Written Lives (Penguin Modern Classics) - Softcover

Marķas, Javier

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0141389273 ISBN 13: 9780141389271

Publisher: Penguin Classics, 2016

Synopsis

In these short, capricious and irreverent portraits of twenty-six great writers, from Joyce to Nabokov, Sterne to Wilde, Javier Marķas, winner of the Dublin IMPAC prize and author of the bestselling A Heart So White, throws unexpected, and very human, light on authors too often enshrined in the halo of artistic sainthood. Revealing that Conrad actually hated sailing and Emily Brontė was so tough she was known as 'The Major', among many other stories of eccentricity, drunkenness and even murder, this joyful book uses unusual angles and peculiar details to illuminate writers' lives in a new way.

Javier Marķas was born in Madrid in 1951. He has published ten novels, two collections of short stories and several volumes of essays. His work has been translated into thirty-two languages and won a dazzling array of international literary awards, including the prestigious Dublin IMPAC award for A Heart So White. He is also a highly practised translator into Spanish of English authors, including Joseph Conrad, Robert Louis Stevenson, Sir Thomas Browne and Laurence Sterne. He has held academic posts in Spain, the United States and in Britain, as Lecturer in Spanish Literature at Oxford University.

About this title

Review:

No one else, anywhere, is writing quite like this (Daily Telegraph)

Marias is a deeply necessary writer, a crusader, funny, pungent, full of wrath and love (Guardian)

Anybody who doesn't read Marķas is doomed (Nation)

You are dazzled by the author's intelligence and understanding of human nature (Scotsman)

From the Back Cover:

'It is difficult to be moderate about the charm of these brief portraits ... Delicious, slyly ironic ... A delightful volume' Michael Dirda, Washington Post Book World

Translated by Margaret Jull Costa

In these short, capricious and irreverent portraits of twenty-six great writers, from Joyce to Nabokov, Sterne to Wilde, Javier Marķas throws unexpected, and very human, light on authors too often enshrined in the halo of artistic sainthood. Revealing that Conrad actually hated sailing and Emily Brontė was so tough she was known as 'The Major', among many other stories of eccentricity, drunkenness and even murder, this joyful book uses unusual angles and peculiar details to illuminate writers' lives in a new way.

'An artful antidote to the "exhaustive and futile erudition" of biography ... Marķas sups from the marrow of their bones with a very long spoon' The Times

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin Classics
• Publication date: 2016
• ISBN 10: 0141389273
• ISBN 13: 9780141389271
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 208