>> Julian Barnes may have won the Booker Prize for one of the slightest books in the prize’s history, but a trip to Waterstone’s this Christmas will confirm that the trend in literature is certainly towards doorstopping fiction: books this autumn from Haruki Murakami, Stephen King and George RR Martin all approach or exceed the 1,000 page mark. It seems entirely at odds with the idea that we live in a hyperactive, time-poor world where we consume culture in bite-size chunks, doesn’t it?
So to find out why publishers, readers and, crucially, authors are falling for the epic, I spoke to Paul Murray, who was longlisted for the Booker after his 642-page Skippy Dies struck a chord with judges and Penguin publishing director, Simon Prosser. Don’t worry, the article is only 1,000 words long…
“On the technical side, keeping track of so many storylines can get really difficult. Your walls slowly fill up with charts and plot outlines and your room starts to look like it belongs to a serial killer.”
Click here to read the full story about epic fiction in The National
