"What a pleasure it is to read this love letter to art and to human connection (fragile, powerful, transforming), at a time when we''re masked and lonesome and can''t kiss our own hand without washing it afterwards." --Deborah Levy, New Statesman "Diary of a Film is about how art ravages and redeems. It is about the responsibility artists bear both for their art and the world that must contain it; about the imperative to create something substantial in a world that moves too quickly to capture beauty to one''s satisfaction; it is about living an ideal, committing to a principle whatever the potential cost, leaping into love and trusting that it will hold you." --Stephen Kelman, author of Pigeon English "A wonderful mediation on why we tell stories, and who gets to tell those stories - and the grief of your masterpiece belonging only to its audience once it''s finished. Sentence by sentence, one of the most beautiful novels I''ve read all year." --Nikesh Shukla "Immersive . This is a wise and skillfully controlled novel that can be read in an afternoon, but which radiates in the mind for much longer." --Financial Times "Govinden has created a work of taut and enveloping beauty, which gets to the heart of what it is to live an artistic life caught in the never-present of the piece just made and the piece as yet uncreated.
" --Andrew McMillan "One for literary fiction fans, Niven''s prose is intoxicating. --Cosmopolitan "A beguiling exploration of artistic obsession. --Colin Grant, Observer "A sophisticated and sensitive book about storytelling and queer kinship." --Attitude "Vicariously I experienced again the freedom to travel and visit a European city just to catch an exhibition, go dancing or merely escape the mundane for a weekend. Diary of a Film is about seeing the familiar in new ways, finding friends wherever we are and coming to terms with the past being the past. Set amongst the gourmet surroundings of a Northern Italian film festival, it reads like an elegy for a just-gone era." --Paul Mendez, author of Rainbow Milk "I truly fell in love with this book. It gifts the reader, offering complex human relationships, beautifully-written; I felt a genuine sadness when each scene ended.
Reading Diary of a Film, I was powerfully reminded of the depth of the human heart, and of the work which proceeds from it." --Okechukwu Nzelu Immensely talented." --Sarah Hughes, i newspaper "A meditation on film-making, art, grief and privacy. Constructed with the skill of a watchmaker, with a precise, consistent pitch of intensity." --Keith Ridgeway "Precision engineered European modernism from a master stylist. It walks us into a luminous and loving conversational drama, rich with complex erotics and interwoven private agonies. He writes exquisitely about art making, about obsession and responsibility. It''s a gorgeous novel.
" --Max Porter "Niven Govinden''s Diary of a Film, his sixth novel, is also his best yet. Smart, sexy and cinematic (in many senses), it is a love letter to Italy and to film." --Alex Preston, Observer "It is a book about the dysfunctions of grief and about what rights the artist has to take liberties with somebody else''s story. Gorgeously written, Diary of a Film is a book quite ripe, fittingly, for film adaptation." --Literary Review "A serious, elegant and elegiac novel: an evocative tribute to the lost world of high cinematic glamour and a lament for the artists'' struggle towards greatness. When the time comes again, this is the book I''ll carry to read during days spent wandering around the grandeur of a city, moving from cafe to cafe, dreaming of the beautiful life." --Preti Taneja "A beautiful, poignant novel of love and longing . This tale of a director beguilingly captures the agony of making a film - and letting the public see it.
" --Tim Robey, Telegraph "Govinden''s prose flows with the smooth lilt of a moving camera . an outstanding, luxurious novel." -- The i "Because this is a novel of introspection - the narrator ponders his relationship to his lead actors, themselves embarking on a relationship with one another, and his life''s work - its tone is one of intimacy and shared confidences that draws the listener ever further inwards." --Financial Times "Elegant . In a strong, clear tone that''s unfettered by hyperbole, Govinden allows us access to the narrator''s mind as he muses on love, work and who should tell whose stories." --Monocle " Diary of a Film is an achingly intimate novel--tender and wise like Rilke''s Letters to a Young Poet through the lens of Luca Guadagnino. Govinden drops us into the fray of an Italian film festival only to reveal a secret garden of quiet and stolen moments with a director whose film is about to premiere. In hotel rooms, abandoned buildings, and in a whisper in front of the international press corps, joy blooms, ideas are born, liberties are taken.
Trust holds it all afloat. A stunning meditation on the art of creation and the nature of the artist." --Saskia Vogel "Fall into its rhythms, and a few nights at a film festival will become an existential exploration of the creative process." --The Skinny.