Bernice Rubens

Bernice Rubens (26 July 1928 – 13 October 2004) was a Booker Prize-winning Welsh novelist.

Background

She was of Russian Jewish descent and born in Cardiff, Wales where she attended Cardiff High School. She came from a very musical family, both her brothers becoming well-known classical musicians. She was married to Rudi Nassauer, a wine merchant and novelist. They had two daughters, Rebecca and Sharon. In the 1960s they owned 10 Compayne Gardens, NW3, where the poet Jon Silkin rented the attic storey and sublet rooms to David Mercer, later a prolific West End and TV playwright, and Malcolm Ross-Macdonald, later an equally prolific writer of historical novels.

Adaptations

Her 1962 novel, Madame Sousatzka, was made into a film in 1988, with Shabana Azmi and Shirley MacLaine.

Her 1975 novel, I Sent a Letter To My Love, was made into a film (Chère inconnue) in 1980 by Moshe Mizraki, starring Simone Signoret and Jean Rochefort.

Her 1985 novel, Mr Wakefield's Crusade, was adapted for television by the BBC in 1992, starring Peter Capaldi and Michael Maloney.

Works

• Set on Edge (1960)
• Madame Sousatzka (1962)
• Mate in Three (1966)
• The Elected Member (1969) (Booker Prize for Fiction 1970)
• Sunday Best (1971)
• Go Tell the Lemming (1973)
• I Sent a Letter To My Love (1975)
• The Ponsonby Post (1977)
• A Five-Year Sentence (1978)
• Spring Sonata (1979)
• Birds of Passage (1981)
• Brothers (1983)
• Mr Wakefield's Crusade (1985)
• Our Father (1987)
• Kingdom Come (1990)
• A Solitary Grief (1991)
• Mother Russia (1992)
• Autobiopsy (1993)
• Hijack (1993)
• Yesterday in the Back Lane (1995)
• The Waiting Game (1997)
• I, Dreyfus (1999)
• Milwaukee (2001)
• Nine Lives (2002)
• The Sergeants' Tale (2003)
• When I Grow Up (2005)

Obituaries

• Bernice Rubens - The Times
• Bernice Rubens - The Daily Telegraph
• Bernice Rubens - The Guardian
• Bernice Rubens - The Independent

External links

• Bernice Rubens at the Internet Movie Database