Piers Paul Read: Difference between revisions

Browse history interactively

← Previous edit Next edit →

Content deleted Content added

VisualWikitext

Inline

Revision as of 19:00, 30 September 2007

Piers Paul Read (b. March 7 1941) is a British novelist and non-fiction writer and author.

Background

Read was born in Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire. He is the son of the poet Herbert Read.

He is a devout Roman Catholic. He received his B.A. in 1961 and M.A. in 1962 from Cambridge University. In the years 1963-64, he spent a year in West Berlin on a Ford Foundation Fellowship. This inspired his second novel The Junkers (1968) and his general sympathy towards the Germans. In the years 1967-68, he spent a year in New York - an experience he used in The Professor's Daughter' (1971).

Read is a practising Catholic and Vice-President of the Catholic Writers' Guild of England and Wales. He is married and the father of four children. He lives in London.

Work

List of Works

Fiction

Game in Heaven with Tussy Marx (1966)
The Junkers (1968)
Monk Dawson (1969)
The Professor's Daughter (1971)
The Upstart (1973)
Polonaise (1976)
A Married Man (1979)
The Villa Golitsyn (1981)
The Free Frenchman (1986)
A Season in the West (1988)
On the Third Day (1990)
A Patriot in Berlin (1995)
Knights of the Cross (1997)
Alice in Exile (2001)

Non-fiction

Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors (1974)
The Train Robbers (1978) (dt. Die Posträuber)
Quo Vadis? The Subversion of the Catholic Church (1991)
Ablaze: The Story of Chernobyl (1993)
The Templars: The Dramatic History of the Knights Templar, the Most Powerful Military Order of the Crusades (1999)
Alec Guinness. The Authorised Biography (2003)
Hell and other Destinations (Essays) (2006)

References

Literature about the Author

Read, Piers Paul. Contemporary Authors. New Revision Series, Vol. 38, pp.353-355.

External links

@@ Line 9: / Line 9: @@
 ==Work==
-===''Alive''===
-Read is best known for his [[non-fiction]] book ''[[Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors]]'' which documented the story of the 1972 crash of [[Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571]] in the [[Andes mountains]]. The book was adapted into the 1993 film ''[[Alive: The Miracle of the Andes]]''.
-===Other work===
-Read's first notable success was his book ''Monk Dawson'' (1969), which won him a [[Hawthornden Prize]] and a [[Somerset Maugham Award]].
-In 1978 he wrote the book ''The Train Robbers'' about the [[Great Train Robbery (1963)]] in England in 1963 ([http://www.biblio.com/isbn/0491020635.html]).
-In 1988 he was awarded a [[James Tait Black Memorial Prize]] for his book, ''A Season in the West''.
-In 2003 his authorized biography of the actor [[Alec Guinness]] was published.
-===Themes===
-Read's novels are strongly influenced by his [[Catholicism|Catholic faith]]. His story focus on the religious themes of sin and redemption. Read writes in a fairly traditional, linear, style and he often uses [[Plot (narrative)|plot]] elements from popular fiction, especially the [[Thriller (genre)|thriller]], like [[espionage]], murder and [[conspiracy theory|conspiracy theories]]. Most of his main characters are fairly unsympathetic and some of them commit horrific deeds before they finally convert to [[God]].
-Almost all of Read's novels are set in Europe. Many of his books show a great interest and sympathy especially for [[Germany]] - quite unusually in [[British literature]] - and for [[Eastern Europe]]an countries like [[Russia]] and [[Poland]]. In ''The Knights of the Cross'', he explicitly satirizes the expectations and [[prejudice]]s of the British readership towards the Germans.
 ==List of Works==