Adam Samuel James Foulds
FRSL
The Royal Society of Literature (RSL) is a learned society founded in 1820, by George IV of the United Kingdom, King George IV, to "reward literary merit and excite literary talent". A charity that represents the voice of literature in the UK, th ...
( ;
born 8 October 1974) is a British novelist and poet.
Biography
Foulds was educated at
Bancroft's School, read English at
St Catherine's College, Oxford under
Craig Raine, and graduated with an MA in creative writing from the
University of East Anglia in 2001.
In 2007, Foulds published his first book, ''The Truth About These Strange Times''. The novel, which is set in the present day, is concerned in part with the
World Memory Championships.
In 2008, Foulds published a substantial narrative poem entitled ''The Broken Word'', described by the critic Peter Kemp as a "verse novella". It is a fictional version of some events during the
Mau Mau Uprising
The Mau Mau rebellion (1952–1960), also known as the Mau Mau uprising, Mau Mau revolt or Kenya Emergency, was a war in the British Kenya Colony (1920–1963) between the Kenya Land and Freedom Army (KLFA), also known as the ''Mau Mau'', an ...
. Writing in ''
The Guardian'',
David Wheatley suggested that "The Broken Word is a moving and pitiless depiction of the world as it is rather than as we might like it to be, and the terrible things we do to defend our place in it".
In 2009, his novel ''
The Quickening Maze
''The Quickening Maze'' is a 2009 historical fiction novel by British poet and author Adam Foulds and published by Jonathan Cape. The book received the Encore Award (2009), European Union Prize for Literature (2011) and was shortlisted for Man ...
'' was published. Recommending the work in a 'books of the year' survey, novelist
Julian Barnes declared: 'Having last year greatly admired Adam Foulds's long poem "The Broken Word", I uncharitably wondered whether his novel ''The Quickening Maze'' (Cape) might allow me to tacitly advise him to stick to verse. Some hope: this story of the Victorian lunatic asylum where the poet
John Clare and
Tennyson's brother Septimus were incarcerated is the real thing. It's not a "poetic novel" either, but a novelistic novel, rich in its understanding and representation of the mad, the sane, and that large overlapping category in between'.
On 7 January 2010, he was published on the Guardian Website's "Over by Over" (OBO) coverage of day five of the Third Test of the South Africa v England series at Newlands, Cape Town. Foulds's published email corrected the OBO writer, Andy Bull, who, in the 77th over, posted lines by Donne in reference to Ian Ronald Bell in verse form: "No doubt I won't be the first pedant to let you know that the Donne you quote is in fact from a prose meditation. The experiment in retrofitting twentieth century free verse technique to it is interesting but the line breaks shouldn't really be there."
In 2013 he was included in the Granta list of 20 best young writers,.
He currently lives in
Toronto,
Ontario,
Canada after marrying Canadian photographer Charla Jones.
"Adam Foulds explores the anxiety around status in our contemporary culture"
''Toronto Star
The ''Toronto Star'' is a Canadian English-language broadsheet daily newspaper. The newspaper is the country's largest daily newspaper by circulation. It is owned by Toronto Star Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary of Torstar Corporation and part ...
'', 26 April 2019.
Awards and honours
Selected bibliography
*2007: ''The Truth About These Strange Times''
*2008: ''The Broken Word''
*2009: ''The Quickening Maze''
*2014: ''In the Wolf's Mouth''
*2019: ''Dream Sequence''
See also
* List of winners and shortlisted authors of the Booker Prize for Fiction
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Foulds, Adam
1974 births
Living people
People educated at Bancroft's School
Alumni of St Catherine's College, Oxford
Alumni of the University of East Anglia
Costa Book Award winners
Fellows of the Royal Society of Literature
British writers