Introduction
James Lasdun (born 1958) is an English novelist and poet.
Life and career
Lasdun was born in London, the son of Susan (Bendit) and British architect Sir Denys Lasdun. Lasdun has written four novels, including The Horned Man, 2002, a New York Times Notable Book, and Seven Lies, 2006, which was an Economist Book of the Year and was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize for fiction. He has published four collections of short stories, including The Siege: Selected Stories, the title story of which was adapted for film by Bernardo Bertolucci as Besieged in 1998. His latest collection It's Beginning To Hurt, 2009 was chosen as a Best Book of the Year by The Los Angeles Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Library Journal and the Atlantic. Lasdun has written four books of poetry, one of which, Landscape with Chainsaw, was a finalist for the T S Eliot Prize, the Forward Prize and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. It was also selected as a TLS International Book of the Year.
In 2013 he published a memoir: Give Me Everything You Have: On Being Stalked. His alleged stalker, Afarin Majidi, responded with a book of her own called Writing and Madness in a Time of Terror.
With Jonathan Nossiter, Lasdun co-wrote the film Sunday in 1997, based on his story Ate Menos or The Miracle, winning both the Best Feature Award and the Waldo Salt Best Screenplay Award at Sundance. Together they also wrote the next Nossiter film Signs and Wonders in 2000, starring Charlotte Rampling and Stellan Skarsgard, selected for the official selection of the 50th Berlin International Film Festivalin 2000.
His reviews and essays have appeared in Harper's, Granta, the London Review of BooksThe Guardian and The New Yorker
With his wife, Pia Davis, Lasdun has written two guidebooks dedicated to the combined pleasures of walking and eating: one in Tuscany and Umbria, the other in Provence.
He has taught creative writing at Princeton, NYU, the New York State Writers' Institute, the New School, Columbia University and Bennington College.
Critical appraisals of his work include reviews by James Wood in the Guardian, Gabriele Annan in the New York Review of Books. and Johanna Thomas-Corr in The Observer https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/mar/03/victory-james-lasdun-review
Honors
- Winner of the Dylan Thomas Prize (short stories)
- Recipient of Guggenheim Fellowship in poetry
- Winner (with Jonathan Nossiter) of the Sundance Waldo Salt Best Screenplay Award for the film Sunday
- Winner (1999) of the London Times Literary Supplement Poetry Competition
- Winner of the inaugural BBC National Short Story Award (May 2006) for his story An Anxious Man.
- Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature