Alec Waugh

Alec Waugh, 1931

Alexander Raban "Alec" Waugh (born July 8, 1898 in Hampstead (London) , Great Britain , † September 3, 1981 in Tampa , Florida , United States ) was a British writer . The brother of Evelyn Waugh was mainly through his novel Iceland in the Sun famous.

Life

Alec Waugh was born as the eldest child of publisher and writer Arthur Waugh and his wife Catherine Charlotte. Like his father, he attended Sherborne School , but was expelled from it before graduation. He entered Sandhurst High School and wrote his first novel, The Loom of Youth , at the age of 17 , in which he processed his experiences in boarding school. The allusions to homosexual relationships in the boarding school sparked a scandal: Arthur and Alec Waugh were expelled from the alumni association and Alec Waugh's younger brother Evelyn was refused admission. In 1933, the school reversed the sanctions and two of Alec Waugh's sons were able to attend the renowned boarding school.

From 1917 Alec Waugh was deployed in France during the First World War . In 1918 he was taken prisoner in Germany for eight months. After the end of the war he worked until 1925 as an editor at Chapman & Hill , which his father was in charge of. Then he traveled to the South Seas. In 1955 his best-known novel Island in the Sun appeared , which was a great sales success in the USA. In the 1957 film adaptation Hot Earth played, among others, James Mason and Joan Fontaine as well as Harry Belafonte , who also sang the theme song of the same name .

From 1958 Alec Waugh lived regularly in Tangier . He wrote nearly 40 books with some socio-critical impact, although won him a lot of money, but all is not the literary success of Iceland in the Sun had. In 1980 he moved to Florida, where he died of a stroke the following year.

Alec Waugh was married three times: with Barbara Jacobs, with Joan Chirnside and most recently with the American children's author Virginia Sorensen.

Works (in German)

• Island in the sun . Holle, Baden-Baden 1956 (= Island in the Sun , 1955)
• Add fuel to the fire . Holle, Baden-Baden 1961 (= Fuel for the Flame , 1960)
• West Indies volcano. The Caribbean island world from Columbus to Castro . Desch, Munich 1967 (= A Family of Islands , 1964)
• Wines and spirits . Time-Life, Amsterdam 1969; Rowohlt, Reinbek 1979, ISBN 3-499-16439-6 (= Wines and Spirits , 1969)
• A family spy . An erotic comedy. Blanvalet, Berlin 1972, ISBN 3-7645-5841-5 (= A Spy in the Family , 1970)
• Trans. Irene Kafka : Tiarenblüte of Tahiti . A Polynesian legend. Neues Wiener Tagblatt , June 14, 1931, pp. 1 - 3 (feuilleton, each lower margin)

literature

• Horst W. Drescher: Lexicon of English literature. Kröner, Stuttgart 1979, p. 494.

Web links

• Obituary, New York Times
• Entry , Britannica