John W. Wall

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John William Wall (known as the author under the pseudonym Sarban ; born November 6, 1910 in Mexborough , Yorkshire ; died April 11, 1989 in Pen-Y-Fan , Monmouthshire ) was a British storyteller and diplomat. His best-known book is the novel Hörnerschall ( The Sound of His Horn , 1952).

Life

Wall's parents were John William Wall, a conductor on the Great Central Railway , and Maria Ellen Wall, née Moffatt. He was the youngest of five surviving siblings. He grew up in a rural and small town and often visited the father's family farm near Beltoft near Belton . He was a gifted student and received a scholarship first to the secondary school in Mexborough and then to the Jesus College in Cambridge . According to him, he had already considered colonial service then, among other things, since one of his role models was the poet and diplomat James Elroy Flecker , author of The Golden Journey to Samarkand .

He therefore decided to study languages ​​in Cambridge and passed the Tripos examination with distinction and then the diplomatic service examination. In September 1933 he received a post as Vice Consul on probation in Beirut and subsequently other posts as Vice Consul in Cairo (1936), second consular secretary in Jedda (1939), further posts in Tabriz (1944), Isfahan (1946), Casablanca ( 1947), Bahrain (1952) and Salonika (1955). From 1957 to 1959 Wall was ambassador to Paraguay and from 1963 to 1966 he was consul general in Alexandria . In 1946 Wall met his future wife Eleanor Alexander Riesle, married in 1950 and they had a daughter together. In 1971 the connection was cut.

By late 1947, Wall had written two short stories, Ringstones and A Christmas Story . Together with three others they appeared under the pseudonym Sarban in 1951 as Ringstones and Other Curious Tales . This was followed by the novel The Sound of His Horn in 1952 and another collection of three short stories, The Doll Maker and Other Tales of the Uncanny, in 1953 . These three books, the novel and a total of eight short stories were all that Wall published during his lifetime, all of them with the publisher Peter Davies . A series of other previously unpublished stories appeared only posthumously.

Wall's first attempt with a longer form was the short novel The Discovery of Heretics , which was rejected by Davies and only appeared in 2010 by Tartarus Press along with other previously unpublished stories Wall. Walls in Cairo in the summer of 1950 wrote the novel The Sound of His Horn (German horns sound ), which is his most famous work. At its core, it is a story from an alternative world into which the protagonist inexplicably got on his flight from a German prisoner of war camp in 1943. In this world, in which the year 102 of the “First German Millennium” is written, the Germans won the Second World War and now rule the world. In this future, the top Nazis indulge in bizarre conversations, including organizing human hunts in an extensive “Reichsforst”.

After Wall retired from the diplomatic service in 1966, he continued to work for the Foreign Office as a lecturer in London and from 1970 for six and a half years for the GCHQ in Cheltenham . After his retirement, Wall lived in Monmouthshire, Wales, where he died in 1989 at the age of 79. His ashes were scattered in the Fellows' Garden at Jesus College, Cambridge.

Wall had claimed that after 1951 he had neither the time nor the inclination to write. In fact, his estate included a number of stories that have now been published, as well as an extensive novel The Gynarchs , which he had written in 1965, and a fragment of a novel, an untitled novel on which he had worked with a colleague from the diplomatic service and a novel with the title Sysgol , which Wall noted using a mixture of Arabic and shorthand, which is why the manuscript has not yet been deciphered.

bibliography

novel
  • The Sound of His Horn (1952)
    • German: Hörnerschall. 2003.
Collections
  • Ringstones and Other Curious Tales (1951)
  • The Doll Maker and Other Tales of the Uncanny (1953)
  • The Sound of His Horn and The King of the Lake (1998)
  • The Sacrifice and Other Stories (2002)
  • The Sarban Omnibus (2008)
  • Discovery of Heretics: Unseen Writings (2010)
  • The Sound of His Horn and Other Stories (2016)
Short stories
  • Ringstones (1951, book published 1961)
  • A Christmas Story (1951)
  • Capra (1951)
  • Calmahein (1951)
  • The Khan (1951)
  • A House of Call (1953)
  • The Dollmaker (1953, book published 1960)
    • German: The Puppet Maker. 2000.
  • The Trespassers (1953)
  • The King of the Lake (1999)
  • Number Fourteen (2000)
  • The Sacrifice (2002)
  • The Sea-Things (2002)
  • “Their Blood Cannot Die” (2010)
  • Agorite (2010)
  • Aunt Rachel (2010)
  • Discovery of Heretics (2010)
  • Fergus Aran (2010)
  • Never Go Back (2010)
  • The Artemists (2010)
  • The Consul (2010)
  • The Father (2010)
  • The Gynarchs (2010)
  • The Herbs of Miss Aran (2010)
  • The Papers of Henry Sugden (2010)

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ "As a job I had already got the idea that I might get into the Colonial Service. I already had an ambition to go to the Middle East (influenced by Flecker's poetry, I think.) And reading George Borrow had awakened a desire to master a difficult Oriental language. "Quoted from http://tartaruspress.com//sarban/ biography.html .
  2. ↑ Peter Nicholls: Sarban. In: Everett Franklin Bleiler (Ed.): Supernatural Fiction Writers. Vol. 2. Scribner's, New York 1985, ISBN 0-684-17808-7 , p. 668.
  3. ↑ According to Wall, a “Sarban” is the Persian name for companions in a caravan, whose job it is also to entertain with stories in the caravanserai in the evenings . See Peter Nicholls: Sarban. In: Everett Franklin Bleiler (Ed.): Supernatural Fiction Writers. Vol. 2. Scribner's, New York 1985, ISBN 0-684-17808-7 , p. 667.
  4. ^ Time, a Falconer , Tartarus Press.
personal data
SURNAME Wall, John W.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Wall, John William (full name); Sarban (pseudonym)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British writer and diplomat
DATE OF BIRTH November 6, 1910
PLACE OF BIRTH Mexborough , Yorkshire
DATE OF DEATH April 11, 1989
Place of death Pen-Y Fan , Monmouthshire