Nick Holdstock

This time: How I write.

In today’s Guardian I wander round various lesser-known Chinese cities and talk to people about what it’s like to live and work in such fast expanding places. I am also asked to sample the smell of death.

The same thing, on a larger scale, is the subject of my next book, Chasing the Chinese Dream, out in September from IB Tauris.

In which I answer the burning question of WHY I WRITE. Warning: this contains my actual voice. https://www.rlf.org.uk/showcase/nick-holdstock-wiw/

I reviewed Yan Lianke’s novel The Explosion Chronicles in the March issue of Literary Review. I thought it was a bloated, prurient, timid satire.

I wrote a piece on the great Soviet fabulist Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky for Open Letters Monthly.

When I was a teacher in China I used to get my students to bring in items and talk about them. It was good practice for them and also meant there was only 42 minutes left of the lesson to fill. The best one was a young man who brought in a bullet and then spoke about how happy he’d felt the first time he fired a gun. This story is probably vaguely inspired by this – it’s in The Manchester Review.