Ronan Bennett

Ronan Bennett

Ronan Bennett (born January 14, 1956 in Newtownabbey ) is a Northern Irish writer . In the UK and the USA , he has also worked as a screenwriter. Bennett also writes regularly for The Guardian and The Observer .

Live and act

Bennett grew up in a Catholic family in Belfast . Although he writes in English, he sees himself as an Irish author. In his stories Bennett repeatedly deals with the fate of people who, through no fault of their own, suddenly find themselves in hopeless situations. Bennett himself was arrested as a youth after a demonstration in his hometown and wrongly convicted in 1974 of the murder of a Royal Ulster Constabulary inspector . In this respect, he partly takes up autobiographical aspects in his novels. In 1975, however, the sentence against him was overturned and Bennett was released from custody.

Bennett received his PhD from King's College , London in 1987 . He wrote the script for the gangster film Face from 1997. He lives in London with his family.

reception

Bennett's novel The Catastrophist was shortlisted for the Whitbread Book Award in 1998 , and Havoc in its Third Year received the Irish Novel of the Year award in 2005 .

In his novel Zugzwang (2007), the figure of Avrom Rozental is modeled on the historical chess master Akiba Rubinstein . The fictional story takes place in Saint Petersburg at the time of the international chess tournament of 1914, in which the challenger to the German world chess champion Emanuel Lasker is to be decided. Zugzwang first appeared in 2006 as a serial in The Observer .

"A thriller with a complex plot and subtle allusions that is reminiscent of Graham Greene "

- The Times Literary Supplement on the novel Zugzwang

Works (selection)

• Havoc, in its third year . Bloomsbury, London 2004, ISBN 0-7475-6249-0 .
• Overthrown by strangers . Review Publ., London 2005, ISBN 0-7472-6820-7 .
• The second prison . Hamilton Books, London 1991, ISBN 0-241-13087-5 .
• Across the dark river ("The catastrophist"). Goldmann, Munich 2000, ISBN 3-442-72651-4 .
• Zugzwang. Roman ("Zugzwang"). Berliner Taschenbuchverlag, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-8333-0565-8 .
  • Zugzwang. Audio book . Hörverlag, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-86717-180-9 (4 CDs, read by Hans Kremer ).

Web links

• Literature by and about Ronan Bennett in the catalog of the German National Library
• Ronan Bennett in the Internet Movie Database (English)
• Interview in Berlin

Individual evidence

1. ^ ^{A b} Bennett at Bloomsbury