Adam Thorpe (born 5 December 1956) is a
British
British may refer to:
Peoples, culture, and language
* British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories, and Crown Dependencies.
** Britishness, the British identity and common culture
* British English, ...
poet
A poet is a person who studies and creates poetry. Poets may describe themselves as such or be described as such by others. A poet may simply be the creator ( thinker, songwriter, writer, or author) who creates (composes) poems (oral or writte ...
and
novelist
A novelist is an author or writer of novels, though often novelists also write in other genres of both fiction and non-fiction. Some novelists are professional novelists, thus make a living writing novels and other fiction, while others aspire to ...
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 the ''
Guardian
Guardian usually refers to:
* Legal guardian, a person with the authority and duty to care for the interests of another
* ''The Guardian'', a British daily newspaper
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'', the ''
Poetry Review
''Poetry Review'' is the magazine of The Poetry Society, edited by the poet Emily Berry. Founded in 1912, shortly after the establishment of the Society, previous editors have included poets Muriel Spark, Adrian Henri, Andrew Motion and Maurice R ...
'' and the ''
Times Literary Supplement
''The Times Literary Supplement'' (''TLS'') is a weekly literary review published in London by News UK, a subsidiary of News Corp.
History
The ''TLS'' first appeared in 1902 as a supplement to ''The Times'' but became a separate publication ...
''.
Career
Adam Thorpe was born in Paris and grew up in India,
Cameroon
Cameroon (; french: Cameroun, ff, Kamerun), officially the Republic of Cameroon (french: République du Cameroun, links=no), is a country in west-central Africa. It is bordered by Nigeria to the west and north; Chad to the northeast; the C ...
and England. Graduating from
Oxford's Magdalen College
Magdalen College (, ) is a constituent college of the University of Oxford. It was founded in 1458 by William of Waynflete. Today, it is the fourth wealthiest college, with a financial endowment of £332.1 million as of 2019 and one of the st ...
in 1979, he founded a touring theatre company, then settled in
London
London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...
to teach drama and English literature. He married Joanna Wistreich, an English teacher, in 1985; they had three children, 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 the
Whitbread Poetry Award
The Costa Book Awards were a set of annual literary awards recognising English-language books by writers based in UK and Ireland. Originally named the Whitbread Book Awards from 1971 to 2005 after its first sponsor, the Whitbread company, then ...
. His first novel, ''
Ulverton'' (1992), an episodic work covering 350 years of English rural history, won critical acclaim worldwide, including that of the novelist
John Fowles
John Robert Fowles (; 31 March 1926 – 5 November 2005) was an English novelist of international renown, critically positioned between modernism and postmodernism. His work was influenced by Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus, among others.
Aft ...
, who reviewed it in ''
The Guardian
''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...
'' as:
"...the most interesting first novel I have read these last years".
The novel was awarded the
Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize
The Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize was presented from 1967 until 2003 by the Royal Society of Literature for the best regional novel of the year. It is named after the novelist Winifred Holtby who was noted for her novels set in the rural scenes ...
for 1992.
Karl Ove Knausgård
Karl Ove Knausgård (; born 6 December 1968) is a Norwegian author. He became known worldwide for six autobiographical novels, titled ''My Struggle'' (''Min Kamp'').
Since the completion of the ''My Struggle'' series in 2011, he has also publis ...
, author of the internationally acclaimed bestseller My Struggle, stated during a reading in Washington DC that, "My favourite... English novel is by Adam Thorpe called ''Ulverton''... a brilliant, very, very good and very unBritish novel... It's magic, a magic book."
Hilary Mantel
Dame Hilary Mary Mantel ( ; born Thompson; 6 July 1952 – 22 September 2022) was a British writer whose work includes historical fiction, personal memoirs and short stories. Her first published novel, ''Every Day Is Mother's Day'', was releas ...
has recently written: "There is no contemporary I admire more than Adam Thorpe, whose novel ''Ulverton'' is a late twentieth century masterpiece."
In 2007 Thorpe was shortlisted for prizes in three respective genres: the
Forward Poetry Prize
The Forward Prizes for Poetry are major British awards for poetry, presented annually at a public ceremony in London. They were founded in 1992 by William Sieghart with the aim of celebrating excellence in poetry and increasing its audience. The ...
