ransley, the foreign rights team at United Agents.