Your weekly edit
This week: the alchemy of adaptation, The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, the new Salman Rushdie documentary; plus, Burns Night and astrology!
From page to stage
Aside from getting excited about the International Booker Prize (only a month until the longlist now!), we’ve been thinking about the alchemy of adaptation this week. Specifically, the magic that happens when a piece of fiction successfully makes the jump from page to stage.
A musical based on The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry opens in London’s West End next week, after a sold-out run at the Chichester Festival Theatre. And a new staging of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time will open later this year at the Birmingham Rep, before a UK tour.
Rachel Joyce and Mark Haddon’s longlisted novels are part of a small but growing group of Booker- and International Booker-nominated books that have been adapted for theatre, including The Years, Wolf Hall and Life of Pi.
For this week’s list, we’ve picked out 12 Booker-nominated books that have been turned into plays, and we explore the secrets of their success.
Reading guide: The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry
If all this talk of adaptations has inspired you to read or revisit The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, you might like to dip into our reading guide.
Rachel Joyce’s debut novel was first written as a radio play, and has been adapted into a film as well as a musical. It was longlisted for the Booker Prize in 2012.
Joyce worked as a theatre actor for 20 years before becoming an author and has said, ‘I’ve realised there is a theatricality to my fiction – it must be because theatre is in my bones.’
Whether you’re new to the novel, or you’ve read it and would like to explore it more deeply, our comprehensive guide features insights from critics and the book’s author, as well as discussion points and suggestions for further reading.
Documenting a ‘literary titan and great thinker’
Alex Gibney’s documentary Knife: The Attempted Murder of Salman Rushdie premieres at the Sundance film festival this weekend. It’s inspired by Rushdie’s recent memoir and features footage shot by his wife, Rachel Eliza Griffiths.
The festival programme says, ‘Gibney gives us a magnificent gift in documenting this literary titan and great thinker as he navigates questions around violence, forgiveness, and expression — questions whose answers are needed now more than ever.’
Uniquely, Rushdie has been nominated for the Booker Prize a whopping seven times, winning in 1981 with Midnight’s Children. That year’s Chair of judges, Malcolm Bradbury, said the winning novel was a work of ‘extraordinary ambition and abundance’ and of ‘amazing imaginative fertility as well as of political courage’.
After the shocking knife attack on Rushdie in New York in 2022, our CEO Gaby Wood shared some reflections on the man and his books in an essay for our website – it’s well worth a read. As is our recent piece on memoirs written by Booker-nominated authors, featuring Knife among others.
Two treats for the weekend
Independent, idealistic and a little bit kooky... it can only be Aquarius. Discover three Booker books perfectly suited to the Aquarius among us on our Instagram.
It’s Burns Night on Sunday, the perfect time to revisit a quiz that celebrates both Scotland and Booker Prize-nominated authors, through words, wit and whisky. Head over to our website and put your Scottish literary knowledge to the test.
Which books will keep you company this weekend? And do you have a favourite Booker-nominated stage adaptation? Let us know in the comments.
The transition from page to stage is fascinating to think about. Some stories gain something in the translation, others lose the interior voice thats so central to the reading experience. Ive been curious about the Harold Fry musical since hearing about the Chichester run. Rachel Joyce being a former theatre actor probably helps her writting naturally lend itself to adaptation. Looking forward to the International Booker longlist next month.
Cool