Andrew Davidson (writer)
Andrew Davidson (born April 12, 1969 in Pinawa , Canadian province Manitoba ) is a Canadian writer.
Life
He graduated from the University of British Columbia with a BA in English Literature in 1995 and then worked as a teacher in Japan for a few years . After returning to Canada, he now lives in Winnipeg , the capital of the Canadian province of Manitoba.
The debut novel
Andrew Davidson has so far only published a single book with the novel The Gargoyle (Eng. Gargoyle , literally 'The Gargoyle') . This work is the result of seven years of research and development work and was published in 2007 by Doubleday in the USA , by Random House in Canada, and by other publishers in other English-speaking countries. Just four days after its release, it was in the New York Times on their list of best sellers out. The German-language edition of the book was published by Berlin Verlag in January 2009 . The novel received the Canadian Sunburst Award .
action
The plot of the novel blends medieval history and religion with a contemporary drama about the seriously injured victim of a car accident. It is a fantastically absurd story in which different levels of time and space are interwoven and at the same time the genre of the historical novel is combined with the literary genre of science fiction .
The protagonist of the book is a porn actor who suffered serious burn injuries in a self-inflicted accident. In the specialist department of the hospital for burns, the first-person narrator then meets a mysterious woman who claims to be a Nuremberg sculptor and who has earned a medium fortune with her work - gargoyles , small stone demons. Although the woman is being treated for schizophrenia, she still seems quite convincing and authentic. In her abstruse stories, she tells the seriously injured man that they both had a love affair in the 14th century. In her reports she explains that she lived as a nun in the Franconian convent Engelthal , while he was hired as a mercenary until he deserted. It was only in this American hospital that they finally found themselves in the present. The plot of the novel sways between the stories of the old woman on the one hand and the present on the other. In addition, the story of the first German translation of Dante's Divine Comedy is also included.
Works
- Gargoyle. Translation: Eike Schönfeldt. Berlin Verlag, Berlin 2009, ISBN 978-3-8270-0782-7 .
literature
- Janet Maslin: Beyond Fiery Gates, All That an Inferno Allows . In: New York Times . July 31, 2008 ( nytimes.com [accessed December 4, 2012]).
Web links
- Literature by and about Andrew Davidson in the catalog of the German National Library
- Andrew Davidson in the Internet Speculative Fiction Database (English)
- Works by and about Andrew Davidson at Open Library
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Davidson, Andrew |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Canadian writer |
| DATE OF BIRTH | April 12, 1969 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Pinawa |