Top 10 books about Manchester

In her memoir Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?, Jeanette Winterson locates the city of her birth with a laser-guided accuracy: “Manchester is in the south of the north of England,” she mehr anzeigen writes. “Its spirit has a contrariness … at once untamed and unmetropolitan; at the same time, connected and wordly.”

Others have been more direct in their appraisal, like the Guardian reader Degrus, who commented under a 2009 piece about Manchester’s burgeoning literary renaissance: “Everyone who comes from Manchester knows that it’s a shithole … However, we also know that it’s not a shithole without charm; Mancunians are proud of their shithole. The best writing about Manchester springs from this.” The city has changed a great deal in the intervening years, but writerly interest in what Degrus calls the “whole complicated bloody mess of a situation” remains a constant.

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As well as being home for much of my life, Manchester has always had a central place in my imagination and my sense of the city is informed by my reading. The following list is, of course, entirely personal: there are many Manchesters and many more writers who have captured the city’s identities and moods than those listed here. These are just the ones who matter most to me.

Adam O'Riordan – LT author page weniger anzeigen