Edinburgh International Book Festival 2011, Part 1 ...

It’s that time of year again! The 2011 Edinburgh International Book Festival programme has been launched and we’re very excited. Here are the Polygon highlights of the programme …

There is a fantastic range of fiction on offer including Kevin MacNeil, whose A Method Actor’s Guide to Jekyll and Hyde takes it’s setting and a lot of its inspiration from Edinburgh itself. The Edinburgh of the nineteenth century is the backdrop for David Ashton’s fantastic Inspector McLevy Mysteries, star of a BBC Radio 4 series and now of three brilliant books. But if you fancy ranging further afield, Carlos Alba’s moving novel The Songs of Manolo Escobar chronicles the hardships of growing up Spanish in Glasgow. And you can jump in space and time with Sam Meekings to China over two thousands years in the magical The Book of Crows, or join Johannes Kepler and Galileo Galilei in Stuart Clark’s magnificent debut novel The Sky’s Dark Labyrinth.

Poets are often thought of as having their heads in the clouds but Andrew Greig really has as the ‘laureate of climbing’ whose mountain poems are collected in Getting Higher. And you can’t get much more down to earth than Scotland’s own Makar Liz Lochhead, a Polygon perennial favourite. Talking of ‘great folk’ (see what we did there?), Martin Strong author of The Great Folk Discography will be sharing his encyclopaedic knowledge of the musical genre.

And it wouldn’t be an Edinburgh International Book Festival without Alexander McCall Smith. He’ll be opening the front door on the latest goings on at 44 Scotland Street with Bertie Sings the Blues as well as leaping back in time and across continents to reveal Precious Ramotswe’s very first detective case in Precious and the Monkeys – a treat for all ages.

Stay tuned for the view of EIBF 2011 from the Birlinn side …