James Lasdun

James Lasdun (born 8 June 1958) is an English novelist and poet.

Life and career

Lasdun was born in London,[1] the son of Susan (Bendit) and British architect Sir Denys Lasdun.[2][3] Lasdun has written four novels, including The Horned Man, 2002, a New York Times Notable Book, and Seven Lies, 2006, which was an Economist Book of the Year and was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize for fiction. He has published four collections of short stories, including The Siege: Selected Stories, the title story of which was adapted for film by Bernardo Bertolucci as Besieged in 1998. His latest collection It's Beginning To Hurt, 2009 was chosen as a Best Book of the Year by The Los Angeles Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Library Journal and the Atlantic. Lasdun has written four books of poetry, one of which, Landscape with Chainsaw,[4] was a finalist for the T S Eliot Prize, the Forward Prize and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. It was also selected as a TLS International Book of the Year.

In 2013 he published a memoir: Give Me Everything You Have: On Being Stalked. His alleged stalker wrote a memoir in response called Writing and Madness in a Time of Terror.[5]

With Jonathan Nossiter, Lasdun co-wrote the film Sunday in 1997, based on his story Ate Menos or The Miracle, winning both the Best Feature Award and the Waldo Salt Best Screenplay Award at Sundance. Together they also wrote the next Nossiter film Signs and Wonders in 2000, starring Charlotte Rampling and Stellan Skarsgard, selected for the official selection of the 50th Berlin International Film Festival[6] in 2000.

His reviews and essays have appeared in Harper's, Granta, the London Review of Books, The Guardian and The New Yorker.

With his wife, Pia Davis, Lasdun has written two guidebooks dedicated to the combined pleasures of walking and eating: one in Tuscany and Umbria, the other in Provence.

He has taught creative writing at Princeton, New York University, the New York State Writers' Institute, the New School, Columbia University and Bennington College.

Critical appraisals of his work include reviews by James Wood in The Guardian,[7] Gabriele Annan in The New York Review of Books[8] and Johanna Thomas-Corr in The Observer.[9]

Bibliography

Novels

  • Lasdun, James (2002). The horned man. London: Jonathan Cape.
  • — (2005). Seven Lies. W. W. Norton. ISBN 978-0-393-32908-7. Paperback.
  • — (2016). The Fall Guy. W. W. Norton. ISBN 978-0-393-29232-9. Hardcover.
  • — (2019). Victory: Two Novellas. London: Jonathan Cape. Contains Feathered Glory and Afternoon of a Faun.

Short fiction

Collections

Poetry

Collections

Nonfiction

Miscellaneous

Honors

Notes

  1. ^ "Search Results for England & Wales Births 1837-2006". Archived from the original on 24 August 2017. Retrieved 24 August 2017.
  2. ^ Rowntree, Diana (12 January 2001). "Sir Denys Lasdun". The Guardian. London. Archived from the original on 29 July 2019. Retrieved 17 February 2014.
  3. ^ [1] Archived 24 August 2017 at the Wayback Machine Book review by Jenny Turner in The Guardian
  4. ^ Birnbaum (14 February 2006), Identity Theory (interview), archived from the original on 19 April 2006, retrieved 8 May 2006.
  5. ^ "Writing and Madness in a Time of Terror". Goodreads. Retrieved 28 April 2024.
  6. ^ "Berlinale: 2000 Programm". berlinale.de. Archived from the original on 11 November 2013. Retrieved 8 July 2015.
  7. ^ "Book review". The Guardian. London, UK. 29 May 1999. Archived from the original on 14 March 2016. Retrieved 11 December 2016..
  8. ^ Annan, Gabriele (9 May 2002). "Who Killed Bogomil Trumilcik?". New York Review of Books. 49 (8). Archived from the original on 28 February 2014. Retrieved 17 February 2014..
  9. ^ "Victory by James Lasdun review – suspenseful, truthful, audacious". The Observer. London. 3 March 2019. Archived from the original on 6 March 2019. Retrieved 7 September 2020.
  10. ^ Online version is titled "My dentist's murder trial".
  11. ^ "Writers Institute website". Archived from the original on 22 April 2006. Retrieved 8 May 2006.
  12. ^ "The Short Story (UK) website". Archived from the original on 21 August 2006. Retrieved 23 August 2006.