Saturday, April 8, 2017

Top ten books about Manchester

Adam O'Riordan's first collection of poems In the Flesh won a Somerset Maugham Award. His new collection A Herring Famine will be published in 2017 along with his debut book of stories, The Burning Ground. O’Riordan was born in Manchester in 1982 and read English at Oxford University. He is Lecturer in Poetry Writing at the Writing School at Manchester Metropolitan University.

One of the author's ten top books about Manchester, as shared at the Guardian:
Little Wilson and Big God by Anthony Burgess

In this first volume of his autobiography, Burgess turns his attention to the city of his youth – from his infancy in Moss Side to his time at Xaverian College and Manchester University. His father’s visit to London is described as an exercise in condescension, with that city then (as perhaps now still) “a day behind Manchester in the arts, in commercial cunning and in economic philosophy”. Moreover, Burgess observes, when foreigners came to Manchester “they came to learn, not to feed ravens and snap Beefeaters”.
Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue