LITERARY BENT – Writing at its best

Vasili Grossman (12 December 1905 – 14 September 1964, http://grossmanweb.eu/en/home.asp/) was a Soviet Russian writer and journalist. A Ukrainian Jew, he was trained as an engineer and worked in the Donets Basin, but changed his career in the 1930s and published short stories and several novels. At the outbreak of the Second World War, he became […]

Margaret Atwood (http://margaretatwood.ca/ and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Atwood) is a hugely respected and loved writer, having been shortlisted for The Booker Prize five times. Her novel of 2003, Oryx and Crake displays her accomplished style, and profound meditations, to good effect. The summary is as follows. Snowman may be the last man on earth, the only survivor of an unnamed apocalypse. Once he

Pat Conroy (born October 26, 1945, http://www.patconroy.com/) is an American bestselling author who has written several acclaimed novels and memoirs. Two of his novels, The Prince of Tides and The Great Santini, were made into Oscar-nominated films. He is recognized as a leading figure of late-20th century Southern literature (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_literature). In The Prince of Tides

Jeffrey Eugenides (born March 8, 1960, http://www.whiting.org/awards/winners/jeffrey-eugenides#/) is an American novelist and short story writer. He has written numerous short stories and essays, as well as three novels: The Virgin Suicides (1993), Middlesex (2002), and The Marriage Plot (2011). Middlesex received the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in addition to being a finalist for the National

It’s always misguided to say that ‘the book was better than the film’ or vice versa. They are works of art in two different media, each with their own criteria for success and excellence. In the case of The Hours by Michael Cunningham (http://www.michaelcunninghamwriter.com/ and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Cunningham), no false comparison need be made between the novel and the

Sarah Dunant (http://sarahdunant.com/) is probably best known for presenting the live BBC nightly culture programme The Late Show (1989-1996). After that she presented the BBC Radio 3 programme Night Waves. She is the author of 10 novels to date. One of her most enjoyable is The Birth of Venus (2003), set in late 15th Century Florence. The

The novelist Molly Gloss (http://mollygloss.com/) has earned numerous awards, including an Oregon Book Award, a Pacific Northwest Booksellers Award, the PEN West Fiction Prize, the James Tiptree Jr. Award and a Whiting Writers Award. If you want a really ‘feel good read’ set in Oregon, The Hearts of Horses (2007) is for you. In the winter

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