MEET SIMON LEWIS, WRITER.

I’m very pleased to introduce my guest today: British novelist and screenwriter, Simon Lewis. I’m reading his novel GO these days and it is such a gripping thriller! My review of the book is coming soon, meanwhile, meet its brilliant author, please.

Simon Lewis was born in Wales in 1971 and GO is his first novel (1999), a travel thriller about backpackers, which he wrote  in a village in the Himalayas. It has been translated into German, Italian, Turkish and Swedish so far.

His second novel, BAD TRAFFIC (2008), is a crime thriller about people smugglers, featuring jaded Chinese cop, Inspector Jian. The book has been published in the UK and the US and translated into German, French, Swedish, Italian, Japanese and Turkish. In 2009 it was nominated for the LA Times Book of the Year Award and for the French SNCF prize for crime fiction.

His third travel thriller, BORDER RUN, was published in April 2012 in the US and the UK.

 As a screenwriter, Simon has worked for Potboiler Films, Cloud 8 and Channel 4 and has 3 movies with incredible International casts  in post-  or in production in 2014!  Read the interview, welcome Simon Lewis  at FLY HIGH and discover more about him and his work.

ANITA B., A YOUNG WOMAN'S COURAGE IN A NEW MOVIE BY ROBERTO FAENZA - MY REVIEW

Today is the international Holocaust Remembrance Day and I've been glad and proud of our special school day: at the cinema with 150 students and some colleagues. A day we've prepared in our lessons in the last few days, a day not to forget and to build new hopes.

I've already posted about this movie by Roberto Faenza, Anita B.,   released only in our country, Italy, so far,  in limited theatres and in just a few cities. That's really a shame! I hope it'll get the attention it deserves, maybe when it gets to the US next summer. Lots of students are seeing it these days thanks to Anita B. Progetto Scuole: that's at least a very positive aspect for the promotion of the movie. 

I  also  read and reviewed the novel by Edith Bruck, on which the film is freely based, "Quanta stella c'è nel cielo." Someone who knows him well told me Roberto Faenza usually says: "Two fathers, two children". That means, books and the movies based on them must be considered for what they are: different art works by different artists. Faenza wrote the script in collaboration with the author of the novel, anyway. So we can imagine she agrees with the changes, the cuts and the additions. I personally liked all the director's choices, especially his rewriting Eli, the male protagonist. Impossible to like him, but in the film at least we are given reasons for his behaviour.

AT THE CINEMA: THE MORTAL INSTRUMENTS CITY OF BONES - SEEN WITH MY KIDS

Note added on Wednesday 5th September 2013: I've seen the movie again at a week's distance. Different theatre, different audience, in my niece's company: second time it was much better! I'd write a different review, honestly. But I won't. I'll only give you this "legenda": the first part was just very good rewatching it (see the "What didn't work" section of present review).  I didn't have the same impression I had the first time. I'd like to re-watch it a third time now  to see what happens but... I'll have to wait for my digital copy when it will be released. I've pre-ordered it. 

_________________________

I’ve been looking forward to seeing this film for a while.  I told you how it all started, do  you remember? 

Mission City of Bones accomplished today.  I saw the movie,  I made a new shadowhunter  without needing any mortal instrument - seeing Jamie Campbell Bower on screen was enough for her  (my niece, 16).   I can go to bed  happy and satisfied.

The first film of what is supposed to become a saga has arrived  today here in Italy and I was at the nearest theatre (one hour’s drive)  in time  for the first afternoon screening. The Italian title of the movie is “Shadowhunters - Città di Ossa” , based on Cassandra Clare's series of books, The Mortal Instruments, YA urban fantasy,  which sold 22 millions copies all over the world.

Young people in my family  were at  first puzzled for my sudden, unexpected enthusiasm for a YA series but, teasing me,  they decided they had to discover why The Mortal Instruments had succeeded where the Twilight Saga , Harry Potter , The Lord of The Rings and all the others hadn’t.  Hence, a few of them brought me to the cinema with them or was it more “I brought them to the cinema with me”?

BOOK REVIEW - QUANTA STELLA C'E' NEL CIELO BY EDITH BRUCK (2009) - SOON AN INTERNATIONAL MOVIE, ANITA B., BY ROBERTO FAENZA

I came to read this book after hearing that Italian director Roberto Faenza was making a movie out of it  (Anita B.) and I’m so  glad I discovered both novel and author. It’s been a great read which I happened to find  just when I was working on 20th century literature with my oldest students.  I couldn’t actually use it in my lessons,  since it hasn’t been translated into English and I teach English not Italian  literature,  but I think it gave indirectly a great contribution to my introduction of the general  background context and to  suggest my students connections and links coming directly from witnesses who lived and survived the tragic reality of WWII.

There's no grammar mistake in the title, it was just meant to sound "How much star is there in the sky",  like in   Sàndor Petöfi's ballad.  

Edith Bruck,  like Anita the young protagonist of  “Quanta stella c’è nel cielo”,     survived being imprisoned in a concentration camp and this is what makes the narration even more touching though it is never too sentimental nor melodramatic.  

