Eva Figes

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Eva Figes (pron.: /ˈfz/; 15 April 1932 – 28 August 2012) was an English author.[1]

Figes wrote novels, literary criticism, studies of feminism, and vivid memoirs relating to her Berlin childhood and later experiences as a Jewish refugee from Hitler's Germany. She arrived in Britain in 1939[2] with her parents and a younger brother. Figes was the mother of the academic Orlando Figes and writer Kate Figes.[3]

In the 1960s she was associated with an informal group of experimental British writers influenced by Rayner Heppenstall that included Stefan Themerson, Ann Quin, Alan Burns, and its informal leader, B. S. Johnson.

Figes' 1983 novel, Light, is an impressionistic portrait of a single day in the life of Claude Monet from sunrise to sunset. Her best known work is probably Patriarchal Attitudes, a feminist polemic written in 1970, and she won the Guardian Fiction Prize for Winter Journey in 1967.

Contents

Selected bibliography [edit]

Fiction [edit]

  • Equinox (1966)
  • Winter Journey (1967)
  • Konek Landing (1969)
  • B (1972)
  • Days (1974)
  • Nelly's Version (1977)
  • Waking (1981)
  • Light (1983)
  • The Seven Ages: A Novel (1986)
  • Ghosts (1988)
  • The Tree of Knowledge (1990)
  • The Tenancy (1993)
  • The Knot (1996)

Literary and social criticism [edit]

  • Patriarchal Attitudes: Women in Society (1970)
  • Tragedy and Social Evolution (1982)
  • Sex and Subterfuge: Women Writers to 1850 (1982)
  • Women's Letters in Wartime, 1450-1945 (1993)

Memoirs [edit]

  • Little Eden: A Child in Wartime (1978)
  • Tales of Innocence and Experience: An Exploration (2004)
  • Journey to Nowhere (2008)

References [edit]

  1. ^ Eva Tucker. "Eva Figes obituary | Books". The Guardian. Retrieved 2012-09-08. 
  2. ^ Flood, Alison (12 October 2009). "British Library acquires Eva Figes archive". The Guardian. Retrieved 17 January 2011. 
  3. ^ "Eva Figes". Bloomsbury Publishing. Retrieved 17 January 2011.