Lost with Mein Kampf

You can divide the nation into those who watch Lost and those who don't, but no matter on which side you fall, few will be unaware of the most expensive US TV show ever made. Featuring survivors of a plane crash marooned on a desert island, the possible dead, possibly doomed cast are under siege from polar bears, magic numbers and motiveless killers. Village, like most of America is hooked, to the point that we're downloading the new series on the internet. No plot give-aways here but readers might be interested to know that the show is rekindling interest in Irish literature. Watchers will know that even the background events in the series have purported relevance to the story, not least to the obsessives who abound on the net, expounding theories on just what is going on. Episode three of the second series features Flann O'Brien's The Third Policeman and has sent viewers scurrying to Amazon to buy the book, pushing it into the Top 40 bestsellers. Just as the relevance of last year's episode featuring Richard Adams' Watership Down, we are not sure why Flann's Dalkey-set comedy would help us decipher the desert island mystery. Although isn't The Third Policeman narrated by someone who turns out to be dead at the end?

Harry Potter has now topped the 300 million sales mark, counting all editions and over 60 languages including Irish. It will be worse than the day since Westlife split when the seventh and final edition is published. In the week that Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince won the US Quills award for Best Book (suggesting the awards may be based on sales rather than quality), the book was back in the news when author and Catholic priest Reverend Graham Taylor was thrown out of a UK school after he attempted to "out" Harry during a talk to the school's pre-teens. Taylor is a writer of fantasy novels himself and claims he was only joking when he referred to our young hero as "not the only gay in the village". Teachers, allegedly embarrassed by the homophobia escorted him from the premises. This was not the only revelation this week however, when friends of Dylan Thomas claimed he wasn't as wild and licentious as posterity has portrayed him. The book, Portrait of a Friend, claims that the wild man image of drink and women was an inaccurate representation of a man who often fell asleep after a few pints. Whatever next? John Banville reportedly seen smiling when discussing his Man Booker victory for The Sea?

So what exactly happened to this year's Nobel Prize for Literature? The Americans were expecting Joyce Carol Oates or Philip Roth, while the rest of the continent was looking to Margaret Atwood or Mario Vargas Llosa to scoop the award. Europe was expectantly looking to Orhan Pamuk, author of My Name is Red and Snow who is awaiting December trial in his native Turkey for treason. He made authorities uncomfortable by allegedly referring to Turkish genocidal acts against the Kurds early last century. Probably not the cause celebre Turkey wanted to be holding when their human rights record was under such scrutiny during their proposed accession to the EU. It wouldn't be unfair to suggest that no-one was looking to playwright Harold Pinter, just returned home after a celebrated 75th birthday weekend in Dublin and a public interview in the Gate Theatre. The award had been due for announcement on 7 October but was unaccountably delayed until 30 October at which time it was Pinter and not Pamuk in the frame. So what happened? Did the Swedes get cold feet? We await the full story…

If you're one of the curious people who bought Hitler's Mein Kampf when it was reissued this year, you've probably been faced with two dilemmas. Firstly, if it came via Amazon, you're probably on an FBI list – with your name underlined should you have also been enticed by any books on terrorism. Secondly, the purchase will have raised issues of a decorative nature. Who should sit by Adolf on the bookshelf? Too easy to plump for Bret Easton Ellis' American Psycho or Patrick Suskind's Perfume but the works of David Irving just seem so predictable? Fear not, for this week sees the publication of a new book which can happily nestle on the psycho-shelf of dishonour between Hitler and Saddam Hussein's 2005 novel Get Out of Here, Curse You. Radovan Karadzic, fugitive genocidal general has released Under the Left Breast of the Century, a short book of poetry which he launched near Slobodan Milosevic's home in Serbia. Despite, we might add, having been on the run from the UN since the mid 1990s. We have no knowledge of the content or quality but are not expecting a rival for Seamus Heaney just yet.