Book festival in dramatic finale with Alasdair Gray

Published on Thursday 16 June 2011 19:18

LEADING actors and authors from Scotland will take to the stage for the most ambitious event in the history of the Edinburgh International Book Festival, organisers have revealed.

The world premiere performance of Alasdair Gray's latest play Fleck will be staged before about 500 fans in what is billed as a one-off occasion, to be narrated by Scotland's poet laureate Liz Lochhead, which will close this year's festival.

It is expected to be one of the highlights of a festival programme that will see guests as varied as playwright John Byrne, footballer John Hartson, comedian Alexei Sayle, ex-FBI chief Michael Scheuer and Sarah Brown, the wife of the former Prime Minister, rub shoulders in Charlotte Square Gardens.

Best-selling international writers who will be making appearances include Julian Baggini, Robert Coover, Dame Joan Bakewell, John Pilger, Michael Ondaatje and Audrey Niffenegger.

However, it is the prospect of the festival joining forces with the National Theatre of Scotland for the first public reading of Alasdair Gray's Fleck that is expected to be the hottest ticket.

Will Self, AL Kennedy, Ian Rankin, Janice Galloway, Zoe Strachan and Regi Claire will be among the writers playing characters, along with Gray himself, in his modern version of Goethe's Faust. The stellar line-up will also feature actors including Cora Bissett, Paul Birchard and Gerda Stevenson.

Festival director Nick Barley said: "It's the most ambitious event we've ever attempted. It'll be a proper staged performance, which is why we're working with the National Theatre of Scotland.

"We did toy with the idea of putting it into a theatre as we know it would sell out several times over but we were very keen that we keep the festival within Charlotte Square so that it retains that intimacy for events. We tamper with that at our peril."

The major theme of this year's festival is revolution, with special guests including exiled Chinese laureate Gao Zingjian, Libyan novelist Hisham Matar, and Pakistani writer Kamila Shamsie.

Among the leading Scots writers gracing the festival will be Alan Warner, William McIvanney, Andrew O'Hagan, Alexander McCall Smith and Ali Smith.

Special events include Glasgow comic book writer Grant Morrison discussing the history of the genre, Billy Connolly's wife Pamela discussing her new book on sex and relationships, a face-to-face between movie critic Mark Kermode and former Edinburgh International Film Festival director Hannah McGill, and actor Simon Callow reliving his long career.

New children's laureate Julia Donaldson will be hosting and curating a number of special events.

Mr Barley added: "We have 750 events and around 800 participants this year, which is as much as we've ever had. We're already looking even further ahead to 2013 and 2014." The event runs from 13-29 August.