SPIKE MAGAZINE

A deceptive visit to the Danish capital brings Kevin Fitzgerald into the orbits of physics, philosophy, politics but no escritoire connected to Kierkegaard 1. In March of this year I was privy to certain communications divulging that the escritoire once

Declan Tan’s second ‘Letter from La Paz’ is a fictional account of a visit to Bolivia’s San Pedro prison “A pint a-Carling yeah and whatever you’re havin’,” a white-spit mouth, mine, chums out familiar to the bar girl. I’m pointing

In the first of two ‘Letters from La Paz’, Declan Tan straightens a few myths about Bolivia’s Route 36, “the world’s first cocaine lounge” “Take it out of the bag,” one of them whispers, as a small mountain of Bolivian marching

Sourav Roy from Mumbai battles gluttony, despair and cricket fever to hunt down seven utterly original book stores of the city As somebody who has been taking books to bed way before hitting puberty, I have it on good authority that the addiction of

Chris Hall revisits J.G. Ballard’s childhood and finds the future in the past The opening of J.G. Ballard’s Empire of the Sun (1984) has young Jim watching British war propaganda films with fellow choristers in the crypt of the Holy Trinity church

Bunhill Fields Burial Ground near Old Street in the City of London has been given Grade I protected status. Originally the Dissenters’ burial ground, one great names of English literature have tombs here, including William Blake, Daniel Defoe and John

Futureland is a photographic and video portrait of the effects of rapid urbanisation Futureland #17 – Shanghai, China, 2010. Ink jet print, 110 x 145 cm © Nuno Cera and Galeria Pedro Cera, Lisbon, reproduced with thanks Nuno Cera’s project Futureland

Spike’s brief travel guide to legendary films studios around the world So far, 2011 has been a bumper year for the film production Pinewood Studios Group. The company has just announced a 31% rise in pre-tax profits and now plans to invest in British

Himalaya – Michael Palin See all books by Michael Palin at Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.com Dodgy dentists. The Dalai Llama. High-altitude polo players. Maoist rebels. Yak herders. Imran Khan. Just a few of the diverse personalities professional

Dan Coxon In recent years high quality, intelligent travel writing has proved hard to come by. The genre that produced such greats as Colin Thubron and William Dalrymple has gone into decline, partly due to the current spate of comedy travelogues (“worst

Pedro Blas Gonzalez Bukowski: Born Into This – Charles Bukowski See all books by Charles Bukowski at Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.com Charles Bukowski was a solitary man and a courageous writer. Without daddy’s money

Pedro Blas Gonzalez Lanzarote – Michel Houellebecq See all books by Michel Houellebecq at Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.com Lanzarote is a colorful vignette that describes the scope of meaninglessness in an apocalyptic age. Even the landscape

Chris Mitchell The Underdog: How I Survived The World’s Most Outlandish Competitions – Joshua Davis See all books by Joshua Davis at Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.com Joshua Davis set out to win. At anything. Living in a crappy apartment

Chris Mitchell The Lost Executioner is my Book of the Year. Like my pick for last year, Emma Larkin’s Secret Histories: Finding George Orwell in A Burmese Teashop, The Lost Executioner is a personal travelogue into a country that tries to understand

Harpreet Singh Soorae If You Are Afraid of Heights – Raj Kamal Jha See all books by Raj Kamal Jha at Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.com Give yourself some time, he says, I will leave the pictures and the pieces of paper with you. Keep them carefully,

Thailand’s answer to Graham Greene Christopher G. Moore has a caffeinated conversation with Chris Mitchell Recently I met up with Christopher G. Moore, a Canadian novelist who’s been living in Bangkok for almost 20 years and writing pretty

Chris Mitchell This could well be my book of the year. Ostensibly an attempt to retrace the physical origins of George Orwell’s novel Burmese Days, Secret Histories is actually a superbly concise and deeply scary history lesson in the fate of

Chris Mitchell The Accursed Mountains: Journeys In Albania – Robert Carver See all books by Robert Carver at Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.com This is truly an armchair traveller’s book: Robert Carver delivers a fascinating account of his

Katrina Gulliver The Devil’s Cup – Stewart Lee Allan See all books by Stewart Lee Allan at Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.com From this book I learnt that my method of consuming a Vienna coffee – drinking the coffee through the cream

Katrina Gulliver Daniel Mason – The Piano Tuner See all books by The Piano Tuner at Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.com The Piano Tuner is an enticing book, telling the story of Edgar Drake, the piano tuner of the title, who travels from

Jayne Margetts on Anthony Bourdain’s quest to eat the most gastronomically dangerous dishes on the planet I love my authors a tad on the fresh, petulant and carnal side. A splatter of blood-and-guts-style reportage only heightens the pleasure,

Chris Mitchell Lonely Planet Unpacked – Tony Wheeler See all books by Tony Wheeler at Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.com Lonely Planet: the world famous travel guidebook company which has scores of writers in the field at any one time

Jonathan Kiefer discusses the delicate art of translation with Michael Emmerich, English translator of Japanese novelist Banana Yoshimoto Here’s what it means to be a literary translator: If you haven’t heard

Gary Marshall During the Cold War huge areas of Russia were strictly off-limits to foreign visitors and, in classic tit-for-tat style, Russian visitors were allowed entry to the USA provided their travels didn’t take them

Nancy Rawlinson finds out why The Beach author Alex Garland is still unsure of his writing success No matter where you go on this small planet of ours, you will encounter ‘Garland’s Law.’ That