Christine Frances Evelyn Brooke-Rose (16 January 1923 – 21 March 2012) was a British writer and literary critic, known principally for her experimental novels."Christine Brooke-Rose is dead"
''PN Review'', 22 March 2012

Life

Christine Brooke-Rose was born in

Geneva , neighboring_municipalities= Carouge, Chêne-Bougeries, Cologny, Lancy, Grand-Saconnex, Pregny-Chambésy, Vernier, Veyrier , website = https://www.geneve.ch/ Geneva ( ; french: Genève ) frp, Genèva ; german: link=no, Genf ; it, Ginevr ...

, Switzerland to an English father, Alfred Northbrook Rose, and American- Swiss mother, Evelyn (née Brooke). They separated in 1929. She was brought up mainly in

Brussels Brussels (french: Bruxelles or ; nl, Brussel ), officially the Brussels-Capital Region (All text and all but one graphic show the English name as Brussels-Capital Region.) (french: link=no, Région de Bruxelles-Capitale; nl, link=no, Bruss ...

with her maternal grandparents, but also studied at St Stephen's College Broadstairs before attending Somerville College, Oxford (MA) and

University College, London , mottoeng = Let all come who by merit deserve the most reward , established = , type = Public research university , endowment = £143 million (2020) , budget = � ...

(PhD). During

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...

, she joined the WAAF. Initially stationed at RAF Thornaby in Yorkshire where she wrote up flight records for Coastal Command. When the WAAF commanding officer heard she was fluent in German, she was immediately commissioned and called to London where she was interviewed by Frederick Winterbotham; she translated a piece of a technical message, floundering only on ''Klappenschrank'' (part of an army field telephone). Then aged 18, she was sent to

Hut 3 Hut 3 was a section of the Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS) at Bletchley Park during World War II. It retained the name for its functions when it moved into Block D. It produced military intelligence codenamed ULTRA from the decrypts ...

Bletchley Park Bletchley Park is an English country house and estate in Bletchley, Milton Keynes ( Buckinghamshire) that became the principal centre of Allied code-breaking during the Second World War. The mansion was constructed during the years followin ...

, where she assessed intercepted German messages. Her autobiographical novel ''Remake'' records her life at ''BP'' She completed her university degree, reading English at Somerville College, Oxford. She then worked for a time in London as a literary journalist and scholar. She was married three times: to Rodney Bax, whom she met at Bletchley Park; to the poet

Jerzy Pietrkiewicz Jerzy Pietrkiewicz or Peterkiewicz (29 September 1916 – 26 October 2007) was a Polish poet, novelist, translator, and literary critic who spent much of his life in British exile. Life He was born in Fabianki, Poland, the son of a well-read pe ...

; and (briefly) to her cousin, Claude Brooke. While serving at Bletchley Park and married to Bax, she had an affair with an American army officer Telford Taylor, who was himself married. This led to the end of her marriage with Bax,Recollections of Brooke-Rose quoted in Smith, Michael. The Secrets of Station X. Biteback Publishing. 2011. although Taylor's marriage endured for some years thereafter. Taylor was in charge of the American liaison section at Bletchley, and was later Counsel for the prosecution at the

Nuremberg Trials The Nuremberg trials were held by the Allies against representatives of the defeated Nazi Germany, for plotting and carrying out invasions of other countries, and other crimes, in World War II. Between 1939 and 1945, Nazi Germany invaded m ...

. On separating from Pietrkiewicz in 1968, she moved to France, teaching at the University of Paris, Vincennes from 1968 to 1988. In 1975, while teaching linguistics and English literature at the University of Paris, she became professor of English and American literature and literary theory. In 1988, she retired and moved to the south of France, near Avignon.

