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Simon Mawer

Author of The Glass Room

15+ Works 3,368 Members 164 Reviews 4 Favorited

About the Author

Author and biology teacher Simon Mawer was born in England in 1948. He studied at Somerset's Millfield School and Oxford's Brasenose College, receiving a degree in zoology. Mawer's first novel, Chimera, won the McKitterick Prize, while The Fall earned the 2003 Boardman Tasker Prize for Mountain show more Literature. He has written several other novels, as well as the exhibition companion volume Gregor Mendel: Planting the Seeds of Genetics. His novel, Tightrope, made the New Zealand Best Seller List in 2015 and won the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction. (Bowker Author Biography) Simon Mawer has a degree from Oxford & lives in Rome. He is the author of "Mendel's Dwarf" & several other widely praised & prize winning novels. 010 show less

Includes the name: Simon Mawer

Series

Works by Simon Mawer

The Glass Room (2009) 1,367 copies
The Gospel of Judas (2000) 366 copies
Mendel's Dwarf (1997) 341 copies
The Fall (2003) 249 copies
Tightrope (2015) 183 copies
Prague Spring (2018) 123 copies
Ancestry (2022) 52 copies
Swimming to Ithaca (2006) 43 copies
Place in Italy (1992) 9 copies
A Jealous God (1996) 8 copies
The Bitter Cross (1992) 7 copies
Chimera (1989) 3 copies
A queda: romance (2004) 3 copies

Associated Works

Between Silk and Cyanide (1998) — Introduction, some editions — 1,009 copies

Tagged

Common Knowledge

Birthdate
1948
Gender
male
Nationality
UK
Places of residence
England
Cyprus
Malta
Channel Islands, UK
Scotland
Rome, Italy
Education
Millfield School, Somerset, England, UK
Brasenose College, Oxford University
Occupations
Biology teacher
Relationships
Connie (wife)
Matthew (son)
Julia (daughter)
Awards and honors
Boardman Tasker Prize for Mountain Literature (2003)
Man Booker Prize Shortlist (2009)
Walter Scott Prize Shortlist (2010)
Booker Prize Longlist (2009)
Agent
Charles Walker
Short biography
His father and grandfather served in the Royal Air Force. As a typical nomadic military family, his childhood was spent, amongst various moves in England, some years in Cyprus and Malta. These experiences gave him a love of the Mediterranean world and a taste for exile. From the age of eight he was educated in boarding schools, which forced upon him the need to preserve a secret, interior world in a society where privacy was at a premium, training that was significant in his development as a writer. After university he taught biology in the Channel Islands, then moved to Scotland, then Malta, before moving to Rome where he has lived ever since. Teaching and family took up much of his time, and it wasn't until his fortieth year that his first novel, Chimera, was published by Hamish Hamilton, a British book publishing house founded in 1931 which now belongs to Penguin Books. It won the McKitterick Prize for first novels. Mendel's Dwarf followed three works of modest success and established him as a writer of note on both sides of the Atlantic. The New York Times judged it one of the "books to remember" of 1998. The option on a film version was sold first to Uzo and then to Barbra Streisand. The Gospel of Judas and The Fall followed. He published Swimming to Ithaca, a novel partially inspired by his childhood on the island of Cyprus. A book called A place in Italy (1992), written in the wake of A year in Provence, recounts the first two years of his life in an Italian village. Gregor Mendel: Planting the Seeds of Genetics, another non-fiction book, was published in conjunction with the Field Museum of Chicago as a companion volume to the museum's exhibition of the same name. In 2009, Mawer published The Glass Room, a novel about a modernist villa built in a Czech city in 1928. Mawer has acknowledged that the book was primarily inspired by the Villa Tugendhat which was designed by architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and built in Brno in the Czech Republic in 1928–30. Mawer has lived in Italy for more than three decades, but he considers home to be where the mind is.

Members

Reviews

I have previously liked all of Simon Mawer’s novels that I’ve read, but Ancestry didn’t quite work for me. Not enough to abandon it, but enough to make me scamper sometimes over some pages with little interest in their content.

