Zembla was a literary and arts magazine published in London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

 for eight issues between 2003 and 2005. The editor was Dan Crowe, publisher Simon Finch and the designer was Vince Frost. The magazine's title came from Vladimir Nabokov

Vladimir Nabokov

Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov was a multilingual Russian novelist and short story writer. Nabokov wrote his first nine novels in Russian, then rose to international prominence as a master English prose stylist...

's novel Pale Fire

Pale Fire

Pale Fire is a novel by Vladimir Nabokov. The novel is presented as a 999-line poem titled "Pale Fire", written by the fictional John Shade, with a foreword and lengthy commentary by a neighbor and academic colleague of the poet. Together these elements form a narrative in which both authors are...

, in which the narrator Charles Kinbote

Charles Kinbote

Charles Kinbote is the unreliable narrator in Vladimir Nabokov's novel Pale Fire.-Academic work:Kinbote appears to be the scholarly author of the Foreword, Commentary and Index surrounding the text of the late John Shade's poem "Pale Fire", which together form the text of Nabokov's novel...

 styles himself the last king of Zembla, a fictional northern country.

One of the notable features was The Dead Interview, in which a modern writer offered an imaginary conversation with a deceased cultural figure. Subjects included Marcel Duchamp

Marcel Duchamp

Marcel Duchamp was a French artist whose work is most often associated with the Dadaist and Surrealist movements. Considered by some to be one of the most important artists of the 20th century, Duchamp's output influenced the development of post-World War I Western art...

 ('interviewed' by Michel Faber

Michel Faber

Michel Faber is a Dutch-born writer of fiction. He writes in English.Faber was born in The Hague, Netherlands. He and his parents emigrated to Australia in 1967...

), Jimi Hendrix

Jimi Hendrix

James Marshall "Jimi" Hendrix was an American guitarist and singer-songwriter...

 (Rick Moody

Rick Moody

Rick Moody is an American novelist and short story writer best known for the 1994 novel The Ice Storm, a chronicle of the dissolution of two suburban Connecticut families over Thanksgiving weekend in 1973, which brought widespread acclaim, became a bestseller, and was made into a feature film of...

), Harry Houdini

Harry Houdini

Harry Houdini was a Hungarian-born American magician and escapologist, stunt performer, actor and film producer noted for his sensational escape acts...

 (Mark Leyner

Mark Leyner

Mark Leyner is an American postmodernist author.Leyner employs an intense and unconventional style in his works of fiction. His stories are generally humorous and absurd: In The Tetherballs of Bougainville, Mark's father survives a lethal injection at the hands of the New Jersey penal system, and...

), Henry James

Henry James

Henry James, OM was an American-born writer, regarded as one of the key figures of 19th-century literary realism. He was the son of Henry James, Sr., a clergyman, and the brother of philosopher and psychologist William James and diarist Alice James....

 (Cynthia Ozick

Cynthia Ozick

Cynthia Ozick is an American short story writer, novelist, and essayist. She is the niece of the Hebraist Abraham Regelson.-Background:Cynthia Shoshana Ozick was born in New York City, the second of two children...

), Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson , often referred to as Dr. Johnson, was an English author who made lasting contributions to English literature as a poet, essayist, moralist, literary critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer...

 (David Mitchell

David Mitchell (author)

David Stephen Mitchell is an English novelist. He has written five novels, two of which were shortlisted for the Booker Prize.- Biography :...

), Friedrich Nietzsche

Friedrich Nietzsche

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was a 19th-century German philosopher, poet, composer and classical philologist...

 (Geoff Dyer

Geoff Dyer

Geoff Dyer is a British author and novelist. He is also a journalist who writes about a wide range of topics. His published work includes four novels and several books of non-fiction, which have won a number of literary awards...

) and Robert Louis Stevenson

Robert Louis Stevenson

Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson was a Scottish novelist, poet, essayist and travel writer. His best-known books include Treasure Island, Kidnapped, and Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde....

 (Louise Welsh

Louise Welsh

Louise Welsh is an author of short stories and novels, based in Glasgow, Scotland.Welsh studied History at Glasgow University and traded in second-hand books for several years before publishing her first novel....

).