Work

Brooke-Rose later recalled that during her time at Bletchley Park, being exposed to "that otherness" helped her in her journey to become a novelist, by making her aware of the viewpoint of the "Other". She shared the

James Tait Black Memorial Prize The James Tait Black Memorial Prizes are literary prizes awarded for literature written in the English language. They, along with the Hawthornden Prize, are Britain's oldest literary awards. Based at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, Uni ...

for fiction for ''Such'' (1966). She was also known as a translator, winning the Arts Council Translation Prize in 1969 for her translation of

Alain Robbe-Grillet Alain Robbe-Grillet (; 18 August 1922 – 18 February 2008) was a French writer and filmmaker. He was one of the figures most associated with the '' Nouveau Roman'' (new novel) trend of the 1960s, along with Nathalie Sarraute, Michel Butor and ...

's ''Dans le labyrinthe'' (''In the Labyrinth'')''.'' Her novel ''Remake'' (1996) is an

autobiographical novel An autobiographical novel is a form of novel using autofiction techniques, or the merging of autobiographical and fictive elements. The literary technique is distinguished from an autobiography or memoir by the stipulation of being fiction. Bec ...

: :It is an autobiographical novel with a difference, using life material to compose a third-person fiction, transformed in an experiment whose tensions are those of memory – distorting and partial – checked by a rigorous and sceptical language which probes and finds durable forms underlying the impulses and passions of the subject. It is not a simple process of chronological remembering. Remake captures not facts but the contents of those facts, the feelings of a war-time child, the textures of her clothing, tastes and smells, her mother, an absent father, a gradual transformation into adulthood.

Bibliography

Novels *''The Languages of Love'' (1957) *''The Sycamore Tree'' (1958) *''The Dear Deceit'' (1960) *''The Middlemen: A Satire'' (1961) *''Out'' (1964) *''Such'' (1966) *''Between'' (1968) *''Thru'' (1975) *''Amalgamemnon'' (1984) *''Xorandor'' (1986) *''The Christine Brooke-Rose Omnibus: Out, Such, Between, Thru'' (first edition, 1986; second edition, 2006) *''Verbivore'' (1990) *''Textermination'' (1991) *''Remake'' (1996) autobiographical novel *''Next'' (1998) *''Subscript'' (1999) *''Life, End of'' (2006) autobiographical novel Short story collection * ''Go When You See the Green Man Walking'' (1970) Poetry * ''Gold: A Poem'' (1955) Essays and criticism *''A Grammar of Metaphor'' (1958) criticism *'' A ZBC of Ezra Pound'' (1971) criticism *''A Structural Analysis of Pound's Usura Canto: Jakobson's Method Extended and Applied to Free Verse'' (1976) criticism *''A Rhetoric of the Unreal: Studies in Narrative and Structure, Especially of the Fantastic'' (1981) criticism *''Stories, Theories, and Things'' (1991) literary theory *''Poems, Letters, Drawings'' (2000) *''Invisible Author: Last Essays'' (2002) Translations into English * ''Children of Chaos'', by Juan Goytisolo (London: MacGibbon and Kee, 1958). * ''Fertility and Survival: Population Problems from Malthus to Mao Tse Tung'', by Alfred Sauvy (New York: Criterion, 1960; London: Chatto and Windus, 1961). * ''In the Labyrinth'', by

(London: Calder and Boyars, 1968).

Awards and honors

* 1965: Society of Authors Traveling Prize, for ''Out'' * 1966: James Tait Black Memorial Prize, for ''Such'' * 1969: Arts Council Translation Prize, for ''In the Labyrinth''

References

External links

Christine Brooke-Rose Collection
at the

Harry Ransom Center The Harry Ransom Center (until 1983 the Humanities Research Center) is an archive, library and museum at the University of Texas at Austin, specializing in the collection of literary and cultural artifacts from the Americas and Europe for the pur ...

at the

University of Texas at Austin The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin, UT, or Texas) is a public research university in Austin, Texas. It was founded in 1883 and is the oldest institution in the University of Texas System. With 40,916 undergraduate students, 11,07 ...