Audiobooks, inclusivity and #MeToo ... how books changed in 2018

New agents and imprints, Northern Ireland’s first Man Booker winner … this year, the books world turned towards inclusivity and a broadening of perspectives

“You brought it on yourself, longest friend. I informed you and informed you. I mean for the longest time ever since primary school I’ve been warning you to kill out that habit you insist on and that I now suspect you’re addicted to – that reading in public as you’re walking about.” Such behaviour, the speaker continues, is unnerving, disturbing, deviant, much to the bemusement of the errant flâneuse, who wonders why it’s acceptable for a terrorist to promenade with Semtex, but beyond the pale for her to do the same with Jane Eyre.

The characters are from Milkman, the novel by Anna Burns that scooped this year’s Man Booker prize and lobbed a rock into the literary millpond: a winner who included the local food bank in her book’s acknowledgements, who went on the news and announced she’d be declaring “one hell of a change in circumstances” to the Department for Work and Pensions, and who turned the recent history of the Troubles into a compelling narrative that spoke to repression and segregation everywhere. Her victory was, as one Guardian writer pointed out, a beacon of hope for those suffering from “shit life syndrome”.

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from Books | The Guardian http://bit.ly/2GLeZN4

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