Uncle Freddie and The Prince of Wales Abdelkarim al-Tabbal

Uncle Freddie and The Prince of Wales Abdelkarim al-TabbalA new collection of short stories from the acclaimed South Shields writer Alex Ferguson, again focusing on the author's part real part mythical Uncle Freddie, and again located in the Jarrow of the 1940s where the author grew up. Ferguson's writing is a unique amalgam of the starkly real the terrible poverty of wartime Tyneside, and the surreally imaginative meeting such famous characters as the Prince of Wales or Joe Stalin upstairs on a no. 38 bus

Nabil Naum Gorgy: Short story The Competition

Tahar Ben Jelloun talks to Pierrre Maury

both from Lebanon

The Morning Star

where he is an Emeritus Professor

three introductory essays open up the background to the short story

His most recent collection of poetry

deferential

and as I was staring at the new emptiness

like the Eliot of his title

as if his look brought the handles back to the doors

And introducing Nicki Monaghan whose first novel appears from Cape in 2006