Far from Verona

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Far away from Verona (original title: A Long Way from Verona ) is the first novel by the British writer Jane Gardam . It was published in 1971 and was translated into German by Isabel Bogdan in 2018 . The autobiographical novel, set in a location on the English coast around 1940 (during the Battle of Britain ), revolves around the 12- and 13-year-old first-person narrator Jessica Vye and her calling as a writer.

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Jessica (or Jess) is the daughter of a curate and lives in the (fictional) seaside resort of Cleveland Sands in north-east England. At the age of nine, she had given the famous (fictional) writer Arnold Hanger, who had been to her school, a pile of self-written material. Shortly afterwards she received a message from Mr Hanger: "Jessica Vye, you are without a doubt a real writer!"

The novel has no actual plot , but describes in three parts some experiences from the life of the 12 to 13 year old student:

  • Part I: The Crazy One (Originally The Maniac )
  • Part II: The Boy ( The Boy )
  • Part III: The poem ( The Poem )

In the first part she describes u. a. how, while strolling off the path in the Valley Gardens, she meets an Italian prisoner of war who, in utter madness, stabs a flower bed with a knife. Jessica stops him, whereupon the "crazy" starts crying.

In the second part, she is invited by her crush Christian, a year older than her and a self-declared communist, for a walk in a workers' settlement. There is an air attack.

The third part is about Jessica submitting a poem to a national competition. The prize, worth a check for £ 20, is actually awarded to her and her poem entitled "The Madman" is published in the Times .

The book title - Far Away from Verona - implicitly refers to Jessica's continually postponed reading of Shakespeare's tragedy Romeo and Juliet , which is set in Verona .

Awards

The book won the Children's Literature Association's Phoenix Award in 1991 . This literary prize is awarded to works that have been published in English at least 20 years before the award ceremony and that have not received a noteworthy award when they were first published.

expenditure

  • A long way from Verona . Hamish Hamilton, London 1971

Web links

Reviews in German-language media

International reviews