Tuesday, March 26, 2013

Ten top novels about newspapers

For the Telegraph (U.K.), Sameer Rahim and Felicity Capon came up with ten great novels about newspapers, including:
The Ghost by Robert Harris (2007)

Robert Harris is a great thriller writer and a great newspaper man. (His books on the coverage of the Falklands War and the Sunday Times Hitler diaries fiasco are well worth reading.) His novel The Ghost, about a Blair-like ex-Prime Minister, combined both interests. Though it satirises modern political culture, it is also harsh on the media that connives with it. When the unnamed hack writing the ex-PM’s memoirs looks up two works on his subject – one “an early hagiography”, another “a recent hatchet job” – he finds the same person wrote them.
Read about another entry on the list.

Also see Bob Greene's five best books about writing for the newspaper.

The Ghost appears on Michael Dobbs's list of five great fictional prime ministers.

--Marshal Zeringue