Several of the contributors were associated with the New Puritans

New Puritans

The New Puritans was a literary movement ascribed to the contributors to a 2000 anthology of short stories entitled All Hail the New Puritans, edited by Nicholas Blincoe and Matt Thorne. The project is said to have been inspired by the Dogme 95 manifesto for cinematic minimalism and authenticity...

 movement, including Nicholas Blincoe

Nicholas Blincoe

Nicholas Blincoe is an English author, critic and screenwriter. He is the author of six novels, Acid Casuals , Jello Salad , Manchester Slingback , The Dope Priest , White Mice , Burning Paris...

, Daren King

Daren King

Laurence Daren King is an award-winning contemporary English novelist. His debut novel, Boxy an Star, was shortlisted for the 1999 Guardian First Book Award and longlisted for the 1999 Booker Prize. He won first prize in the Nestle Children's Book Prize in 2006...

, Toby Litt

Toby Litt

Toby Litt is an English writer, born in Bedford in 1968. He studied at Bedford Modern School, read English at Worcester College, Oxford and studied Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia where he was taught by Malcolm Bradbury....

, Scarlett Thomas

Scarlett Thomas

Scarlett Thomas, born 1972 in Hammersmith, is an English author. She has written eight novels, including The End of Mr. Y and PopCo, and teaches Creative Writing at the University of Kent.-Biography:...

 and Matt Thorne

Matt Thorne

Matt Thorne is an English writer born in 1974 who has published seven novels. Thorne grew up in Bristol, England, and was educated at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge University. Thorne's first book, Tourist, was published in 1998. The book is an attack on the negative effects of tourism on...

.

Other contributors included Jake Arnott

Jake Arnott

Jake Arnott is a British novelist, author of The Long Firm and other novels. Most of his works are crime novels, and include homosexual characters...

, Paul Auster

Paul Auster

Paul Benjamin Auster is an American author known for works blending absurdism, existentialism, crime fiction and the search for identity and personal meaning in works such as The New York Trilogy , Moon Palace , The Music of Chance , The Book of Illusions and The Brooklyn Follies...

, David Baddiel

David Baddiel

David Lionel Baddiel is an English comedian, novelist and television presenter.-Early life:Baddiel was born in New York, and moved to England when he was four months old. His father, Colin Brian Baddiel, was a Welsh research chemist with Unilever before being made redundant in the 1980s, after...

, Manolo Blahnik

Manolo Blahnik

Manuel "Manolo" Blahnik Rodríguez CBE, , is a Spanish fashion designer and founder of the self-named, high-end shoe brand.-Biography:Born to a Czech father and a Spanish mother and born and raised in the Canary Islands , Blahnik graduated from the University of Geneva in 1965 and studied art in Paris...

, John Byrne, Brian Eno

Brian Eno

Brian Peter George St. John le Baptiste de la Salle Eno , commonly known as Brian Eno or simply as Eno , is an English musician, composer, record producer, singer and visual artist, known as one of the principal innovators of ambient music.Eno studied at Colchester Institute art school in Essex,...

, Helen Fielding

Helen Fielding

Helen Fielding is an English novelist and screenwriter, best known as the creator of the fictional character Bridget Jones, a sequence of novels and films that chronicle the life of a thirtysomething single woman in London as she tries to make sense of life and love.Her novels Bridget Jones's...

, Tibor Fischer

Tibor Fischer

Tibor Fischer is a British novelist and short story writer. In 1993 he was selected by the influential literary magazine Granta as one of the 20 best young British writers....

, Jonathan Safran Foer

Jonathan Safran Foer

Jonathan Safran Foer is an American author best known for his novels Everything Is Illuminated and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close...

, Tim Footman

Tim Footman

Tim Footman is a British author, journalist and editor. He was educated at Churcher's College, Appleby College in Canada, and the University of Exeter....

, Russell Hoban

Russell Hoban

Russell Conwell Hoban is an American writer, now living in England, of fantasy, science fiction, mainstream fiction, magic realism, poetry, and children's books-Biography:...

