Bernice Rubens
Bernice Rubens | |
|---|---|
| Born | 26 July 1928 Cardiff, Wales |
| Died | 13 October 2004 (aged 76) |
| Occupation | Novelist |
Bernice Rubens (26 July 1928 – 13 October 2004) was a Booker Prize-winning Welsh novelist.[1]
Personal history
Rubens was born in Cardiff, Wales in 1928. Her father, Eli Rubens, was a Lithuanian Jew who, at the age of 16, left mainland Europe in 1900 in the hope of starting a new life in New York. Due to being swindled by a ticket tour, Rubens never reached America, his passage taking him no further than Cardiff.[1] He decided to stay in Wales, and there he met and married Dorothy Cohen, whose Polish family had also emigrated to Cardiff. Rubens was one of four children and came from a musical family, both her brothers, Harold and Cyril, becoming well-known classical violinists. Harold was forced to quit playing through illness, but Cyril became a violinist in the London Symphony Orchestra.[1] Rubens failed to follow in her family's musical tradition though she would later learn the piano and cello. She was educated at Cardiff High School for Girls and later read English at the University of Wales, Cardiff, where she was awarded her BA in 1947.[2] She married Rudi Nassauer, a wine merchant and novelist.[1] They had two daughters, Rebecca and Sharon.
From 1950 to 1955 Rubens taught at a grammar school in Birmingham, before moving onto the film industry where she made documentaries. 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.
Professional career as a writer
Rubens first novel, Set On Edge, was published in 1960.
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)
- Chosen People (1969)
- 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
Notes
- ^ a b c d Watts, Janet (14 October 2004). "Bernice Rubens: Booker-winning novelist whose work focused on the more disturbing aspects of human behaviour". guardian.co.uk. Retrieved 1 December 2012.
- ^ Anderson, Hephzibah. "Bernice Rubens". jwa.org. Retrieved 1 December 2012.
External links
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