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 – poetry is best (from 16min 40sec in)

 

 

 

POEMS

 

Shorter ones   

Addition to “Me without You” (Jan 15); Additions to “Brief” (Jan 3, Oct 21, Oct 11, Sept 18, etc); “The Page” (Oct 30); “Home” (Sept 12); Addition to “Prisoner” (Aug 12); “Figged”; “Five Bad Analogies”; “The Old Dog”; “Sonnets”; “A Lancastrian’s Terror of Todmorden”; etc, etc

 

Longer ones

 “Age”; “On a Birthday”; “A Very Hippy Christmas”

 

Sex Change at the London Hospital

Additions (Feb 11, Nov 23, July 17, etc)

 

Berlin Burned

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 £1.99. (With the free app you can read Kindle books on any device)

 

‘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

 

 

 

NOVELS

 

Extract from Something Like a House’ (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

Buy

 

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

Buy

 

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

Buy

 

 

 

STORIES ABOUT MIRRORS

 

‘The Hat’ 

‘Perry, Young and Old’

‘In The Mirror’

‘Sasha’

‘The Retiree’

Twins’

 

 

QUOTES ABOUT WRITING

 

Stuff that seems true

 

 

 

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.”

 

 

 

HOW I BUILT OUR SHOWER

 

Pictures and words about a DIY project