Interview
What kind of role did “research” (everyday materials, files…) play in “This Side of Brightness”? How much did it affect the final result? At the beginning of the novel, or when I was researching it, I used to go down to the tunnels four or five times a week. I’d hang out, outside the tunnels,…
Read MoreSasha: The beginning of Dancer is astonishing. You begin with a narrative that conveys the Soviet Army experience of World War 2, the subject of which is “they” and the section ends with zooming in on a six-year old boy who’s waiting for his father, one of “them”–who could be any one of them– to come…
Read MoreRobert Birnbaum: Is there really no Russian word for ‘privacy’? Colum McCann: No, there’s not. There is nothing that accurately reflects what we believe of as privacy. RB: That’s peculiar isn’t it? CM: There might be now. Certainly not in the ’40s, ’50s and ’60s. Right now there might be a developing word for privacy. That’s a country, right…
Read More
“What I was most interested in was not so much Philip Petit but the people who were on the ground, the people who walk the sort-of little tightrope of our ordinary everyday moments,” McCann says. The reactions of McCann’s main characters to the stunt range from gripping fear that the tight-rope walker will fall, to…
Read More
For Colum McCann, the Dublin-born, New York-based writer whose ‘ Let the Great World Spin’ won the US National Book Award on Wednesday night, the prestigious accolade helped make up for Ireland’s defeat to France – just about, he tells FIONA McCANN
Read More- « Previous
- 1
- 2