George Szanto

{{Short description|American-Canadian novelist, playwright, critic, and scholar}}

{{infobox person

| name = George Szanto

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George H. Szanto

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| birth_date = {{Birth year and age|1940}}

| birth_place = Derry, Northern Ireland

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| occupation = Novelist, playwright, critic

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| spouse = Alison Szanto

| awards = {{plainlist|

Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada
Hugh MacLennan Award for Fiction

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| website = http://georgeszanto.com/

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George Szanto (born 1940) is an American-Canadian novelist, playwright, critic, and scholar. His published work includes more than a dozen novels and short-story collections as well as plays, full-length works of literary criticism, mysteries, and a memoir. His work has also appeared in literary periodicals including the Kansas Quarterly, the Bucknell Review, the Massachusetts Review, and the Canadian Comparative Literature Review and in anthologies. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, and he won the Hugh MacLennan Award for Fiction in 1995 for his novel Friends & Marriages.{{cite web|title=Biography in Context: George H. Szanto|work=Contemporary Authors Online|publisher=Gale|year=2007|url=http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/H1000097024/BIC?u|access-date=April 28, 2019|url-access=subscription}}

Born in Derry, Northern Ireland, Szanto attended Dartmouth College in the United States, the University of Frankfurt am Main in Germany, and the University of Aix-Marseille in France before completing a Ph.D. at Harvard University in 1967. During his academic career, Szanto taught comparative and dramatic literature at the University of California, San Diego, and comparative literature at McGill University, Montreal, Quebec.

Bibliography

=Short story collections=

Sixteen Ways to Skin a Cat (1977)
Duets (with Per Brask) (1989){{cite book|title=Duets|publisher=WorldCat|oclc=19848172|url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/19848172|access-date=April 30, 2019}}

=Novels=

Not Working (1982)
The Underside of Stones: A Story Cycle (1990)
Friends & Marriages (1994)
The Condesa of M (2001)
Second Sight (2004)
The Tartarus House on Crab{{cite book|title=The Tartarus House on Crab|publisher=WorldCat|oclc=670421135 |url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/670421135|access-date=April 30, 2019}}
Whatever Lola Wants (2014){{cite book|title=Whatever Lola Wants: A Novel|publisher=WorldCat|oclc=869266714 |url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/869266714|access-date=April 30, 2019}}

=Mysteries=

Four novels, co-authored with Sandy Frances Duncan, comprise the Islands Investigations International Mysteries, as follows:

Never Sleep with a Suspect on Gabriola Island (2009){{cite book|title=Never Sleep with a Suspect on Gabriola Island|publisher=WorldCat|oclc=305104485 |url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/305104485|access-date=May 1, 2019}}
Always Kiss the Corpse on Whidbey Island (2010){{cite book|title=Always Kiss the Corpse on Whidbey Island|publisher=WorldCat|oclc=1036057052|url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/1036057052|access-date=May 1, 2019}}
Never Hug a Mugger on Quadra Island (2011){{cite book|title=Never Hug a Mugger on Quadra Island|publisher=WorldCat|oclc=935755909|url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/935755909|access-date=May 1, 2019}}
Always Love a Villain on San Juan Island (2013){{cite book|title=Always Love a Villain on San Juan Island|publisher=WorldCat|oclc=833553361 |url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/833553361|access-date=May 1, 2019}}

=Criticism=

Narrative Consciousness: Structure and Perception in the Fiction of Kafka, Beckett and Robbe-Grillet (1972)
Theater and Propaganda (1978)
Narrative Taste and Social Perspectives: The Matter of Quality (1987)
Inside the Statues of Saints: Mexican Writers Talk About Culture and Corruption, Politics and Daily Life{{cite web|title=Biography in Context: George Szanto|work=Directory of American Scholars|publisher=Gale|year=2002|url=http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/K1612546517/BIC?u=|access-date=April 28, 2019|url-access=subscription}}

=Biography=

Bog Tender: Coming Home to Nature and Memory (2013){{cite book|title=Bog Tender|publisher=WorldCat|oclc=813522406|url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/813522406|access-date=April 30, 2019}}

=Drama=

The New Black Crook (1971)
Chinchill! (with Milton Savage) (1972)
After the Ceremony (1978)
The Next Move (1981)

=Satire=

A modest proposition to the people of Canada concerning the pervasive ills and divisions afflicting the nation, including but not limited to the anguish of a land rent asunder by heinous tax bills, curtailment of economic opportunity, the plight of the middle classes, and Quebec (with Per Brask and the Committee Responsible for the Oversight of Canadian Conflict) (1992){{cite book|title=A Modest Proposition...|publisher=WorldCat|oclc=24215526|url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/24215526|access-date=April 30, 2019}}

Awards

Hugh MacLennan Award for Fiction (1995) for Friends & Marriages
Finalist, The Voices of Canada (1980)
Finalist, Books in Canada First Novel Award (1984) for Not Working
Silver Foundation Medal, National Magazine Awards (1988) for "How Ali Cran Got His Name"
Fellow, Royal Society of Canada (1988)
ACTRA winner, Southwest Theatre Conference New Play Project for The New Black Crook