Edward P. Jones

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Edward Paul Jones (born October 5, 1950 in Washington, DC ) is an American writer.

Life

Jones was born in 1951 to African-American parents (a North Carolina dishwasher and a restaurant worker). He grew up in poor circumstances and was partly raised by his mother alone. From an early age he preferred reading to other pursuits. He attended Holy Cross College in Worcester , Massachusetts . There he attended courses in creative writing and graduated in English . At the invitation of the American novelist John Casey , he moved to the University of Virginia in Charlottesville , where he took courses in creative writing, which he successfully completed with the title “Master of Fine Arts” (MFA).

For the next 19 years, he made a living writing and editing texts on economic topics. However, he lost this job while writing his novel The Known World . In 1992 he published his first book, a collection of short stories Lost in the City , dt. In the labyrinth of the city with which he for the National Book Award was nominated and selected as a finalist in the shortlist came selection. In 1993 he received the Hemingway Foundation PEN Award for this . He was a MacArthur Fellow in 2004 before joining the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2008.

For the novel The Known World , dt. The known world , where he had worked for 10 years, him once again succeeded. He also won the Pulitzer Prize for this novel in 2004 , received the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award and in 2005 the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award . In 2015, this novel was chosen by the BBC's selection of the best 20 novels from 2000 to 2014 as one of the most important works of this century to date. In 2019 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters .

Jones currently resides in Arlington, near Washington, DC .

Works

The known world

The book is set in the pre-war slavery society in the state of Virginia . The focus of the book is the generally little-known fact that black slave owners also existed at the time . Using the example of the people involved, the book shows the effects of slavery on the personality of the people of that time. It is partly understood as an alternative to the book Roots by Alex Haley .

The title of the book alludes to the fact that the slaves were denied any education: they were not allowed to learn to read and write in order not to be able to issue their own permits. They were also not allowed to acquire knowledge of geography , as this could be useful to them in the event of an escape. The known world of the slaves was therefore the plantation on which they worked.

literature

  • Michael Basseler: Cultural Memory and Trauma in the Contemporary Afro-American Novel. Theoretical foundation, forms of expression, development tendencies , Wissenschaftsverlag Trier 2008. ISBN 978-3-86821-013-2

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Newly Elected Members 2019. American Academy of Arts and Letters, accessed May 30, 2019 .
  2. ^ Süddeutsche Zeitung, February 1, 2006
personal data
SURNAME Jones, Edward P.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Jones, Edward Paul (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American writer
DATE OF BIRTH 5th October 1950
PLACE OF BIRTH Washington, DC , United States