Patrick Flanery
Patrick Flanery (born 1974, Omaha, Nebraska) is an American author and academic. He is also professor of Creative Writing at the University of Reading.
Writing career
Partick Flanery wrote Absolution (2012), Fallen Land (2013) and I Am No One (2016). Philip Gourevitch, writing in The New Yorker, called Flanery "an exceptionally gifted and intelligent novelist". [1] He has had two writing fellowships in Italy at the Bellagio Center (owned by the Rockefeller Foundation) in 2013 and the Santa Maddalena Foundation in 2014.[2] In 2017 he was living in London.[3]
Absolution
Flanery's debut novel, Absolution, weaves a story of South Africa's violent past and troubled present, built around a series of conversations between an aging novelist and her official biographer. It was originally published in 2012 by Atlantic Books in the UK and Riverhead in the USA and has since been translated into eleven languages. It was shortlisted for one of the Spear's Book Award in 2012[4] and was shortlisted for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, the Royal Society of Literature's Ondaatje Prize, the Flaherty-Dunnan First Novel Prize, and the Authors' Club (UK) Best First Novel Award. A review in The Financial Times declared that "Absolution serves as proof, if any were needed, that a novel can be both unashamedly literary and compellingly readable."[5]
Other work
Taking up themes of the housing boom and bust, reparations for land stolen from black farmers, and creeping surveillance, Fallen Land was very much in tune with the Zeitgeist when it came out in 2013. James Bradley of the Washington Post noted that "it paints a chilling picture of a society deranged by violence, paranoia and its own fantasies of self-reliance".[6]
Flanery's third novel, I Am No One, was released in 2016. This book is about a university professor who returns to New York after teaching at Oxford. Various disconcerting events convince him he is under surveillance and his privacy is being invaded by unknown people.[7]
His non-fiction essays, reviews, and interviews have appeared in The Los Angeles Times, The Spectator, The Times Literary Supplement, Newsweek, The Guardian, and The Daily Telegraph.[3] He has also written several articles in acedemic journals.[2]
References
- ↑ Gourevitch, Philip (30 April 2012). "Unreconciled". The New Yorker. Retrieved 11 October 2015.
- 1 2 "Professor Patrick Flanery - Professor of Creative Writing". University of Reading. 2017. Retrieved 2017-08-04.
- 1 2 2017-02-25. "Revolution in the Mind: Reassessing the psychology of rebellion and obedience". London School of Economics and Political Science. Department of Psychological and Behavioural Science and LSE Literary Festival. Retrieved 2017-08-04.
- ↑ "Literary Howlers Make Me Howl". Spear's. 3 September 2012. Retrieved 11 October 2015.
- ↑ Evans, David (2012-04-07). "Fragmented revelations". Financial Times. Retrieved 11 October 2015.
- ↑ Bradley, James (10 September 2013). "Book World: Patrick Flanery’s ‘Fallen Land’ draws a chilling portrait of modern America". The Washington Post. Retrieved 11 October 2015.
- ↑ Lee, Jonathan (2016-07-27). "A Fictional Surveillance Expert Is Being Watched, and the Watcher Wants Him to Know It". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2017-08-04.
Sources
- Kidd James (18 March 2012). "Patrick Flanery: An American abroad lives in black and white". The Independent. London. Retrieved 11 October 2015.
- Esposito, Scott (5 July 2012). "Book review: ‘Absolution’ by Patrick Flanery". The Washington Post. Retrieved 11 October 2015.
- Fuller, Alexandra (27 April 2012). "Unreconciled: ‘Absolution,’ a Novel by Patrick Flanery". The New York Times. Retrieved 11 October 2015.
- Flanery, Patrick (18 August 2013). "A Dystopian View Of America's 'Fallen' Suburbs (author interview of Fallen Land)" (Interview). NPR. Retrieved 11 October 2015.