The Happy Reader Nº 19

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 two cultural giants connecting through the time-honoured method of literary exchange.

The Book of the Season is THE ODYSSEY, a singable story of heroes and gods inhabiting the world’s first archipelago and the perfect read for slow summer journeys, outbound or inbound. Contributors include: Justin E. H. Smith, Rebecca May Johnson, Nicholas Jubber, Eliot Haworth, Jeremy Lewis, Sabine Mirlesse and Rob Doyle.

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, James Baldwin, Andrew Holleran and Flannery O’Connor.

The articles that follow strive to unlock the meaning of THE BLACK TULIP, an unputdownable novel set in the Dutch Golden Age, with contributions from DEBORAH LEVY, RICHARD BENSON, CHARLIE CONNELLY and NEAL FOX.