, the
BBC National Short Story Award
BBC National Short Story Award is a British literary award for short stories. It was founded in 2005 by the NESTA (the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts) with support from BBC Radio 4 and '' Prospect'' magazine. The winner re ...
and the
South Bank Show Award
The South Bank Sky Arts Awards (originally The South Bank Show Awards) are an accolade recognizing British achievements in the arts. The awards have been given annually since 1997.
They originated with the long-running British arts programme ' ...
for the year's best novel (''Between Each Breath''). His novel ''Hodd'' (2009), a darker version of the
Robin Hood
Robin Hood is a legendary heroic outlaw originally depicted in English folklore and subsequently featured in literature and film. According to legend, he was a highly skilled archer and swordsman. In some versions of the legend, he is depic ...
legend in the form of a medieval document, was shortlisted for the inaugural
in 2010. His sixth poetry collection, ''Voluntary'' (2012), was a
Poetry Book Society Recommendation.
His 2012 novel, the literary thriller ''Flight'', was described by
D. J. Taylor
David John Taylor (born 1960) is a British critic, novelist and biographer. After attending school in Norwich, he read Modern History at St John's College, Oxford, and has received the 2003 Whitbread Biography Award for his biography of Geo ...
in the ''Guardian'' as confirming "a long-held impression that Thorpe is one of the most underrated writers on the planet."
Thorpe started his career as an actor, and is the author of many BBC radio dramas starring, among others,
Tara Fitzgerald
Tara Anne Cassandra Fitzgerald (born 18 September 1967) is an English actress who has appeared in feature films, television, radio and the stage. She won the New York Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Featured Actress in a Play in 1995 as Opheli ...
,
Sian Phillips Sian or Siyan may refer to:
__NOTOC__ People
*Siân, a Welsh girl's name; list of people with this name
Places
*Sian, Iran (disambiguation), various places in Iran
*Sian, Russia, a rural locality in Amur Oblast, Russia
*Xi'an, China, formerly roman ...
and
Patrick Malahide
Patrick Gerald Duggan (born 24 March 1945), known professionally as Patrick Malahide, is a veteran British film, television and theatre actor, author and producer, known, amongst other things, for his roles as Inspector Alleyn in ''The Inspect ...
; his one-stage play, ''Couch Grass and Ribbon'', written almost entirely in Berkshire dialect, was performed at the
Watermill Theatre
The Watermill Theatre is a repertory theatre in Bagnor, Berkshire. It opened in 1967 in Bagnor Mill, a converted watermill on the River Lambourn. As a producing house, the theatre has produced works that have subsequently moved on to the We ...
, Berkshire, in 1996.
Using period language, he has translated two great nineteenth-century French novels for
Vintage Classics
Vintage Classics is a paperback publisher of contemporary fiction and non-fiction. It is part of the Vintage imprint, which is itself a part of Random House Publishers. The famous American publisher Alfred A. Knopf (1892–1984) founded Vintage Boo ...
:
Flaubert
Gustave Flaubert ( , , ; 12 December 1821 – 8 May 1880) was a French novelist. Highly influential, he has been considered the leading exponent of literary realism in his country. According to the literary theorist Kornelije Kvas, "in Flauber ...
's ''
Madame Bovary
''Madame Bovary'' (; ), originally published as ''Madame Bovary: Provincial Manners'' ( ), is a novel by France, French writer Gustave Flaubert, published in 1856. The eponymous character lives beyond her means in order to escape the banalities ...
'' and
Zola Zola may refer to:
People
* Zola (name), a list of people with either the surname or given name
* Zola (musician) (born 1977), South African entertainer
* Zola (rapper), French rapper
* Émile Zola, a major nineteenth-century French writer
Plac ...
's ''
Thérèse Raquin
''Thérèse Raquin'' is an 1868 novel by French writer Émile Zola, first published in serial form in the literary magazine ''L'Artiste'' in 1867. It was Zola's third novel, though the first to earn wide fame. The novel's adultery and murder ...
''.
His first work of non-fiction, ''
On Silbury Hill'', described by
Paul Farley
Paul Farley, FRSL (born 1965) is a British poet, writer and broadcaster.
