Margaret Drabble

»En oerhört stimulerande rikedom av röster, perspektiv, diskussioner. Drabble lyckas också fånga det där otydliga och komplexa skeendet när en tidsanda glider över i en annan.« | AFTONBLADET Liz får ett paket med posten från en nära vän hon inte hört av på länge. Frimärkena är stämplade i Kambodja. Innehållet är lika gåtfullt som upprörande: bland fragment av dagböcker, brev, manus och fotografier finns - ett avhugget finger. Det var flera år sedan Stephen Cox reste i väg för att samla material till en pjäs om Pol Pot. Nu vet ingen var han befinner sig. Margaret Drabbles Elfenbensporten [The Gates of Ivory, 1991] befolkas av en intellektuell medelklass med absolut koll på vad som är korrekt att säga, men utan mod att agera. En engelsk romanklassiker om ett åttiotal vars politiska klimat nu gör sig starkt påmint igen. I översättning av Britt Arenander och med ett nyskrivet förord av kritikern Marie Peterson. MARGARET DRABBLE är en engelsk författare och dramatiker, född i Sheffield 1939, som hyllades av kritikerna redan för sin debutroman A Summer Bird Cage [1963]. Sedan decennier räknas hon till Storbritanniens viktigaste författare. »Elfenbensporten följer ett stort antal personer, låter dem tala och tänka, utan att författaren alltid precisera vem och var och när. Associationerna flödar och jag märker att jag som i läsningen av Ulysses känner att nej, nu får vi ta och bena upp det här. För att i nästa stund ge upp och följa med i vågorna av människors förehavanden, små och stora.« | MARIA SCHOTTENIUS, DN »Om det är något Margaret Drabble gör i Elfenbensporten så är det att skriva fram gestalter som är mycket mänskliga, som känns helt på riktigt. I denna värld med sin starka förnimmelse av att allt är på låtsas, lyckas hon ändå gjuta så mycket liv i sina romanfigurer att jag tror på dem.« | THERESE ERIKSSON, SvD »Det här är böcker man vill ge i present åt sina kloka väninnor, för att tillsammans kunna häpna över det som känns gammalt i dem och förenas i instämmande över det som inte gör det.« | PIA INGSTRÖM, HUFVUDSTADSBLADET, OM MARGARET DRABBLES FÖRFATTARSKAP

Margaret Drabble returns with a powerful novel of unbreakable love, enduring friendships and a society changing forever

Margaret Drabble's novels have illuminated the past fifty years, especially the changing lives of women, like no others. Yet her short fiction has its own unique brilliance. Her penetrating evocations of character and place, her wide-ranging curiosity, her sense of irony--all are on display here, in stories that explore marriage, female friendships, the English tourist abroad, love affairs with houses, peace demonstrations, gin and tonics, cultural TV programs, in stories that are perceptive, sharp, and funny. With an introduction by the Spanish academic Jos Fern ndez that places the stories in the context of her life and her novels, this collection is a wonderful recapitulation of a masterly career.

The Pattern in the Carpet: A Personal History with Jigsaws is an original and brilliant work. Margaret Drabble weaves her own story into a history of games, in particular jigsaws, which have offered her and many others relief from melancholy and depression. Alongside curious facts and discoveries about jigsaw puzzles -- did you know that the 1929 stock market crash was followed by a boom in puzzle sales? -- Drabble introduces us to her beloved Auntie Phyl, and describes childhood visits to the house in Long Bennington on the Great North Road, their first trip to London together, the books they read, the jigsaws they completed. She offers penetrating sketches of her parents, her siblings, and her children; she shares her thoughts on the importance of childhood play, on art and writing, on aging and memory. And she does so with her customary intelligence, energy, and wit. This is a memoir like no other.

The love of place is endemic in English literature, from the work of the earliest poets and hermits to the suburban celebrations of John Betjeman, covering all varieties of the British rural and urban landscape. This book presents an image of Britain as seen by writers of different regions and periods, and also illuminates the way in which their work has changed our visual attitudes, our taste in landscape and our relation to nature.

Angus Wilson was a critic, lecturer and man of letters. Pre-eminently though he was a novelist, indeed, in the words of Paul Bailey 'no other novelist of his generation offered as complete and detailed a portrait of English society.'His first volume of stories, The Wrong Set (1949) - reissued in Faber Finds - launched Wilson as one of the most controversial, colourful and entertaining figures on the post-war literary scene, and he rapidly developed into a major novelist, maturing from enfant terrible to elder statesman in the process. Margaret Drabble's biography traces the influences of his bizarrely extended family, his years as a librarian at the British Museum - interrupted by a grim spell in the code-breaking huts at Bletchley Park - and his unexpected liberation as a writer. It portrays the dizzying progress of a writer and enthusiast whose work was at the forefront of English fiction for the second-half of the twentieth-century: above all it is a portrait of an artist of enormous courage, a man who confronted challenge to the very end. In his later years he became both influence and mentor for a younger generation of writers, including Ian McEwan, Rose Tremain and Margaret Drabble herself. Margaret Drabble knew Angus Wilson from the late 1960s and her biography is enriched with personal knowledge and recollections.'He has been fortunate in his biographer . . . Altogether, with the assistance and consent of Tony Garrett, the dedicatee and second hero of the book, she has given a minute, intimate and candid account . . . of Wilson's hectic life.' Frank Kermode, London Review of Books 'A solid tribute of scholarship and affection' Penelope Fitzgerald, Independent'No one interested in the story of modern fiction can fail to find this life fascinating. Its virtues - a bright, crowded canvas, warmth, a witty, polished style - are those of Wilson's novels . . . Through it all shines so human a picturer of a courageous, doubting, eccentric, driven writer.' Jackie Wullschlager, Financial Times

Simon Camish, an embittered, diffident lawyer in a loveless marriage, would not have particularly noticed Rose Vassiliou had he not been asked to drive her home one night after a dinner party. Yet at one time she had been notorious-her name constantly in the news. Now, separated from her Greek husband, she lives alone with her three children. Despite all the efforts and sneers of her friends, she refuses to move from her slum house in a decaying neighborhood to which she has become attached. Gradually, Simon becomes aware that Rose is a woman of remarkable integrity and courage. He is drawn into her affairs when her husband takes legal action to reopen the question of custody of the children-a scheme for getting his wife back. And, while the precise nature of their ties eludes him, Simon comes to realize that Rose and her Greek ex-husband are forever and inextricably bound to each other.

The nineteenth-century Danish writer, Steen Steensen Blicher deserves to stand alongside the great writers of world literature, from Boccaccio to Maupassant, and this selection of his work will make a group of his most important stories available in the English-speaking world. These reveal not only the writer himself but the country and culture which formed him in the early years of the nineteenth century. Although his subject matter is deeply and truly that of Denmark, his account of human relationships is timeless and he deploys the true storytellers art.