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Enigmas and Arrivals

Alastair Niven

Edited by Alastair Niven and Michael Schmidt

Cover Picture of Enigmas and Arrivals
Imprint: Carcanet Fiction
Publisher: Carcanet Press
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  • To mark ten years of the Commonwealth Writers' Prize, Alastair Niven, until recently Arts Council of England Literature Director and now Literature Director of the British Council, and Michael Schmidt assemble an anthology of work by some of the new and established writers who have been recognised by the Prize. Enigmas & Arrivals (its title borrowed from V.S.Naipaul) is a distinctive volume, a resource for general readers of fiction and for teachers and students of English language literatures. Here some of the best writing of a decade is presented, many of the writers choosing the work themselves. The editors provide an introduction and brief biographical and bibliographical notes.

    Contributors to this anthology include:


    Ama Ata Aidoo
    Louis de Bernieres
    John Cranna
    Githa Hariharan
    Adib Khan
    Pauline Melville
    Alex Miller
    Rohinton Mistry
    Mordecai Richler
    Olive Senior
    Vikram Seth

    Michael Schmidt
    Michael Schmidt FRSL, poet, scholar, critic and translator, was born in Mexico in 1947; he studied at Harvard and at Wadham College, Oxford, before settling in England. Among his many publications are several collections of poems and a novel, The Colonist (1981), about a boy’s childhood in Mexico. He is general ... read more
    Awards won by Michael Schmidt Winner, 2016 Forward Prize for Best Single Poem - Sasha Dugdale's 'Joy', published in PN Review 227  (PN Review 227 )
    Praise for Michael Schmidt 'Its pleasures are longer term ones: as you return to it and re-read its substantial selections, you come to appreciate how and what each contributor is working on.'

    Jane Routh, The North 66

    '...this is the joy of New Poetries VIII: time and again you discover refreshing and compelling new styles and subjects'

    Jake Morris-Campbell, The Poetry School

    '...probably the most informative and entertaining poetry journal in the English-speaking world.'
    John Ashbery
     'The most engaged, challenging and serious-minded of all the UK's poetry magazines.'
    Simon Armitage
    'It has attempted to take poetry out of the backwaters of intellectual life and to find in it again the crucial index of cultural health.'
    Cairns Craig, Times Literary Supplement
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