About

SHORTLISTED FOR THE RATHBONES FOLIO PRIZE 2020

OUT NOW IN PAPERBACK

“an instant masterpiece that brings the taut psychological precision of a Chekhov story to a hyper-modern, post-#MeToo setting” Johanna Thomas-Corr, The Guardian 

Photograph by Tania Barricklo _________________________________________________________________________________

James Lasdun was born in London and now lives in the US. He has published novels, a memoir, collections of poetry and books of short stories. His most recent books are Bluestone: New and Selected Poems and Victory, a pair of short novels, one of which, Afternoon of a Faun is published separately in the US (the other was previously published in the Paris Review). With Jonathan Nossiter he co-wrote the films Sunday, which won Best Feature and Best Screenplay awards at Sundance, and Signs and Wonders, starring Charlotte Rampling and Stellan Skarsgaard. With Michael Hofmann he edited the anthology After Ovid: New Metamorphoses. His essays and reviews have appeared in Harper’s, Granta, The London Review of Books, The New York Times, The Guardian and The New Yorker.

His work has been widely translated and won numerous awards, including the inaugural BBC National Short Story Award. He has been a finalist for the T.S. Eliot Prize, the Forward Prize and the LA Times Book Prize. His first novel, The Horned Man, was a New York Times Notable Book, and his second, Seven Lies, was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize.

Critical appraisals of his work include reviews by James Wood in The Guardian and Gabriele Annan in the New York Review of Books.

“James Lasdun seems to be one of the secret gardens of English writing…when we read him we know what language is for… Lasdun is a poet, and of course, one would expect, on his part, an enlarged attention to prose. It is easy to forget how very ordinary most contemporary prose-writers are… Lasdun’s prose, by contrast, is neither too fancy nor too regular. It is flexible, rich, metaphorical, and lovely… In sentence after sentence, the reader feels Lasdun’s words shaping and then freely donating a world to us, with great flexible artistry.”  — James Wood, The Guardian

Contact (USA): Alice Whitwham, The Cheney Agency, 39 West 14th Street, Suite 403, New York, NY 10011,Tel: (212) 277-8007, email: Alice@cheneyagency.com
(UK): Anna Webber, United Agents LLP, 12-26 Lexington St, London W1F 0LE, England, Tel: +44 (0) 20 3214 0800 email: AWebber@unitedagents.co.uk