| What are you reading at the moment? One of my resolutions this year was to read one book a month. Yes, this is a pathetic number, but the decision was provoked by the realisation that for 12 months I had scarcely read a thing. Of course, as someone who has to read things for a living, it wasn’t as though my life wasn’t enriched by the written word. But I was ashamed to realise that, without trying, I had joined the class among whom recreational reading has declined by some 40 per cent in the past two decades. 
© Wendy Huynh So far this year I have managed to stick to my resolution: my current tally is 21½ books. Many of them are published by Fitzcarraldo Editions, a distinctive independent house I was first drawn to – because I am that shallow – by its graphic International Klein Blue designs. Founded in 2014 by Jacques Testard, Fitzcarraldo will publish 34 new books this year. Its speciality is translated fiction and non-fiction, and it has a knack for picking up writers before they win their Nobel Prize. As Helen Bain writes in a profile of the company: “It now seems absurd that Annie Ernaux, Jon Fosse and Svetlana Alexievich [as well as Olga Tokarczuk] had not been published in the UK sooner.” The story echoes the theme of this arts issue, where we meet people championing and rediscovering the classics for new audiences and times. Testard and his team are helping us to find international writers and acquainting us with a library of titles that might have remained unknown. Meet the leading men of Sense and Sensibility | | | | 
© Ronan Gallagher This week has seen a new adaptation of Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility arrive in cinemas. The film stars Daisy Edgar-Jones alongside George MacKay, Frank Dillane and the Norwegian actor Herbert Nordrum, best known for his role in The Worst Person in the World. Together, the latter trio are representative of a new generation of leading actors who have broken through in recent years. Kate Finnigan went to meet them as they prepared for a wave of Austen-mania, and to find out how those famous breeches really felt. A trip to Nymphenburg, Munich’s porcelain paradise | | | | 
© Amelie Niederbuchner Rachel Feinstein is rediscovering the porcelain studio of Nymphenburg in Munich, maker of gigantic florid figurines. The US sculptor (and regular subject of her husband John Currin’s artworks) earned herself an invite to the majolica workshop in order to become acquainted with the ancient craft. “I was so in awe of the calmness, the harmony – and how different that is to making art in New York City, which is chaos,” she tells Victoria Woodcock of her unique art retreat. “I also realised that my understanding of rococo through Walt Disney was not what real rococo was about. It’s a source of incredible duality – of opulence but also terror and violence.” When Vampire Weekend met Haruomi Hosono | | | | 
© Ebet Roberts/Getty Images Lastly, another discovery, for me anyway, is the Japanese electronic music legend Haruomi Hosono, better known as the founder of the Yellow Magic Orchestra. Now 79, and having just released his 23rd solo studio album, the musician has influenced countless other artists, among them De La Soul and Harry Styles. Another fan, Vampire Weekend’s Ezra Koenig, sat down to talk to Hosono about his astonishing and multifaceted career. And, while I am extremely late to the party, I’m delighted to have discovered Pacific; Hosono’s seminal 1978 electronic album has become the unexpected soundtrack of my year. |