, Barry Humphries

Barry Humphries

John Barry Humphries, AO, CBE is an Australian comedian, satirist, dadaist, artist, author and character actor, best known for his on-stage and television alter egos Dame Edna Everage, a Melbourne housewife and "gigastar", and Sir Les Patterson, Australia's foul-mouthed cultural attaché to the...

, Siri Hustvedt

Siri Hustvedt

Siri Hustvedt is an American novelist and essayist. Hustvedt is the author of a book of poetry, five novels, two books of essays, and a work of non-fiction...

, AL Kennedy, Matthew Kneale

Matthew Kneale

Matthew Kneale is a British writer, best known for his 2000 novel English Passengers, which won the prestigious Whitbread Book Award and was also shortlisted for the Booker Prize. He went to school at Latymer Upper School and then studied Modern History at Magdalen College, Oxford, and afterwards...

, Hari Kunzru, Hanif Kureishi

Hanif Kureishi

Hanif Kureishi CBE is an English playwright, screenwriter and filmmaker, novelist and short story writer. The themes of his work have touched on topics of race, nationalism, immigration, and sexuality...

, JT Leroy

JT LeRoy

Jeremiah "Terminator" LeRoy was a pseudonym created by American writer Laura Albert. The name was used from 1996 on for publication in magazines such as Nerve and Shout NY. After his first novel Sarah was published, "LeRoy" started making public appearances...

, Robert Macfarlane

Robert Macfarlane

Robert Macfarlane, , is a British travel writer and literary critic. Educated at Nottingham High School, Pembroke College, Cambridge and Magdalen College, Oxford, he is currently a Fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and teaches in the Faculty of English at Cambridge.-Books:Macfarlane's first...

, Stephen Merchant

Stephen Merchant

Stephen James Merchant is an English writer, director, radio presenter, comedian, and actor. He is best known for his collaborations with Ricky Gervais, as the co-writer and co-director of the popular British sitcom The Office, as the co-writer, co-director and a co-star of Extras, and as the...

, ZZ Packer

ZZ Packer

ZZ Packer is an African-American author, notable for her works of short fiction.-Life:She grew up in Atlanta, Georgia and Louisville, Kentucky. "ZZ" was a childhood nickname; her given name is Zuwena...

, Harold Pinter

Harold Pinter

Harold Pinter, CH, CBE was a Nobel Prize–winning English playwright and screenwriter. One of the most influential modern British dramatists, his writing career spanned more than 50 years. His best-known plays include The Birthday Party , The Homecoming , and Betrayal , each of which he adapted to...

, Nicholas Royle

Nicholas Royle

Nicholas Royle is an English novelist.Born in Manchester, Royle has written five novels - Counterparts, Saxophone Dreams, The Matter of the Heart, The Director’s Cut and Antwerp. He also claims to have written more than 100 short stories, which have appeared in a variety of anthologies and...

, James Scudamore

James Scudamore (author)

James Scudamore is an author. He grew up in Japan, Brazil and the UK, and is a graduate of Christ Church, Oxford and of the University of East Anglia.-Books:...

, Will Self

Will Self

William Woodard "Will" Self is an English novelist and short story writer. His fictional style is known for being satirical, grotesque, and fantastical. He is a prolific commentator on contemporary British life, with regular appearances on Newsnight and Question Time...

, Tilda Swinton

Tilda Swinton

Katherine Mathilda "Tilda" Swinton is a British actress known for both arthouse and mainstream films. She has appeared in a number of films including The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Burn After Reading, The Beach, We Need to Talk About Kevin and was nominated for a Golden Globe for her...

, Rachel Weisz

Rachel Weisz

Rachel Hannah Weisz born 7 March 1970)is an English-American film and theatre actress and former fashion model. She started her acting career at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, where she co-founded the theatrical group Cambridge Talking Tongues...

 and Dr Mortimer.

The magazine closed in October 2005.

External links

• http://www.3ammagazine.com/litarchives/2005/feb/interview_dan_crowe.htmlInterview with Dan Crowe, editor of Zembla, in 3:AM Magazine
  3:AM Magazine
  3:AM Magazine is a literary magazine, which was set up as 3ammagazine.com in April 2000 and is edited from Paris. Its editor-in-chief since inception has been Andrew Gallix, a lecturer at the Sorbonne ....
  
  , February 2005]