The website of
SID SMITH
“One of Britain’s most challenging and original novelists,” Times Literary Supplement
With extracts from the novels (although the text of China Dreams is
complete), journalism, short stories and poems
You can write to me via sid [at] sidsmith [dot] co [dot] uk
The Wikipedia entry
On BBC Radio 4
Writing novels about a place you haven’t been (from 8min in)
Writing novels is boring (from 16min 40sec in)
I’m back writing novels again (despite the above R4 interview), hence the lack of updates here
POEMS
Addition to “The Poem”; “An Old Man Looks at a Fountain”; Silence”; Addition to “Me without You”; “When I impersonate the old”; “John Masefield’s True Confession”; Addition to “Me without You”; Additions to “Brief”; “The Page”; “Home”; Addition to “Prisoner”; “Figged”; “Sonnets”; “A Lancastrian’s Terror of Todmorden”; etc, etc
“Age”; “On a Birthday”; “A Very Hippy Christmas”
Sex Change at the London Hospital
War, pianos and strange sex with mirrors
Why We’re Not Bloody Moving to Bloody France
or, In the Chunnel, Arguing with the Missus
THE NISBET CHRONICLES
For when I’m not doing poems
In which we follow Lord Nelson’s (real-life) stepson through his (not-very-real) adventures. Think of it as Flashman goes to sea
Buy
‘Nisbet
and Trafalgar’
Read
an extract here
Buy it here for £2.99
Buy ‘Nisbet and Nelson’s Eye’
Nisbet’s first voyage and his first exposure to Nelson’s adulteries. Oh, and how did Nelson lose his eye?
Read an extract here
Buy it here for £2.23
NOVELSSomething Like a House’
Extract from ‘ (Picador, 2001)
Whitbread First Novel Award, James Tait Black Memorial Prize
“This amazing, authoritative tale of a deserter in China – ‘the only round-eye in the Red Guards’ – stains the mind indelibly, like a beautiful, harrowing dream”: Books of the Year, Daily Telegraph
Extract from ‘A House by the River’ (Picador, 2003)
“A poetic novel and a serious literary novel, but also an adventure story. The writing is wonderful, absolutely brilliant. There is no Whitbread Second Novel Award, but he would be up for it”: Tom Sutcliffe, BBC Radio 4
The full text of ‘China Dreams’ (Picador, 2007)
Introduction to ebook version of China Dreams
“Plot summary cannot capture the strange beauty of this spare and intricately constructed novel”: The Guardian
“A string of visions that could be taken from Chinese folklore, but have as many resonances with the Bacchae, or the cult of Cybele. These nightmares have all the authority of world myth … Smith has made something fierce, alternative and horribly real”: Daily Telegraph
STORIES ABOUT MIRRORS
QUOTES ABOUT WRITING
JOURNALISM
I’m a sub-editor at The Times and write the occasional piece for the paper. These days it’s behind a paywall, but if you have access you can search for my by-line, or here are some direct routes: My Japanese Wedding, a Historic Homes piece, another one, a shortie about British action novels and one on JP Donleavy’s The Ginger Man.
ON PATRICK O’BRIAN’S MASTER AND COMMANDER SERIES
Random notes about novels I adore:
“Is Stephen Maturin the best character in all literature? He’s the best I know.
Is his friendship with Jack Aubrey the best in all literature? It’s the best I know.”