For this issue’s cover, inimitable actress TILDA SWINTON talks to the novelist Deborah Levy. In this landmark conversation Tilda looks into both the past and the future, seeking out the contours of how encounters with the work of writers such as Virginia Woolf and Muriel Spark shaped her worldview. We are invited to eavesdrop on
On the cover, photographer Davey Adésida captures the immeasurable energy of DIANE VON FURSTENBERG. The Book of the Season, Nella Larsen’s novel PASSING, prompts stories on race, code-switching and the whirlwind of Harlem in the 1920s. This novel about race caused a major stir in 1929, only to then be forgotten and for its author
On the cover, legendary artist MARK LECKEY is photographed by Mark Peckmezian. The Book of the Season is MIDDLEMARCH: A STUDY OF PROVINCIAL LIFE by Mary Ann Evans who, for reasons of societal sexism, wrote under the pen name George Eliot. This sprawling English novel tends to be accompanied by phrases like ‘but it’s just
On the cover this time, sonic trailblazer Moses Sumney is photographed by Kennedi Carter in Asheville, North Carolina, where he lives. Our Book of the Season is Sabahattin Ali’s breathtaking romance, MADONNA IN A FUR COAT. Published to indifference in the early ‘40s it’s become one of the biggest literary blockbusters in Turkey in recent
Beaches, books and juniper berries: this season’s cover star SARAH JESSICA PARKER is photographed by Roe Etheridge in Amaganesett, Long Island Our Book of the Season, JAPANESE GHOST STORIES, is centre of gravity to a series of hallucinatory artworks; correspondents around the world compile an obsessive yet fragmentary portrait of the book’s odd author, Lafcadio
GRACE WALES BONNER is a 28 year old fashion designer from south-east London. She has been feted by the worlds of both serious culture and high glamour, but here’s the unusual part: her clothes come with reading lists. Interviewed by Booker Prize-winning author Ben Okri for this Happy Reader cover story, Grace explains how she sees herself on some
Owen Wilson, the movie star, loves to read. His mind is filled with quotes from favourite books, which he is able to recall at a moment’s notice. In this rare interview he invites The Happy Reader to get to know him while perusing the classic and not-so-classic titles stacked up around his home. Our Book
LAURIE ANDERSON became a household name in 1981, when her 8-minute avant-garde monologue ‘O Superman’ became the world’s strangest-ever hit single. Anderson, now 71, is an artist whose work encompasses whatever she needs it to, from performance to music, from CD-ROM to virtual reality. Interviewed in Denmark, she discusses the dizzying breadth of her reading
This bookish magazine for summer 2018 presents a landmark interview with OLLY ALEXANDER and a free-roving parade through the novel THE BLACK TULIP. OLLY ALEXANDER, lead vocalist with British pop group YEARS & YEARS opens up about being young, gay and famous, explains a key literary reference in a new song, and namechecks, among others,
Former Pulp frontman JARVIS COCKER is a voracious bookworm and an ideal addition to the Happy Reader pantheon. In this winter issue he discusses his reading habits and literary foibles with the great poet SIMON ARMITAGE. Accompanied by glorious photographs by ALASDAIR McLELLAN, the chat covers everything from the stories of Carson McCullers to the