PD Smith

City – interviews & reviews #2

22 August 2012 | City | Post a comment

Dan Wagstaff has inter­viewed me for his won­der­ful blog The Casu­al Opti­mist. We cov­ered a lot of ground, from cities (of course) and dystopias, to my ear­li­est expe­ri­ence of writ­ing (as well as read­er feed­back) and my favourite book (Titus Groan). You can read it here.

City was reviewed by Will Wiles in this mon­th’s Icon mag­a­zine. It’s an urban-themed issue, includ­ing a fas­ci­nat­ing piece on fer­al cities by Geoff Man­augh and some of Michael Wolf’s superb pho­tos of Hong Kong sky­scrap­ers. Well worth buy­ing! The review is not online, but here’s a taster of what he thought about the book:

“The over­all effect is an ener­getic trib­ute to the city rather than a guide or aca­d­e­m­ic study — a cel­e­bra­tion of city-ness itself. Smith…writes plain­ly and with aston­ish­ing scope, per­sis­tent­ly glob­al and seem­ing­ly at home with every­thing from Mar­dok to Mas­dar. The lit­tle the­mat­ic essays are a joy… With even lit­tler texts boxed in colour and scat­tered hith­er and yon, City is a tremen­dous­ly jazzy, rest­less book.”

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