David Blackburn

Nigeria is called ‘God’s own country’, and well it might be because no one else is on its side. Eliza Griswold, who has spent several years exploring religious divisions in the country’s interior, tells me that billions of oil dollars are embezzled each year, leaving the vast majority of the population to fend for themselves on a couple of dollars a day — that’s to say nothing of the millions of unemployed vagrants. The government oscillates between inertia and rapacity, so competing religious organisations have emerged in its place. But while religious communities provide legal services and schools, they can also incite sectarian violence as Nigerians contest their country’s dwindling resources.

Penguin has launched a new design for the Penguin English Library. The press blurb says, ‘Each cover is a crafted gem, they’ll look and feel lovely in your hands.’ And they do. Steal into a bookshop in the next couple of days and hold one. The covers are individual and relevant to the book — Far From the Madding Crowd has a symmetrical series of bees set against a honeyed background — and the paper, though very thin, has a smooth lacquer that makes your fingers slide over the pages. The problem is the spines. The blurb says: ‘with a distinctive evolution of the famous Penguin orange spines they’ll striking on your shelves.’ They certainly will. The arrival of the first batch of books has set tongues wagging in the office.

It is fitting that Bram Stoker is more celebrated in death than life. This week marks the centenary of his death. Numerous events have been held in his honour. It’s a typical jamboree. Horror writer Stewart King has explained how Stoker’s legacy is being sustained by a new wave of vampire fiction, which, for those who’ve been locked in an eerie for the past decade, has proved wildly popular. Vampires also remain popular in academic circles. The Times Higher Education reports that numerous professors convened for a Stoker centenary conference, where they lamented the modern assault on the gothic tradition.

An elderly woman receives a phone call from a once eminent publishing house. The nice man on the phone tells her that his company is going to reprint her deceased father’s books. Wonderful news, she says — delighted that her old man is not quite dead and buried yet. Hope for us, she thinks. The publisher adds that they want a party to mark this important literary event, a proper knees up with champagne and canapés. She’s all for this. What generosity, she thinks. Then they say that want to make a small contribution to the party costs, maybe fifty quid. Traditional publishers are in extremis. Print continues to collapse; eBook sales are not covering losses.

St. George’s Day, 23rd April, is Shakespeare’s birthday. You may get a present, if you are in the right place at the right time. World Book Night, the event where enthusiasts give a book to passers-by, will take place this evening. The organisers hope that 2.5 million copies of 25 books will be given away by 78,000 volunteers in the United States, Britain, Germany and Ireland. This massive undertaking is laudable, even though the selection of books is wholly unimaginative. Martina Cole, Audrey Niffenegger and Bernard Cornwell may not need more readers, but their best-selling pot-boilers might get more people reading. Like all the best things in life, one book leads to another.

The London Book Fair (LBF) is not much to write home about, although there is something about the spectacle of Chinese apparatchiks shooting the breeze with what appear to be battalions of enhanced women from Eastern Europe. But, LBF is the latest theatre in the tablet wars. The saga of Waterstones and the Barnes&Noble Nook continues. The companies have apparently agreed to enter partnership, after months of secret deliberations which were conducted in anything but secret. However, any official announcement has been pushed back until the summer. This deal has been dragging on for nearly a year, during which time the opposition has gone from strength to strength. In that time, the very swish Kobo has been launched in Britain through WHSmith.

There was drama at the Pulitzer Prize last night. No fiction prize was awarded for the first time in 35 years. The judges were unable to reach a decision in the race between David Foster Wallace’s The Pale King, Karen Russel’s Swamplandia! and Denis Johnson’s Train Dreams. Literary bigwigs in America have expressed shock. Jane Smiley — who won the prize in 1992 for her reimagining of King Lear, A Thousand Acres — sent an email to The Press Association saying, 'I can’t believe there wasn’t a worthy one. It’s a shame. But sometimes a selection committee really cannot agree, and giving no award is the outcome. Too bad.' Meanwhile, John Lewis Gaddis took the biography award for his life George F.