Author: Marilynn Richtarik Publisher: Oxford University Press ISBN: 0191655163 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages :
Book Description
Born in Belfast during World War II, raised in a working-class Protestant family, and educated on scholarship at Queen's University, writer Stewart Parker's story is in many ways the story of his generation. Other aspects of his personal history, though, such as the amputation of his left leg at age 19, helped to create an extraordinarily perceptive observer and commentator. Steeped in American popular culture as a child and young adult, he spent five years teaching in the United States before returning to Belfast in August 1969, the same week British troops responded to sectarian disturbances there. Parker had developed a sense of writing as a form of political action in the highly charged atmosphere of the US in the late 1960s, which he applied in many and varied capacities throughout the worst years of the Troubles to express his own socialist and secular vision of Northern Irish potential. As a young aspiring poet and novelist, he supported himself with free-lance work that brought him into contact with institutions ranging from BBC Northern Ireland to the Irish Times (for which he wrote personal columns and the music review feature High Pop) and from the Queen's University Extramural Department to Long Kesh internment camp (where his creative writing students included Gerry Adams). It is as a playwright, however, that Parker earned a permanent spot in the literary canon with drama that encapsulates his experience of Northern Ireland in the 1970s. Marilynn Richtarik's Stewart Parker: A Life illuminates the genesis, development, and meaning of such classic plays as Spokesong, Northern Star, and Pentecost - works that continue to shed light on the North's past, present, and future - in the context of Parker's life and times. Meticulously researched and engagingly written, this critical biography rewards general readers and specialists alike.
Author: Glenn Patterson Publisher: McClelland & Stewart ISBN: 0771071124 Category : Fiction Languages : en Pages : 270
Book Description
Acclaimed Belfast novelist Glenn Patterson's classic novel of a day in the life in that city: a funny, brilliantly observed, bittersweet snapshot of a moment in 1967 just before everything changed. "If I had known history was to be written that Sunday in the International Hotel I might have made an effort to get out of bed before teatime." So begins The International. Danny Hamilton takes us back over three troubled decades to one wonderfully ordinary Saturday, in January 1967, when his 18-year-old self had no idea — most people had no idea — that ordinary days in Belfast would soon become tragically rare. Ordinary, but packed with extraordinarily observed characters; and extraordinary enough for Danny to fall in love twice (and think about sex a few more times than that). Ordinary, but when someone calls out "Be careful" in parting, no one takes it lightly and for good reason. First published in the UK in 1999, and reissued by Blackstaff in 2008, The International is a timeless novel: funny, bawdy, deftly crafted, and heartwrenchingly humane. Featuring an essay “On Reading The International” by Man Booker-Prize winner Anne Enright
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