 Edith Bruck won the Premio Viareggio Narrativa 2009 for this novel. She’s been living in Italy  since soon after WWII and has become a writer in the Italian language since the Hungarian tongue brought painful memories back to  her mind, the memories of being a rejected, persecuted Jewish child imprisoned in several Nazi concentration camps (Auschwitz, Dachau, Bergen-Belsen). 

She tells she  couldn’t even say “ciao” in our language when she arrived in Rome as a  desperate orphan, but wanted to learn Italian and use it in order to be born again,  into a new life, in order to forget those memories which were  poisoning her. 

She felt welcome here in our country. Italy and her were extremely poor at that time and she felt immediately at home in Rome. The experience  of Anita B., the protagonist of the book, is quite different, though. 

ANITA B. - ROBERTO FAENZA DIRECTS ROBERT SHEEHAN AND ELINE POWELL

Robert Sheehan  and Eline Powell as Eli and Anita

Roberto Faenza has started shooting his new film, Anita B.,  in Bolzano, Italy, with an international cast: Robert Sheehan, Eline Powell, Antonio Cupo, Nico Mirallegro are among the young protagonists. The movie is based on a novel by Edith Bruck (read about her HERE), titled Quanta stella c'è nel cielo, which,  for what I know, hasn't been translated into English so far. 

The book

Edith Bruck won the Premio Viareggio Narrativa 2009 for  «Quanta stella c'è nel cielo». There's no grammar mistake in the title. It was just meant to sound "How much star is there in the sky" in the quoted line of Sàndor Petöfi's ballad.  
Anita (Eline Powell) , who's  only 16,  has just the great Hungarian poet's  lines to warm her heart and little else sweet left in her mind.  She keeps so many ripping memories inside herself, memories nobody wants to listen to.  She survived the concentration camp, is beautiful and sensitive, life trials have tattoed her soul forever. She's running away from a Hungarian orphanage to join her aunt, Monika. 

THE MORTAL INSTRUMENTS: CITY OF BONES - SHADOWHUNTERS, KILLING DEMONS AND PREJUDICES

“The boy never cried again, and he never forgot what he'd learned: that to love is to destroy, and that to be loved is to be the one destroyed.” (Cassandra Clare) 

Book synopsis  - Sixteen-year-old Clary Fray is an ordinary teenager, who likes hanging out in Brooklyn with her friends. But everything changes the night she witnesses a murder, committed by a group of teens armed with medieval weaponry. The murderous group are Shadowhunters, secret warriors dedicated to driving demons out of this dimension and back into their own. Drawn inexorably into a terrifying world, Clary slowly begins to learn the truth about her family - and the battle for the fate of the world.

You know,  each time I write about books or movies at FLY HIGH, it is never on a professional level .  I  try to be as honest as I can with you,  but don't ask me to be  objective. I've been and will be,  on the contrary,  totally and personally involved in each of my reviews.

So,   this time too,  I'll  tell you something really personal.

WILL YOU BE MY VALENTINE? - FOR THE LOVE OF SWOON GIVEAWAY HOP: WIN THE MORTAL INSTRUMENTS OR BEAUTIFUL CREATURES E-BOOKS

Happy Valentine's Day,

everyone.  Joy and love to all of you, who are in love with someone or in love with  the idea of love! With or without a boy/girl - friend, a passionate love affair, a loyal partner or a special one,  this is the right day to dream about romance and love. Regardless our age, gender, status. Ready to play with me? There are gifts for those who accept to take part in this game. Books to swoon over and heroes/heroines to dream about.

Choose your ideal Valentine and win an e-book 

To be one of the two winners, you'll have to choose your dream Valentine  and share your choice with us in the comments. Tell us who he/she is and why you'd ask (or have asked!) him/her to be your Valentine. You can choose a real person, someone you are a fan of, characters you love from movies or books. This post is part of  "For the Love of Swoon Hop" hosted by The Book Hookup & I Am a Reader Not A Writer. The prizes you'll find in this giveaway contest or visiting the other blogs in the list below are YA  books or gift cards to buy items of this genre. Take your chances in the rafflecopter form below and then hop to as many blogs as you can from the list.

WATCHING TV DRAMA BETWEEN PAST AND PRESENT

I've been watching different stuff, belonging to very different genres . The recent Christmas  holidays have been the occasion to catch up on things I wanted to see but didn't have time to while working or to have a look at movies and series recommended by my blogger/facebook buddies. I'm not writing about all of them and especially not in just one post. Hence, let's see what can be relevant or recommendable. Why not to start with ...

AIDAN TURNER AND ROBERT SHEEHAN, YOUNG TALENTS FROM THE EMERALD ISLE

Will they become as popular and universally acknowledged as Liam Neeson, Colin Farrell,   Pierce Brosnan, Gabriel Byrne, Ciaran Hinds and  Jonathan Rhys Meyers? All these fascinating men share their talent at acting and their being Irish. All of them made it in the movie industry,  getting to a huge popularity. Will Aidan Turner and Robert Sheehan, young, Irish and talented, make it too? I'd say, they've got great chances and , in fact, they are already on their way to stardom. I bet you'll soon hear of them if you haven't yet.