For those of you on Facebook, here is the event page.

The piece – which you’ll find by following this link – offers a real flavour of Sinclair’s new book, Hackney, That Rose-Red Empire which is now at number #13 in the hardcover charts, is ranked in the top 250 Amazon sellers and has already been reprinted twice since its Feb 26th release!

‘The title Cyberabad Days is a deliberate echo of the Arabian Nights. The stories are fairy tales of New Delhi. River was an Indian—novel, fat, many-voiced, wide-screen; Cyberabad Days is tales. Mumbai movies tell stories in ways that challenge our Western aesthetics and values. They’re not afraid of sentiment, they’re not afraid of big acting, or putting in song and dance, because Bollywood cinema’s not supposed to be a mimetic art form. It’s not about realism—that most pernicious of Western values—it’s a show. I wanted these stories to have a similar feel. There are dance routines in the ‘The Djinn’s Wife’ (and it ends in a Bollywood melodrama bloodbath). There are indeed princesses who fall from power and exact revenge on their enemies. There are brothers whose feud plays out over decades.‘

Read the full article here.

‘I’m in bits. Pieces of me are all over the place.

And I’m a part-time mage in World of Warcraft. Well, I’m not. But it might be fun. More fun than Second Life, where I could be some tedious avatar and hang with boring people.’

• Click this link for the rest  of this article.

Check out this review at Bookgeeks.com and if that intrigues you, nip over to Concept Sci-Fi via this link where an extract of the novel is available. And here is an interview with the author for good measure.

• Reviews are starting to come in for Iain Sinclair’s new book Hackney, That Rose-Red Empire and we’ll be posting news of them here as they come in. For starters, here’s a four star write-up from today’s London Metro paper.

• Check our previous post for details of specific Hackney related events that are coming up and don’t forget to listen to BBC Radio 4 next week, when Hackney, That Rose-Red Empire will be being featured as Book of the Week.

• The Observer carried a wonderful interview with author Iain Sinclair on February 8th , 2009. ‘The brilliant chronicler of uncharted, often unloved, parts of Britain has stayed close to home for his latest epic – a bittersweet love letter to the London borough of Hackney. He takes Rachel Cooke for a stroll round his patch – no ordinary walk, as the visionary author beautifully evokes the area’s rich history while reflecting on his own memories of the urban landscape.‘ The piece is available here online.

• And if all this coverage is wetting your appetite for the book (and how can it not?) the publisher Hamish Hamilton has made an except of the book’s opening chapter available online. Click this link for the pdf.

• Flight into Darkness in 60 Seconds

“A reader recently emailed me, mentioning how intrigued he was at finding a fantasy series in which gunpowder and eighteenth century weaponry can be found alongside dragons and daemons. I really appreciated that comment! Because in writing this series I wanted to evoke an Age of Reason not unlike our own and confront the enlightened thinkers and scientists with the raw forces of an ancient and powerful magic that they can neither explain away nor begin to understand.” Follow this link to read more…

And if this wets your appetite and you’d like to investigate Sarah’s wonderful fantasy novel further, follow this link for an excerpt of the first chapter, available to read free at Randomhouse.com.

“Seeds Of Earth, the first part of my Humanity’s Fire space opera trilogy, steps fully-fledged onto the world stage in early March. I hope to be doing a reading or two in Glasgow and Edinburgh, and there will also be the odd competition for goodies and so forth. Eastercon, the UK national SF convention, takes place in Bradford from April 10th to the 13th, and I shall be there, saying hello, signing anything that’ll stay put long enough, and going in search of The Perfect Curry! Also in March, I’ll be submitting volume 2, The Orphaned Worlds, before diving headlong into the final part, The Ascendant Stars.“