John Lanchester (1962-) is an author.
Life[]
John was born in February of 1962 to Julie (an ex-nun who wrote short stories under the name "Shivaun Cunningham") and Bill Lanchester (a banker) in Hamburg, Germany. To hide the fact that John was conceived before marriage, Julie hid his actual birthdate.
Shortly after John's birth, the Lanchesters moved to Hong Kong and spent a few years moving throughout Asia before returning to Hong Kong where the family remained for most of John's childhood. He then visited the Gresham boarding school -with his father retiring from the Bank around the same time that John left the school[1] - and studied at St. John's College at Oxford.[2]
While John was still at college, his father died of a massive heart attack while John was visiting his family. Though devastated by the death, John kept working at his thesis. He soon realized that he despised academia and began experiencing panic attacks. Late in 1986, John took a job in The London Review of Books and began working on The Debt to Pleasure shortly afterwards. This took several years - with John meeting his wife, Miranda Carter, during the writing of Debt and his mother having her first stroke shortly after this. Debt was published in 1996 and won several awards - including the Whitbread Award and Hawthornden Prize. Two years after this, John's mother died.[1]
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Writing style[]
Lanchester says of his novels in Family Romance, "One of the things I have noticed about my novels, in the course of writing this book, is that they all concern people who can't quite bring themselves to tell the truth about their lives".
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Notable quotes[]
Family Romance[]
- We fight for autonomy over so many areas of our lives - for decency and democracy and freedom, for suffrage, for the right to have some say over our lives, some control - and then in the central question of what we are to do with our days, with our working lives, we give all that freedom away in return for a pay cheque. And are content to be bored and obedient, resentful and uninvolved and tired. This is such a standard, universally accepted feature of the modern world - that we will dislike and be bored by our work - that we have forgotten to notice that it doesn't make any sense.
Notable works[]
- Reality and Other Stories - collects various ghost stories.
Novels[]
- The Debt to Pleasure - reveals the life of a monstrous Englishman through his thoughts on cuisine during a trip to France.
- Mr. Phillips - shows the aftermath of a man being fired from his job due to being made redundant.
- Fragrant Harbour - shows the lives of three immigrants in Hong Kong.
- Capital - shows the effects of the 2007/2008 financial crisis.
- The Wall - a dystopian novel.
Nonfiction[]
- Family Romance - details the history of Lanchester's family.
- Whoops! Why Everyone Owes Everyone and No One Can Pay - a description of the 2007/2008 financial crisis
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See also[]
- Ian McEwan
- J.G. Ballard
- Henry James
Sources[]
- Wikipedia