Adam Thorpe
{{short description|British poet and novelist (born 1956)}}
{{Use British English|date=December 2015}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=September 2020}}
{{Infobox writer
| name = Adam Thorpe
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| birth_date = {{birth date and age|1956|12|5|df=yes}}
| birth_place = Paris, France
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| occupation = novelist, poet, playwright, translator, reviewer
| nationality = British
| period = 1988–present
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Adam Thorpe (born 5 December 1956) is a British poet and novelist whose works also include short stories, translations, radio dramas and documentaries. He is a frequent contributor of reviews and articles to various newspapers, journals and magazines, including the Guardian, the Poetry Review and the Times Literary Supplement.
Career
Adam Thorpe was born in Paris and grew up in India, Cameroon and England. Graduating from Oxford's Magdalen College in 1979, he founded a touring theatre company, then settled in London to teach drama and English literature. He married Joanna Wistreich, an English teacher, in 1985; they had three children,Meritt Moseley, British novelists since 1960, Detroit, Gale Group, 2001, p. 268. and they now live in France.
His writing has garnered recognition throughout his career, and has been translated into many languages. His first collection of poetry, Mornings in the Baltic (1988), was shortlisted that year for the Whitbread Poetry Award. His first novel, Ulverton (1992), an episodic work covering 350 years of English rural history, won critical acclaim worldwide, including that of the novelist John Fowles, who reviewed it in The Guardian as:
"...the most interesting first novel I have read these last years".John Fowles, "Thank the Gods for Bloody Mindedness" (review of Ulverton), the Guardian, 28 May 1992, p. 25.
The novel was awarded the Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize for 1992.
Karl Ove Knausgård, author of the internationally acclaimed bestseller My Struggle, stated during a reading in Washington DC that, "My favourite... English novel is by Adam Thorpe called Ulverton... a brilliant, very, very good and very unBritish novel... It's magic, a magic book."{{cite web |url= https://www.loc.gov/today/cyberlc/feature_wdesc.php?rec=5528 |title= Karl Ove Knausgaard Reads from "My Struggle: Book One" Webcast |orig-year= event 2 May 2012 |work= Library of Congress |date= 7 August 2014 |access-date= 21 April 2017}}
Hilary Mantel has recently written: "There is no contemporary I admire more than Adam Thorpe, whose novel Ulverton is a late twentieth century masterpiece."{{cite web |url= http://www.vogue.com/946802/novelists-summer-reading-lists |title= 5 of Vogue's Favorite Novelists Tell Us What They're Reading This Summer |author= Guiducci, Mark |work= vogue.com |date= 6 August 2014 |access-date= 21 April 2017}}
In 2007 Thorpe was shortlisted for prizes in three respective genres: the Forward Poetry Prize, the BBC National Short Story Award and the South Bank Show Award for the year's best novel (Between Each Breath). His novel Hodd (2009), a darker version of the Robin Hood legend in the form of a medieval document, was shortlisted for the inaugural Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction in 2010. His sixth poetry collection, Voluntary (2012), was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation.
His 2012 novel, the literary thriller Flight, was described by D. J. Taylor in the Guardian as confirming "a long-held impression that Thorpe is one of the most underrated writers on the planet."{{cite web|url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/may/04/flight-adam-thorpe-fiction-review|title=Flight by Adam Thorpe – review|first=D. J.|last=Taylor|date=4 May 2012|access-date=21 April 2017|work=The Guardian}}
Thorpe started his career as an actor, and is the author of many BBC radio dramas starring, among others, Tara Fitzgerald, Sian Phillips and Patrick Malahide; his one-stage play, Couch Grass and Ribbon, written almost entirely in Berkshire dialect, was performed at the Watermill Theatre, Berkshire, in 1996.
Using period language, he has translated two great nineteenth-century French novels for Vintage Classics: Flaubert's Madame Bovary and Zola's Thérèse Raquin.[http://www.the-tls.co.uk/tls/reviews/literature_and_poetry/article1371574.ece] {{dead link|date=October 2021}}
His first work of non-fiction, On Silbury Hill, described by Paul Farley in the Guardian as "a rich and evocative book of place",{{cite web|url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/jul/17/on-silbury-hill-adam-thorpe-review|title=On Silbury Hill review – 'a rich and evocative book of place'|first=Paul|last=Farley|date=17 July 2014|access-date=21 April 2017|work=The Guardian}}
was Book of the Week on Radio 4 in August 2014.
