David Hewson

Category: Writing

  • Now out in a new print and ebook edition… Hamlet

    It’s something like ten years since I started work on an adaptation of Hamlet for Audible with my good friend A.J. Hartley. It was an experimental project, one that took a sideways look at a very familiar story. The work also introduced us to an actor chap called Richard Armitage who took our original script and did something quite amazing with it. Astonishing to think Richard and audiobooks weren’t a thing back then.

    Well, here we are on the verge of 2023 and I’m delighted to say Hamlet is still a popular item on Audible, and now you can enjoy the story in a new edition from Falstaff Books. You should find it in all the usual places in hardback, paperback and ebook. It is brand new and shipping from the US so those outside in say, the UK, may have a little while to wait. But the ebook is, of course, readily available worldwide.

    I hope you enjoy it. We had enormous fun taking Shakespeare’s original and adding some tricks of our own (yes, Young Yorick). And I’ll always be grateful to our producer at Audible, Steve Feldberg, for having the foresight to bring Mr. Armitage into the studio.

  • The Garden of Angels becomes Garten der Engel

    My tale of a young Venetian discovering his grandfather’s role during the Nazi occupation is headed for the German language. Out on February 28, 2023 from Folio, Garten der Engel is now appearing in a special press and book industry edition ahead of publication, one that includes background to the story, the location and the history, photos, and an article by me about its writing. So if you’re in the German language book business please look out for it.

    I’m immensely grateful for the lovely staff of Folio, who I was lucky enough to meet in Vienna earlier this year to talk about the book. And to my translator Birgit Salzmann who has been a champion for the story since it first appeared in English.

    There are some publicity events on the horizon… and a German audio edition too, of which more news later. Do please subscribe to updates here or follow me on Twitter (if Twitter is still around come February). Here’s the cover and the back copy.

  • Ytali magazine… the big interview

    Ytali magazine… the big interview

    It was fascinating to ‘sit down’ (a few thousand miles apart) with JoAnn Locktov to talk writing and Venice at length. You can read the result now in Ytali, an essential source of news and opinion for anyone interested in Italy and Venice in particular. The English version is here, and the Italian, kindly translated by Ytali’s founder, Guido Moltedo, here.

    I first talked to JoAnn a decade ago when she wanted to run an extract from one of my tales in the beautiful photography and writing book she was producing, Dream of Venice. Since then, she’s produced two more stunning books on the city, Dream of Venice Architecture and Dream of Venice in Black and White, and curated surely the most comprehensive list of current fiction and non-fiction Venetian titles on her Dream of Venice Bookshop.org site.

    It was flattering to discover she’d been following my work in the city for so many years, going back to Lucifer’s Shadow/The Cemetery of Secrets which I wrote more than a quarter of a century ago.

    A delight to chat at greater length than one normally finds in these interviews. And remember… if you have questions yourself and are in Venice on October 13 you can come and ask them when I’m at the Studium bookstore with Philip Gwynne Jones and Gregory Dowling, starting at 6 pm, all free, no need to book.

  • Introducing Arnold Clover and a new series set in Venice

    The Medici Murders is out in the UK and the US in hardback next week (October 4), the first in what I hope will become a long-running series set in Venice and featuring a very unusual protagonist. It’s time I issued what I suspect, in the language of the day, ought to be called a trigger warning. If it’s one of those lightning-paced, breathless, heart-pounding read-in-a-flash thrillers you’re after, you should probably look elsewhere.

    With this book, and those that follow with the same characters, I’m out to do something different.

    You can get a glimpse of what I’m going to talk about when I tell you Arnold Clover, the protagonist, is a newly retired civil servant from the National Archives at Kew outside London. A quiet, intelligent, inquisitive man with a name I picked because I wanted something a million miles from a standard action hero.

    (more…)

    The Medici Murders is out in the UK and the US in hardback next week (October 4), the first in what I hope will become a long-running series set in Venice and featuring a very unusual protagonist. It’s time I issued what I suspect, in the language of the day, ought to be called a trigger warning. If it’s one of those lightning-paced, breathless, heart-pounding read-in-a-flash thrillers you’re after, you should probably look elsewhere.

    With this book, and those that follow with the same characters, I’m out to do something different.

    You can get a glimpse of what I’m going to talk about when I tell you Arnold Clover, the protagonist, is a newly retired civil servant from the National Archives at Kew outside London. A quiet, intelligent, inquisitive man with a name I picked because I wanted something a million miles from a standard action hero.

    (more…)

    The Medici Murders is out in the UK and the US in hardback next week (October 4), the first in what I hope will become a long-running series set in Venice and featuring a very unusual protagonist. It’s time I issued what I suspect, in the language of the day, ought to be called a trigger warning. If it’s one of those lightning-paced, breathless, heart-pounding read-in-a-flash thrillers you’re after, you should probably look elsewhere.

    With this book, and those that follow with the same characters, I’m out to do something different.

    You can get a glimpse of what I’m going to talk about when I tell you Arnold Clover, the protagonist, is a newly retired civil servant from the National Archives at Kew outside London. A quiet, intelligent, inquisitive man with a name I picked because I wanted something a million miles from a standard action hero.

    (more…)

    The Medici Murders is out in the UK and the US in hardback next week (October 4), the first in what I hope will become a long-running series set in Venice and featuring a very unusual protagonist. It’s time I issued what I suspect, in the language of the day, ought to be called a trigger warning. If it’s one of those lightning-paced, breathless, heart-pounding read-in-a-flash thrillers you’re after, you should probably look elsewhere.

    With this book, and those that follow with the same characters, I’m out to do something different.

    You can get a glimpse of what I’m going to talk about when I tell you Arnold Clover, the protagonist, is a newly retired civil servant from the National Archives at Kew outside London. A quiet, intelligent, inquisitive man with a name I picked because I wanted something a million miles from a standard action hero.

    (more…)