Adam Thorpe

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Adam Thorpe (born December 5, 1956 in Paris , France ) is a British writer whose works include dramas , short stories and poetry .

Life

Adam Thorpe grew up in India , Lebanon , Cameroon and England . Thorpe's father Bernard Naylor Thorpe worked for Pan Am and his mother Sheila Greenlees Thorpe worked for NATO .

In 1979 Thorpe graduated from Oxford ( Magdalen College ). He studied together with well-known poets and scholars such as John Fuller , Emrys Jones and Bernard O'Donoghue . After graduating, Thorpe went to the Desmond Jones School of Mime and learned to act. At the same time he was co-founder of the Equinox Traveling Theater and toured the Berkshire - Wiltshire area of ​​England with his group from 1980 to 1986 , also offering workshops at local schools. Thorpe also taught theater at East London College from 1983 to 1987 and lectured in English at the Polytechnic of Central London from 1987 to 1990. In 1985 Thorpe married and went to France . Thorpe has three children.

Works and work

His works brought Thorpe worldwide appreciation for their experimentalism. His debut novel Ulverton (1992) became a bestseller and is a panoramic picture of English rural history. Ulverton was published with great success and the writer John Fowles stated in The Guardian (May 28, 1992): "(...) the most interesting first novel I have read these last years". The work consists of 12 loosely connected stories over a period of 350 years, in which the story of a rural village and its inhabitants takes place. Different narrative forms, from dense prose to dialect to forms of the modern script come into play. It was not uncommon for Ulverton to compare it to James Joyce's Ulysses in reviews relating to the linguistic intensity . " Ulverton " is still considered to have what it takes to become a modern classic and is the subject of investigation in English studies. The book won the Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize in 1992. Ulverton, often thought to be untranslatable, has been published in several languages, with the German translator Hans Wolf receiving the Ledig-Rowohlt Translator Prize for Ulverton.

Thorpe's cosmopolitan background and his residence in France are reflected in his numerous novels and short stories in addition to his poetry, whereby Europe and Great Britain in particular are subject to critical scrutiny.

So his 2007 published novel is Between Each Breath ( clock skew ) translated into German has been and is a critical examination of the British society.

The 2004 published novel The Rules of Perspective ( The rules of perspective ) was also translated into German and is also a war novel, as well as philosophy of art. The action takes place in a German museum during the Second World War and confronts art with an extreme situation. Thorpe's novel Hodd was published in 2009. Hodd unravels the mystery of Robin Hood anew, offers over 400 footnotes, has a few surprises in store and presents himself as a translation of a Latin manuscript. Thorpe also writes short stories a. a. for the BBC (radio) and in 2009 took part, among other things, in the project “Parc stories - stories from the Royal park”, in which eight well-known British writers were involved and each wrote a short story on one of eight London parks. Adam Thorpe was responsible for Hyde Park with the short story Direct Hit .

Awards

  • 1985: Eric Gregory Award
  • 1988: Whitbread Poetry Award (shortlist) Mornings in the Baltic
  • 1992: Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize Ulverton
  • 2007: Forward Poetry Prize (Best Poetry Collection of the Year) (shortlist) Birds with a Broken Wing
  • 2008: National Short Story Prize (shortlist)
  • 2010: Walter Scott Prize (shortlist) Hodd

Works

  • Mornings in the Baltic (1988) (lyrics)
  • Meeting Montaigne (1990) (Poetry)
  • Ulverton (1992) (novel)
  • Still (1995) (novel)
  • Pieces of Light (1998) (novel)
  • From the Neanderthal (1999) (lyrics)
  • Shifts (2000) (Short Stories Collection)
  • Nineteen Twenty-One (2001) (Novel)
  • No Telling (2003) (novel)
  • Nine Lessons From the Dark (2003) (lyric)
  • The Rules of Perspective (2005) (novel)
  • Is This The Way You Said? (2006) (Short Stories Collection)
  • Between Each Breath (2007) (novel)
  • Birds with a Broken Wing (2007) (lyrics)
  • The Standing Pool (2008) (novel)
  • Hodd (2009) (novel)
  • Missing Fay (2017) novel. Jonathan Cape, London.

literature

  • Simone Broders: As if a building was being constructed. Studies on the role of history in Adam Thorpe's novels. Erlangen Studies in English and American Studies, Volume 10. LIT, Münster 2008.
  • Simone Broders: I must live, or the universe will die '- Holocaust and memory in Adam Thorpe's The Rules of Perspective. In: Rudolf Freiburg, Gerd Bayer (Hrsg.): Literature and Holocaust. Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2008.
  • Sabine Hagenauer: An Interview with Adam Thorpe. In: R Freiburg, J Schnitker (Ed.): Do you consider yourself a postmodern author? LIT, Münster 1999.
  • Ingrid Gunby: History in Rags: Adam Thorpe's Reworking of England's National past. In: Contemporary Literature. Vol. 44, No. 1, 2003, pp. 47-72.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Jules Smith : British Council. Contemporary writers. Adam Thorpe. ( online ( memento of October 9, 2009 in the Internet Archive ))
  2. ↑ a b c d e f Adam Thorpe: Introduction. Adam Thorpe ( Memento from January 22, 2013 in the web archive archive.today )
  3. ↑ a b ( Adam Thorpe: . Ulverton novel about twelve generations. In: . Random House Retrieved on March 2, 2014 . April 2006) ISBN 1-4481-3006-9
  4. ↑ Bernhard Walcher : The discrete charm of the upper class. About Adam Thorpe's contemporary novel “Clock Shift”. ( Literary Review, No. 5/2008)
  5. ↑ Alf Mentzer : Adam Thorpe. The rules of perspective. ( . Books novel and poetry (no longer available online). In: hr-online. Formerly in the original ; accessed on March 2, 2014 .  ( Page no longer available , searching web archives )@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.hr-online.de )
  6. ↑ John Harrison: Review of Hodd. ( The Guardian, Saturday , June 20, 2009)
  7. ^ Royal Parks are work of fiction. ( BBC London )
personal data
SURNAME Thorpe, Adam
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British writer
DATE OF BIRTH 5th December 1956
PLACE OF BIRTH Paris , France