Author: David Lodge
Year: 2015
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Genres/categories:
Memoirs, Non Fiction
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ISBNs:
9781784700539
1784700533 |
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'I was born on January 28th, 1935, which was quite a good time for a future writer to start life in England...' Born into a lower-middle-class Catholic family just before the outbreak of the Second World War, David Lodge grew up in times of great social and cultural change. This shifting landscape provided him with compelling material in his journey towards becoming the major British writer and academic he is acknowledged to be today.
In this memoir, David looks back over his childhood and youth, including his time as an undergraduate, where he meets his wife, Mary, at fresher's week, aged eighteen. After National Service, he begins his long association with the University of Birmingham, where amongst stimulating friendships with other writers and academics, including Malcolm Bradbury, he struggles, as the father of any young family, to make his way in the world. The joys of his marriage, his travels, and the thrill of publishing his first novel, are shadowed by professional disappointments and personal challenges. All the while, he is thinking and writing, always intensely connected to the political, religious, literary, and social backdrop against which he works.
Candid and insightful, illuminating both the man and his work, Quite a Good Year to be Born gives a fascinating picture of a time of transition in British society and the evolution of a writer who has become a classic in his own lifetime. It charts the development of a bright young boy from Brockley to the author of Changing Places.
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