Works
=Poetry=
- Mornings in the Baltic (Secker and Warburg, 1988)
- Meeting Montaigne (Secker, 1990)
- From the Neanderthal (Cape, 1999)
- Nine Lessons from the Dark (Cape, 2003)
- Birds with a Broken Wing (Cape, 2007){{Cite web|url=http://www.towerpoetry.org.uk/poetry/poetry-archive/201-dark-wings-alison-brackenbury|archiveurl=https://archive.today/20150425234607/http://www.towerpoetry.org.uk/poetry/poetry-archive/201-dark-wings-alison-brackenbury|url-status=dead|title=Tower Poetry, Christopher Tower Poetry competition, Oxford poetry competition, Young poets competition UK|website=Archive.today|archive-date=25 April 2015|access-date=25 October 2021}}
- Voluntary (Cape, 2012)
- Words from the Wall (Cape, 2019)
=Novels=
- Ulverton (Secker, 1992; Vintage Classics, 2010)
- Still (Secker, 1995){{Cite web |url=http://webdoc.gwdg.de/edoc/ia/eese/artic99/puchner/4_99.html |title=Archived copy |access-date=25 April 2015 |archive-date=4 March 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160304195344/http://webdoc.gwdg.de/edoc/ia/eese/artic99/puchner/4_99.html |url-status=dead }}
- Pieces of Light (Cape, 1998)
- Nineteen Twenty-One (Cape, 2001)
- No Telling (Cape, 2003)
- The Rules of Perspective (Cape, 2005){{cite web|url=http://observer.com/2006/03/art-class-in-the-rubble-a-war-novel-eyes-beauty-2/|title=Art Class in the Rubble- A War Novel Eyes Beauty|date=20 March 2006|website=Observer.com|access-date=21 April 2017}}
- Between Each Breath (Cape, 2007)
- The Standing Pool (Cape, 2008)
- Hodd (Cape, 2009)
- Flight (Cape, 2012)
- Missing Fay (Cape, 2017)
=Short story collections=
- Shifts (Cape, 2000)
- Is This the Way You Said? (Cape, 2006)[https://archive.today/20150425234601/http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/is-this-the-way-you-said-by-adam-thorpe-407961.html]
=Non-fiction=
- On Silbury Hill (Little Toller, 2014)
- Notes from the Cévennes (Bloomsbury, 2018)
=Translation=
- Madame Bovary (Vintage Classics, 2011)
- Thérèse Raquin (Vintage Classics, 2013)
=Radio dramas=
- The Fen Story (1991)
- Offa's Daughter (1993){{Cite news|url=https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/radio-acts-decline-and-fall-1453357.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211025190558/https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/radio-acts-decline-and-fall-1453357.html |archive-date=2021-10-25 |url-access=limited |url-status=live|title=RADIO / Acts of decline and fall|date=23 October 2011|newspaper=The Independent|access-date=25 October 2021}}
- Couch Grass and Ribbon (1996)
- An Envied Place (2002)
- Nought Happens Twice Thus (2003)
- Himmler's Boy (2004){{Cite news|url=http://www.theguardian.com/media/2004/oct/25/tvandradio.radio|title=Radio review|date=24 October 2004|newspaper=The Guardian|access-date=25 October 2021}}
=Prizes and awards=
- 1985 Eric Gregory Award, for poetry
- 1988 Whitbread Award, for poetry, shortlist, Mornings in the Baltic
- 1992 Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize, for best work of regional literature, Ulverton
- 2007 Forward Poetry Prize, for Best Poetry Collection of the Year, shortlist, Birds with a Broken Wing
- 2010 Walter Scott Prize, for historical fiction, shortlist, Hodd[https://www.theguardian.com/books/2010/apr/01/booker-rivals-walter-scott-prize-shortlist "Booker rivals clash again on Walter Scott prize shortlist"], The Guardian, 2 April 2010
Notes and references
{{Reflist}}
External links
{{wikiquote}}
- [https://web.archive.org/web/20160304055824/http://new.bostonreview.net/BR28.3/hynes.html Overview in the Boston Review] by James Hynes (2003).
- [https://www.nytimes.com/books/first/t/thorpe-light.html Chapter 1 of Pieces of Light by Adam Thorpe], reprinted in The New York Times.
- [https://web.archive.org/web/20091112112442/http://www.theinterviewonline.co.uk/library/books/adam-thorpe-interview.aspx Watch a video interview with Adam Thorpe] on The Interview Online.
- [https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/bookreviews/5369532/Hodd-by-Adam-Thorpe-review.html Hodd by Adam Thorpe: review] Review of Hodd in the Daily Telegraph.
- [http://www.poetenladen.de/bertram-reinecke-adam-thorpe-english.htm Adam Thorpe Interview with Bertram Reinecke | poetenladen (poet-shop)] Interview with Bertram Reinecke.
- [https://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/dec/16/adam-thorpe-interview-ulverton-flight Adam Thorpe: 'One can hardly say I've been unambitious'] "One can hardly say that I've been unambitious." Interview in the Guardian, 2012.
- [https://web.archive.org/web/20150114183633/http://literature.britishcouncil.org/adam-thorpe Adam Thorpe | British Council Literature] An overview on the British Council website.
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Category:20th-century English novelists
Category:21st-century English novelists
Category:English dramatists and playwrights
Category:British male dramatists and playwrights
Category:English male novelists