• Keen observers of contemporary fiction will be delighted to hear of a new anthology entitled All Hail the New Puritans, in which the grooviest of writers parade their wares according to a set of draconian guidelines established by the book's editors, Nicholas Blincoe and Matt Thorne
Asceticism, though, is not what it used to be, as a handful of contributors to the book demonstrated at a dinner thrown by Zadie Smith at the ICA. Blincoe and Thorne themselves, alongside Toby Litt, Daren King and others, enjoyed proceedings so greatly that they forgot they all had to look their best the next day for a Puritans photoshoot. With an hour to go, Blincoe was still attempting to rouse King from his slumbers, having performed the same operation four times on the way home the night before. Glad to see the nation's literary flowers aren't denying themselves too many worldly pleasures for the sake of art.
• The man who has written more swingeing letters than the Loafer has had angels on horseback and Pinot Grigio - Tottenham firebrand Keith Flett - is to produce something that doesn't begin with the words Dear Sir. His subject matter remains reassuringly left of centre, though, as a dip into The Twentieth Century: A Century of Wars and Revolutions, edited with David Renton, will demonstrate.
Flett is proving himself a natural convert to the author's life, telling us of a celebratory gathering to mark publication and having a cheeky Follett-style sideswipe at Mr Blair. Those concerned for Flett's ideological purity, however, need not worry too much: we are sternly informed that the bash won't take place in Islington, but "in the environs of the Marxism 2000 summer school".
• Further material for the AA Gill dossier. The great Scottish writer (as, in all seriousness, the Loafer once heard him introduced) finds himself used as puff material for someone else's book. "Elizabeth David written by Quentin Tarantino" enthuses Gill of Anthony Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential, the blood-and-guts memoir of a hellraising chef. Give yourself a treat by trying to envisage precisely what that description means - Bunfight at the OK Corral, perhaps?
• Congratulations to Leila Aboulela, who has won the first Caine Prize for African Writing for her short story "The Museum". Ben Okri chaired the judges, and Aboulela will receive her $15,000 prize money this weekend in Harare to coincide with the Zimbabwe Book Fair.
