Red
Cecelia Ahern / David Almond / Rachel Cusk / Emma Donoghue / John Gray /
David Harsent / Max Hastings / Victoria Hislop / Anthony Horowitz / Jackie Kay /
Hanif Kureishi / Suzanne Moore / Andrew Motion / Alice Oswald /
Christopher Reid / Will Self / Lionel Shriver / Simon Van Booy
To be published by Waterstones on 1st November 2012 in hardback, priced £10
“The frustration of a bookseller, if any, is to think of the great titles you are not advocating even as you champion something wonderful. So why, then, for the first time in many years, is Waterstones itself adding to the mix? The answer, quite simply, is for the fun of it.”
James Daunt, Waterstones Managing Director
Waterstones presents Red: a collection of brand new work from some of our finest contemporary writers including Max Hastings, Emma Donoghue and Will Self.
Edited by writer and journalist Cathy Galvin, this collection is each writer’s response to the colour red. Signalling danger and passion; boldness and beauty; joy and remembrance; sex and revolution; Red provides a timely response to the year gone by.
Galvin said: “Our world changed in 2012. We shared sporting and cultural highs; suffered political and economic lows. We have felt happiness, pride and fear. This unique anthology of newly commissioned short stories, poems and essays by some of our most-loved writers, fizzes with the mood of an extraordinary time.”
Each of the 18 writers interprets ‘red’ in distinct ways, including Hastings who provides a poppy-red lament for our armed forces, and journalist Suzanne Moore who sees red in her attack on the decline of feminism. Andrew Motion and David Almond set aside the rose-tinted spectacles of childhood memory, while Cecelia Ahern, Victoria Hislop, and Emma Donoghue evoke the scarlet of love in three new short stories, as well as an unsettling memoir from Rachel Cusk.
Daunt continued: “Red assembles a great collection of writing by some of the best writers of the day. It has been a privilege to assemble and we hope gives great pleasure to everyone who reads it.”