(Especially those interminable pages about the Crimean War.)

Ancestry is a fictionalised version of Mawer’s family history, which is intended to bring his ancestors to life. But like most people who trawl in their family history, Mawer knows little more than his ancestors’ patchy history in official documents. Births, Marriages, Deaths, Census records, some military history. Women, especially illiterate ones, fade into the shadows. Poor people don’t leave Stuff to inherit, stuff that might (or might not) give descendants some indication of what they were like. Just occasionally there is a bit of ‘family lore’ that might (or might not) have a grain of truth in it.

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2024/01/15/ancestry-2022-by-simon-mawer/
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anzlitlovers | 2 other reviews | Jan 14, 2024 |
In the end, I quite like the Prague story but I don't care for most of the characters, albeit in a somewhat interesting way I associate with Mawer.
But should I share my rant? Yeah, probably. From the notes:
Why is every damn book set in Prague about a bumbling white man and some mysterious czech woman that he treats like shit. Every one! Moreover, dudes, why do you think you are the heroes?
I read Mawer once 20 years ago, I liked the book, I thought maybe he'd do better here. But it's the same thing, like as soon as you meet a woman who's at all different than the archetypal Wife of your culture, it means you don't have to treat her with respect or honor her boundaries or even see her as fully human. She's not a Rusalka, bud, and frankly even if she were that doesn't make her yours to exploit. UGH.… (more)
 
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Kiramke | 9 other reviews | Jun 27, 2023 |
There's a review at The Guardian which recounts how in 1975 Mawer was caught in an avalanche on the North Face of Ben Nevis and had to cling to an ice ledge for 22 hours. Whether this experience informed his ability to capture the suspense of existential moments I do not know, but while Prague Spring is not a cliffhanger, it becomes unputdownable as the pages move towards their inexorable conclusion.

It is history that makes the conclusion inexorable. Set in 1968 when Czechoslovakia enjoyed a brief taste of freedom under Dubček before the Soviet tanks rolled in, the novel traces the narratives of a naïve young couple of hitchhikers who stumble into trouble, and the story of an English diplomat walking a tightrope between love and duty. Ellie and James are an ill-matched pair from Oxford, playfully choosing a route through Europe by a roll of the die, while Sam Wareham, progressing his career at the embassy, is disarmed by falling in love with Lenka — who not only has the kind of past that tests the UK-Soviet relationship, but is also sufficiently optimistic about the prospects of 'socialism with a human face' that she does some rather imprudent things.

Well, only imprudent because we all know what happened. Mawer's characters do not have the wisdom of hindsight, and his omniscient narrator sometimes reminds us of that. The presence of Soviet tanks massing on the border gives the novel a contemporary relevance not merely because of current events in Europe but also because of the protests in Iran where authorities are cracking down on dissidents with an iron fist.

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2023/01/13/prague-spring-2018-by-simon-mawer/
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anzlitlovers | 9 other reviews | Jan 12, 2023 |
Abraham lives an impoverished life in Suffolk. He cannot read or write but he dreams of more and is finally apprenticed to become a seaman. Naomi has moved to London to become a dressmaker but fate has more in store. Ann and George are newly wed and living in Army barracks. The lives of these individuals in 1850s England will link through their families.
This is the story of Mawer's own ancestors, he has taken a few facts and written a gripping fictionalised account of their lives. The stories are wonderful, Abraham's life at sea and the difficulties faced by his family as news is often months late, George's adventures in the horror of the Crimean War. Of course there is a lot of literary licence taken to fill in the gaps but this is where Mawer's expertise as a novelist really shines. This is a wonderful book… (more)
 
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pluckedhighbrow | 2 other reviews | Aug 18, 2022 |

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Statistics

Works
15
Also by
1
Members
3,368
Popularity
#7,574
Rating
3.8
Reviews
164
ISBNs
158
Languages
9
Favorited
4

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