LITERARY BENT – Writing at its best

Christa Wolf (née Ihlenfeld; 18 March 1929, Landsberg an der Warthe – 1 December 2011, Berlin, http://www.fembio.org/english/biography.php/woman/biography/christa-wolf/ ) was a German literary critic, novelist, and essayist. She was one of the best-known writers to emerge from the former East Germany. In Cassandra (1983) the author retells the story of the fall of Troy, but from the point of […]

Amy Tan (born February 19, 1952, http://www.amytanauthor.com/) is an American writer whose works explore mother-daughter relationships and the Chinese-American experience. Her best-known work is The Joy Luck Club, which has been translated into 35 languages. In 1993, this book was adapted into a commercially successful film directed by Wayne Wang. (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107282/?ref_=nv_sr_1) The brief outline of The

Winfried Georg Sebald (18 May 1944 – 14 December 2001, http://www.theguardian.com/education/2001/dec/21/artsandhumanities.highereducation) — known as W.G. Sebald or Max Sebald — was a German writer and academic. At the time of his death at the age of 57, he was being cited by many literary critics as one of the greatest living authors and had been

Alan Furst (born February 20, 1941, http://www.alanfurst.net/) is an American author of historical spy novels. He has been called ‘an heir to the tradition of Eric Ambler and Graham Greene’, whom he cites along with Joseph Roth and Arthur Koestler as important influences. Most of his novels since 1988 have been set just prior to

André Philippus Brink, (29 May 1935 – 6 February 2015, http://literature.britishcouncil.org/andra-brink) was a South African novelist. He wrote in both Afrikaans and English and was a Professor of English at the University of Cape Town. His 1979 novel A Dry White Season is as startling and powerful as when first published more than two decades ago, even knowing

Haruki Murakami (born January 12, 1949, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haruki_Murakami ) is a contemporary Japanese writer. His books and stories have been bestsellers in Japan as well as internationally, with his work being translated into 50 languages and selling millions of copies. The Wind-up Bird Chronicle (being three books in one volume: The Thieving Magpie, Bird as Prophet, The Birdcatcher) is an

Alan James Hollinghurst, FRSL, (born 26 May 1954, http://literature.britishcouncil.org/alan-hollinghurst and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Hollinghurst) is an English novelist, poet, short story writer and translator. He is the recipient of numerous awards, including the 1989 Somerset Maugham Award, the 1994 James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the 2004 Booker Prize for this novel, The Line of Beauty. The summary is

If your preference is for the controversial, try reading The Elementary Particles (2000) by Michel Houellebecq (http://www.houellebecq.info/english.php and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michel_Houellebecq). This edition was a translation from the French by Frank Wynne. It has otherwise been translated as ‘Atomised’. The summary is simple enough. Bruno and Michel are half-brothers abandoned by their mother, an unabashed devotee of the drugged-out free-love

Geraldine Brooks (http://geraldinebrooks.com/) is a skilled writer whose 2005 novel, March, won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Originally from Sydney, Australia, she became a US citizen in 2002. In this piece of historical fiction (inspired by the true story of Eyam) the scene is set when an infected bolt of cloth carries bubonic plague from London

Successful American novelist John Irving (http://john-irving.com/and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Irving) has published 19 works since his first – Setting Free the Bears in 1968. The one I’ve enjoyed most was his fifth, The Hotel New Hampshire (1981). This is a wildly eccentric family saga. John Berry is the son of a hapless dreamer, and brother to a cadre of crazy siblings. He

Anthony Doerr (http://www.anthonydoerr.com/biography/) was born and raised in Cleveland, Ohio. He is the author of the story collections The Shell Collector and Memory Wall, the memoir Four Seasons in Rome, and the novels About Grace and All the Light We Cannot See, which was awarded the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for fiction and was a finalist for

“You don’t see the connections in your life until it’s too late to disentangle them,” says Alice, a character in Andrew O’Hagan’s new novel. This thought-provoking book is about patterns which are repeated through generations of families and nations. It traces the confluences of the personal and historical, of art and life. We meet Anne Quirk whose life

Kazuo Ishiguro (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kazuo_Ishiguro and http://www.faber.co.uk/author/kazuo-ishiguro/) is one of the most celebrated contemporary fiction authors in the English-speaking world, having received four Man Booker Prize nominations, and winning the 1989 award for his novel The Remains of the Day. The summary of Never Let Me Go is as follows. As a child, Kathy – now thirty-one years old

The Poisonwood Bible (1998) (recently voted Britain’s favourite readers group book), by Barbara Kingsolver (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbara_Kingsolver and http://www.kingsolver.com/), is a novel about a missionary family, the Prices, who in 1959 move from the U.S. state of Georgia to the village of Kilanga in the Belgian Congo, close to the Kwilu River. (The nearest town, an impossibly long journey away,

Sarah Waters (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarah_Waters and http://www.sarahwaters.com/) is a Welsh born novelist best known for her first novel, Tipping the Velvet (1998). In 2002, this novel was adapted into a three-part television series of the same name for BBC 2. If Victorian lesbian cunnilingus holds any appeal for you, the novel and DVD (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Tipping-Velvet-Complete-BBC-DVD/dp/B00007DL9J/ref=sr_1_1?s=dvd&ie=UTF8&qid=1418862038&sr=1-1&keywords=tipping+the+velvet) would make for a fine Christmas gift. Novels that