Author of YA murder-mysteries including This Book Kills, and YA Book Prize and Nibbie shortlistee Ravena Guron is to pen a murder-mystery retelling of Jane Eyre, after being approached with the idea by Scholastic. (Maia Snow)
Novelist Anjet Daanje has been tipped as a serious contender for the Nobel prize in literature and, from her 2022 work The Song of Stork and Dromedary, for very good reason.Published in Dutch as Het lied van ooievaar en dromedaris, the book is loosely based on the life of Emily Brontë, the author of Wuthering Heights. The work opens in 1847, with a villager laying out the body of Eliza May Drayden, who, like Brontë, has written a book widely derided at the time it was published but would go on to become a classic.The opening scene is tinged with the Gothic horror of Wuthering Heights, Drayden’s eyes refuse to close for her burial.The next 650 pages follow 11 interconnect stories that orbit around Drayden, and her sister Millicent, the fictionalised Charlotte Brontë who authored of Jane Eyre. Similar again to Wuthering Heights, all are largely set on the moors in England, though the final story takes the reader to the Daanje’s hometown of Groningen.Rather than a traditional narrative, the book is written like an expansive biography, incorporating news articles, excerpts from diaries, letters, citations from fictional biographies and even parts of Drayden’s novel.Each of the tales could be novellas in their own right, vivid and sometimes nail-biting, sending the reader off on tangents such as the mistreatment of two half-German sisters during the Second World War, or a pair of French half-sisters whose shared father creates a wedge between them.The nature of sisterhood and the relationship between various female characters is one of the central themes of The Song of Stork and Dromedary. The work also reflects on the status of women at different times across the novel’s 200-year span.Death is another important theme. Drayden’s death, with which the book opens, is an event that brings characters together but also tears them apart. [...]The Song of Stork and Dromedary took home both the Boekenbon Literature Prize and the Libris Literature Prize, the first book to ever net both awards. It was named the Best Book of the Century by the NRC newspaper. The English translation was published this year.In 2023, Daanje was awarded the Constantijn Huygens Prize for her oeuvre.The book was translated by David McKay, who also translated War and Turpentine by Stefan Hertmans and Multatuli’s Max Havelaar. He renders the complicated work thoughtfully, retaining Daanje’s character.The Song of Stork and Dromedary is compelling and brilliant, and the author is worthy of the highest honour in literature. (Molly Quell)
Jane Eyre (2006)Few novels have done more for the gothic imagination than Brontë’s Jane Eyre. The 2006 adaptation leans into all the familiar pleasures of Brontë’s world, from a remote country house, its brooding master and coincidentally love interest and a dark past hidden behind closed doors. Ruth Wilson brings a sharp intelligence to Jane, while Toby Stephens gives Rochester enough danger to keep their romance from becoming too comfortable. Dark and emotionally charged, this is a Jane Eyre that understands the gothic works best. (Naina Zilbermints)
After a windier road than expected, Paramount and Warner are now one, under the banner of Skydance, and the film industry is set for a shake-up [...]That’s where executives like the departed De Luca and Abdy would have come in handy. Their tenure at Warner was characterized by both risks and variety befitting one of Hollywood’s most recognizable and prestigious movie studios. They greenlit two beloved smash-hit horror movies with Sinners and Weapons. The studio won a best picture Oscar – their first in over a decade – with Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another. They let indie talents play in a big-studio sandbox with movies like Wuthering Heights and The End of Oak Street. Even their franchise films, like the Dune sequels, Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, and Superman had the clear creative imprint of individual creators. (Jesse Hassenger)
Your favourite literary character?Jane Eyre because she insists the world doesn’t belong to the rich, beautiful and well connected: “Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain, and little, I am soulless and heartless?” She reverses traditional gender roles and ends up rescuing Mr Rochester (I’d have left him to fester).
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