Adam Thorpe | |
|---|---|
| Born | (1956-12-05)5 December 1956 (age 68) Paris, France |
| Occupation | novelist,poet,playwright,translator,reviewer |
| Nationality | British |
| Period | 1988–present |
Adam Thorpe (born 5 December 1956) is aBritishpoet andnovelist 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 theGuardian, thePoetry Review and theTimes Literary Supplement.
Adam Thorpe was born in Paris and grew up in India,Cameroon and England. Graduating fromOxford'sMagdalen College in 1979, he founded a touring theatre company, then settled inLondon to teach drama and English literature. He married Joanna Wistreich, an English teacher, in 1985; they had three children,[1] 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 theWhitbread 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 novelistJohn Fowles, who reviewed it inThe Guardian as:
"...the most interesting first novel I have read these last years".[2]
The novel was awarded theWinifred 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 calledUlverton... a brilliant, very, very good and very unBritish novel... It's magic, a magic book."[3]
Hilary Mantel has recently written: "There is no contemporary I admire more than Adam Thorpe, whose novelUlverton is a late twentieth century masterpiece."[4]
In 2007 Thorpe was shortlisted for prizes in three respective genres: theForward Poetry Prize, theBBC National Short Story Award and theSouth Bank Show Award for the year's best novel (Between Each Breath). His novelHodd (2009), a darker version of theRobin Hood legend in the form of a medieval document, was shortlisted for the inauguralWalter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction in 2010. His sixth poetry collection,Voluntary (2012), was aPoetry Book Society Recommendation.
His 2012 novel, the literary thrillerFlight, was described byD. J. Taylor in theGuardian as confirming "a long-held impression that Thorpe is one of the most underrated writers on the planet."[5]
Thorpe started his career as an actor, and is the author of many BBC radio dramas starring, among others,Tara Fitzgerald,Sian Phillips andPatrick Malahide; his one-stage play,Couch Grass and Ribbon, written almost entirely in Berkshire dialect, was performed at theWatermill Theatre, Berkshire, in 1996.
Using period language, he has translated two great nineteenth-century French novels forVintage Classics:Flaubert'sMadame Bovary andZola'sThérèse Raquin.[6]
His first work of non-fiction,On Silbury Hill, described byPaul Farley in theGuardian as "a rich and evocative book of place",[7] wasBook of the Week onRadio 4 in August 2014.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
