Word: novelistic
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...gardens. But the founding father of English literature was a man of the world. A diplomat and customs official, Chaucer was captured in battle, sued for debt and indicted for rape--a charge that was apparently dropped. In this robust account of his life, Ackroyd, a noted British novelist, points out that the author of The Canterbury Tales was not foremost a poet: "He was a government official and diplomat who, in his spare time, happened to write poetry...
...parents who were writers [mom is novelist Tabitha King]. You must have had a lot of writing going on in your house. What was that like...
...Soviet Union, he found his way to France. "Somewhere along the line," he recalls, "I lost the sense of Jewish identity. My family's history, my people's history receded. I was preoccupied with my own life, my own affairs." He became a successful painter, an occasional novelist and human rights activist. "But some time after the death of my father," the author admits, "I realized that I had not truly known him, or his tradition." Halter began to sift through the evidence of World War II, then ransacked ancient volumes, diaries and letters, scouring Europe and the Middle East...
...retelling this story, Field frequently borrows verbatim from his earlier book. But there are some intriguing additions. His research since Nabokov's death in 1977 has enriched the European period between the wars and provided some naughty parts. The novelist's great-grandmother Nina von Korf continued a love affair with Dmitri Nabokov, the novelist's grandfather, after he became her son-in-law. This, according to Field, accounts for the theme of incest in books like Ada and Lolita, a reversal of family history in which "the man marries the daughter in order to be able to continue more...
What is a novelist to do with an antihero who has no need of external reality except for an occasional sniff? Süskind invents several short-lived missions for Jean-Baptiste. The first, to become the "greatest perfumer of all time," is child's play. Wheedling an apprenticeship with the renowned but fading establishment of Giuseppe Baldini, Grenouille easily makes his master the toast of Paris and the rest of the civilized world. Next, he spends seven years on an isolated mountain, safe from the smells of humanity and lolling in olfactory memories. Finally, he embarks on a quest...