Rachel Seiffert
{{short description|British novelist and short story writer (born 1971)}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=March 2025}}
{{Use British English|date=October 2016}}
Rachel Seiffert (born 1971) is a British novelist and short story writer.
Biography
She was born in 1971 in Oxford{{cite news|url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/1552142.stm|title=Seiffert: Important debut|publisher=BBC News|date=19 September 2001|accessdate=31 January 2010}} to German and Australian parents, and was brought up bilingually. She lives in London.[http://www.contemporarywriters.com/authors/?p=auth03A30L020012634903 British Council of Contemporary writers]. {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070408033932/http://www.contemporarywriters.com/authors/?p=auth03A30L020012634903 |date=8 April 2007 }} Rachel Seiffert
Publications and awards
Seiffert has published five works of fiction to date:
The Dark Room (2001) is a novel, shortlisted for the Booker Prize{{cite news|url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/1340877/Bainbridge-fails-to-make-Booker-shortlist.html|title=Bainbridge fails to make Booker shortlist|date=18 September 2001|accessdate=31 January 2010|work=The Daily Telegraph|location=London}} and the Guardian First Book Award in 2001, winner of the LA Times Prize for First Fiction and a Betty Trask Award in 2002.{{cite web|title=Society of Authors – Prizes, Grants and Awards|publisher=Society of Authors|accessdate=2009-01-18|url=http://www.societyofauthors.org/prizes-grants-and-awards/prizes-for-fiction-and-non-fiction/the_betty_trask_prize/betty_trask_past_winners.html|url-status=dead|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20090503102735/http://www.societyofauthors.org/prizes-grants-and-awards/prizes-for-fiction-and-non-fiction/the_betty_trask_prize/betty_trask_past_winners.html |archivedate=3 May 2009}} The 2012 movie Lore by writer-director Cate Shortland is based on The Dark Room.Taylor, Ella (7 February 2013) [https://www.npr.org/2013/02/07/171202770/lore-after-hitler-an-awakening-for-the-reichs-children "'Lore': After Hitler, An Awakening For The Reich's Children"], NPR.
Field Study (2004) is a collection of short stories, one of which received an award from International PEN.
Afterwards (2007) is a novel, long-listed for the Orange Prize for Fiction the same year.
The Walk Home (2014) is a novel set in Glasgow about a family torn apart.
A Boy in Winter (2017) is a novel set during the 1941 German invasion of the Ukraine during Operation Barbarossa.
Seiffert was named as one of Granta magazine's 20 Best of Young British Novelists in 2003, and her short story "Field Study" was included in the subsequent collection.{{cite news|title=Sympathy for the squaddie|url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/3662830/Sympathy-for-the-squaddie.html|first=Lorna|last=Bradbury|date=28 January 2007|accessdate=31 January 2010|work=The Daily Telegraph|location=London}}
In 2011, she received the E. M. Forster Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Her books have been translated into ten languages.
Subjects
Seiffert's subject is the individual in history: how political and economic upheavals impact on ordinary lives. Her characters have included the 12-year-old daughter of an SS officer in 1945, a Polish seasonal worker on a German asparagus farm after the fall of the Berlin Wall, and a London painter and decorator who killed a civilian as a 19-year-old squaddie with the British Army in Northern Ireland during the Troubles.
References
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Category:British women novelists
Category:British women short story writers