Lawrence Norfolk

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Lawrence Norfolk, Vienna, 2013

Lawrence Norfolk (born October 1, 1963 in London ) is a British novelist.

Life

Norfolk studied English at King's College ( University of London ) until 1986 . He then worked as a teacher and as a freelance writer for various journals and magazines, including The Times Literary Supplement .

reception

In his novels, Norfolk merges carefully researched historical details and descriptions of the milieu with imaginatively devised fictional elements.

Lemprière's dictionary

On the one hand, the story of the creation of the Classical Dictionary by John Lemprière , published in 1788, is told here, but mixed with the establishment of the East India Trading Company , the massacre of the French Huguenots in La Rochelle , the adventures of the Pantisocratic pirates and Greek mythology . For this novel, Norfolk was awarded the Somerset Maugham Award in 1992 . The literary criticism of the time, however, criticized the novel "its icy artificiality, its plastic perfection". In addition, Hanswilhelm Haefs ' idiosyncratic Germanization of the novel sparked a debate about the quality of the translation.

A rhinoceros for the Pope

The rivalry of Spain and Portugal to win the favor of the Pope in the early 16th century, resulting in expeditions to the Pope a rhinoceros ( Rhinoceros ) for his menagerie in Rome to get. At the same time, Norfolk describes the experiences of German friars in the Tiber city, who traveled from the island of Usedom to Rome.

In the shape of a boar

While the first two novels were recognizably mixed from the same ingredients - a sunken city, a mysterious ship, a dead monster - the knitting pattern of the third differs significantly: In the novel In the Shape of a Boar , Norfolk takes up the myth of the Calydonian boar hunt : Im 13th century BC A boar causes terrible havoc. Sixty men and one woman hunt the animal that Artemis , the goddess of the hunt, sent into the country because she was not sufficiently worshiped. In the novel, history repeats itself in World War II : This time Greek partisans are the hunters and a German officer of the Wehrmacht is the prey.

Works

stories
  • Drug squad smeeched my Hoover . In: Maria Lexton (Ed.): The Time out book of London short stories . Penguin Books, London 1993, ISBN 0-14-023085-8 .
Novels
Non-fiction
  • Ott's sneeze . Book Works Edition, London 2002, ISBN 1-870699-52-1 (together with Neal White).

literature

  • Thomas Köhler: Alphabet and Labyrinth. To Lawrence Norfolk's "Lemprière's Dictionary" . Wehrhahn, Hannover 2003, ISBN 3-932324-35-8 .

Web links

Commons : Lawrence Norfolk  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual references, footnotes

  1. ↑ Andreas Kilb : In the Disneyland of the imagination. Review in Die Zeit . Oct 2, 1992.
  2. ↑ Heidrun Gerzymisch -Arbogast: translation criticism system and criteria. (PDF; 419 kB) 'Advanced Translation Research Center' (ATRC) at Saarland University . Furthermore Burkhart Kroeber : The dispute over "Lemprière's dictionary". A public excitement with a long reverberation, in language in the technical age , SpritZ, special issue Sovereign Bridge Builders . 60 years of the Association of Literary Translators . Ed. Helga Pfetsch. Böhlau, Cologne 2014 ISSN  0038-8475 ISBN 9783412222840 , pp. 73-84. Also on publishing politics and " literary criticism " using the example of this book. The entire controversy online as a pdf , from Der Translators , 27, 3, 1993, pp. 1–28
personal data
SURNAME Norfolk, Lawrence
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British novelist
DATE OF BIRTH October 1, 1963
PLACE OF BIRTH London