Highlights of the 2012 Edinburgh International Book Festival

Published on 21/06/2012 17:54

This year’s Edinburgh International Book Festival boasts appearances by eight Man Booker Prize winners, a First Minister, a former Prime Minister, two poet laureates, a Michelin-starred chef and a disco king.

Highlights of the 2012 Festival will include appearances by Ian McEwan, James Kelman, Hilary Mantel, Pat Barker, Howard Jacobson, Anne Enright, John Banville and Ben Okri; all previous winners of the Man Booker Prize. In addition, the Korean female author Kyung-Sook Shin, who won the Man Asia Prize with Please Look After Mom, the story of a missing mother and her family, will also appear.

Ian McEwan, who will unveil a new novel, will be interviewed on stage by First Minister Alex Salmond, while former Prime Minister Gordon Brown will give the keynote Donald Dewar lecture. Little Britain star David Walliams will also appear to launch his children’s book Gangsta Granny.

The festival boasts over 800 authors from 44 countries, and the programme displays a strong focus on politics, from coverage of the Lockerbie case and the banking crisis, and an appearance by phone-hacking campaigner Tom Watson MP, to readings from the work of the jailed Chinese poet and human rights activist, the Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo.

International authors range from American author Joyce Carol Oates to the Bulgarian travel writer Kapka Kassabova, who now lives in Edinburgh, to Israeli novelist and Holocaust survivor Aharon Appelfeld.

While broadcasters James Naughtie and Sue MacGregor will curate a series of events in the programme, presenter Kirsty Wark will interview chef Tom Kitchin, and record producer Nile Rodgers, best known for disco classics like Le Freak, will talk about his life in the pop industry.

Scottish writing includes a new book from James Meek, and a new volume of short stories by Alasdair Gray. Both the English and Scottish poet laureates, Carol Ann Duffy and Liz Lochhead, will attend. Ian Rankin returns with a ‘desert island Rebus’, marking 25 years of the fictional detective who returns in his latest novel.