Piers Paul Read
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Piers Paul Read (b. March 7, 1941) is a novelist and non-fiction British writer and author.
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[edit] Background
Read was born in Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire, UK. He is the son of the poet, Herbert Read.
He is a devout Roman Catholic. He received his B.A. in 1961 and M.A. in 1962 from Cambridge University. In the years 1963-64, he spent a year in West Berlin on a Ford Foundation Fellowship. This inspired his second novel The Junkers (1968) and his general sympathy towards the Germans. In the years 1967-68, he spent a year in New York - an experience he used in The Professor's Daughter' (1971).
Read is a practising Catholic and Vice-President of the Catholic Writers' Guild of England and Wales. He is married and the father of four children. He lives in London.
[edit] Work
[edit] Alive
Read is best known for his non-fiction book Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors which documented the story of the 1972 crash of Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 in the Andes mountains. The book was adapted into the 1993 film Alive: The Miracle of the Andes.
[edit] Other work
Read's first notable success was his book Monk Dawson (1969), which won him a Hawthornden Prize and a Somerset Maugham Award.
In 1978 he wrote the book The Train Robbers about the Great Train Robbery (1963) in England in 1963 ([1]).
In 1988 he was awarded a James Tait Black Memorial Prize for his book, A Season in the West.
In 2003 his authorized biography of the actor Alec Guinness was published.
[edit] Themes
Read's novels are strongly influenced by his Catholic faith. His story focus on the religious themes of sin and redemption. Read writes in a fairly traditional, linear, style and he often uses plot elements from popular fiction, especially the thriller, like espionage, murder and conspiracy theories. Most of his main characters are fairly unsympathetic and some of them commit horrific deeds before they finally convert to God.
Almost all of Read's novels are set in Europe. Many of his books show a great interest and sympathy especially for Germany - quite unusually in British literature - and for Eastern European countries like Russia and Poland. In The Knights of the Cross, he explicitly satirizes the expectations and prejudices of the British readership towards the Germans.
[edit] List of Works
[edit] Fiction
- Game in Heaven with Tussy Marx (1966)
- The Junkers (1968)
- Monk Dawson (1969)
- The Professor's Daughter (1971)
- The Upstart (1973)
- Polonaise (1976)
- A Married Man (1979)
- The Villa Golitsyn (1981)
- The Free Frenchman (1986)
- A Season in the West (1988)
- On the Third Day (1990)
- A Patriot in Berlin (1995)
- Knights of the Cross (1997)
- Alice in Exile (2001)
[edit] Non-fiction
- Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors (1974)
- The Train Robbers (1978) (dt. Die Posträuber)
- Quo Vadis? The Subversion of the Catholic Church (1991)
- Ablaze: The Story of Chernobyl (1993)
- The Templars: The Dramatic History of the Knights Templar, the Most Powerful Military Order of the Crusades (1999)
- Alec Guinness. The Authorised Biography (2003)
- Hell and other Destinations (Essays) (2006)
[edit] References
[edit] Literature about the Author
- Read, Piers Paul. Contemporary Authors. New Revision Series, Vol. 38, pp.353-355.
[edit] See also
- Miracle in the Andes: 72 Days on the Mountain and My Long Trek Home
- Alive: 20 Years Later
- Nando Parrado
- Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571