Life and work
Farley was born in Liverpool. He studied painting at the Chelsea School of Art, and has lived in London, Brighton and Cumbria. His first collection of poetr ...
in the ''Guardian'' as "a rich and evocative book of place",
was ''
Book of the Week
''Book of the Week'' is a BBC Radio 4 series that is broadcast daily on week days. Each week, extracts from the selected book, usually a non-fiction work, are read over five episodes; each fifteen-minute episode is broadcast in the morning (9:45a ...
'' on
Radio 4 in August 2014.
Works
Poetry
* ''Mornings in the Baltic'' (Secker and Warburg, 1988)
* ''Meeting Montaigne'' (Secker, 1990)
* ''From the Neanderthal'' (Cape, 1999)
* ''Nine Lessons from the Dark'' (Cape, 2003)
* ''Birds with a Broken Wing'' (Cape, 2007)
* ''Voluntary'' (Cape, 2012)
* ''Words from the Wall'' (Cape, 2019)
Novels
* ''
Ulverton'' (Secker, 1992; Vintage Classics, 2010)
* ''Still'' (Secker, 1995)
* ''Pieces of Light'' (Cape, 1998)
* ''Nineteen Twenty-One'' (Cape, 2001)
* ''No Telling'' (Cape, 2003)
* ''The Rules of Perspective'' (Cape, 2005)
* ''Between Each Breath'' (Cape, 2007)
* ''The Standing Pool'' (Cape, 2008)
* ''Hodd'' (Cape, 2009)
* ''Flight'' (Cape, 2012)
* ''Missing Fay'' (Cape, 2017)
Short story collections
* ''Shifts'' (Cape, 2000)
* ''Is This the Way You Said?'' (Cape, 2006)
Non-fiction
* ''
On Silbury Hill'' (Little Toller, 2014)
* ''Notes from the Cévennes'' (Bloomsbury, 2018)
Translation
* ''Madame Bovary'' (Vintage Classics, 2011)
* ''Thérèse Raquin'' (Vintage Classics, 2013)
Radio dramas
* ''The Fen Story'' (1991)
* ''Offa's Daughter'' (1993)
* ''Couch Grass and Ribbon'' (1996)
* ''An Envied Place'' (2002)
* ''Nought Happens Twice Thus'' (2003)
* ''Himmler's Boy'' (2004)
Prizes and awards
*1985
Eric Gregory Award
The Eric Gregory Award is a literary award given annually by the Society of Authors for a collection by British poets under the age of 30. The award was founded in 1960 by Dr. Eric Gregory to support and encourage young poets. In 2021, the seven ...
, for poetry
*1988
Whitbread Award
The Costa Book Awards were a set of annual literary awards recognising English-language books by writers based in UK and Ireland. Originally named the Whitbread Book Awards from 1971 to 2005 after its first sponsor, the Whitbread company, then ...
, for poetry, shortlist, ''Mornings in the Baltic''
*1992
Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize
The Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize was presented from 1967 until 2003 by the Royal Society of Literature for the best regional novel of the year. It is named after the novelist Winifred Holtby who was noted for her novels set in the rural scenes ...
, for best work of regional literature, ''Ulverton''
*2007
Forward Poetry Prize
The Forward Prizes for Poetry are major British awards for poetry, presented annually at a public ceremony in London. They were founded in 1992 by William Sieghart with the aim of celebrating excellence in poetry and increasing its audience. The ...
, for Best Poetry Collection of the Year, shortlist, ''Birds with a Broken Wing''
*2010
, for historical fiction, shortlist, ''Hodd''
"Booker rivals clash again on Walter Scott prize shortlist"
''The Guardian
''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...
'', 2 April 2010
Notes and references
External links
Overview in the ''Boston Review''
by James Hynes (2003).
reprinted in ''The New York Times''.
Watch a video interview with Adam Thorpe
on The Interview Online.
Review of ''Hodd'' in the ''Daily Telegraph''.
Interview with Bertram Reinecke.
Adam Thorpe: 'One can hardly say I've been unambitious'
"One can hardly say that I've been unambitious." Interview in the ''Guardian'', 2012.
Adam Thorpe , British Council Literature
An overview on the British Council website.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Thorpe, Adam
20th-century English novelists
21st-century English novelists
English dramatists and playwrights
English male poets
1956 births
Living people
British male dramatists and playwrights
English male novelists
20th-century English male writers
21st-century English male writers