PAUL ABLEMAN
Novelist, playwright, critic, Paul Ableman was born in 1927 in Leeds, England. He attended Stuyvesant High School in New York City, but otherwise his education was pursued in England. He published five novels, including I Hear Voices, Tornado Pratt, and Twilight of the Vilp. The play "Green Julia" was a notable success at the 1965 Edinburgh Festival, leading to an additional career writing plays for radio, television, and the stage. For many years he was chief fiction reviewer for The Spectator and The Evening Standard, as well as London literary correspondent for the Australia Broadcasting Corp. By virtue of his independence from any particular literary movement, his work has exerted an influential if largely unsung force on contemporary English fiction. Maurice Girodius, publisher at The Olympia Press — which published the first edition of I Hear Voices — remarked in a memoir that the book he was proudest to have published was not Lolita or The Ginger Man, but I Hear Voices. .Mr. Ableman died in London in October of 2006. To come Guardian Obituary, 2006: Inspired by Kafka and Beckett |