Literature Defining National Identity. Martin Amis and Ned Beauman
2 December 2013 Russia, MoscowEvents like this one
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Event details
British Council along with GRANTA magazine, Ahmad Tea Ltd and the Russian State Library continues a series of events with the UK writers. In December Martin Amis and Ned Beauman are visiting Moscow.
Martin Amis described his latest novel, Lionel Asbo, as follows: "This is a book about the decline of my country, about hatred, resentment, bitterness ... “ In each of his books, Amis invariably raises the issue of self-determination, both creative and personal, as well as national, and not limited to his native Great Britain. For example, Koba the Dread is dedicated not only to redefining the role of Stalin in the Soviet Union and - increasingly - the world's history, but also to understanding whether a state or nation is primary for Russia.
In search of the answer to the question of national self-determination, Ned Beauman, younger Amis’s contemporary, who was included in GRANTA Magazine’s 2013 list of best young writers with his debut novel Boxer, Beetle, delved into German archives of the 1930s. In spite of the detective story and dark humour, his book essentially addresses the same issues as the novels of Martin Amis: what does it mean to be "British"? How do tradition and history influence the formation of personality? What determines the values of a generation? To what extent isnationalidentityimportantintoday'sworld?
Given that both of these British writers currently live in New York, and Martin Amis calls the modern era the "Age of Boredom", in which historical, ethnic and cultural individuality has lost its value, the answers to these questions promise to be unconventional, to say the least.We'd like to talk about how an author's affiliation to a particular culture may help to explain his way of thinking and writing, how cultural traditions affect our way of thinking, followed by talking about literature that focuses on national benchmarks and referencing historical issues.
Moderator - Konstantin Milchin
Discussions will be in English and Russian with simultaneous translation
Free entrance with a printed ticket of registration.
Martin Amis
Martin Amis was born in 1949 in Swansea, South Wales. He graduated from Exeter College, Oxford, later working as an editor and reporter for the New Statesman magazine and The Observer. For his first novel, Memoirs of Rachel, published in 1973, Amis was awarded a Somerset Maugham literary prize. This was followed by Dead Babies (1975), Success (1977) and Other People: A Mystery Story (1981). Martin Amis achieved international recognition through his famous “London Trilogy”, including the novels, Money: A Suicide Note (1985), London Fields (1989) and The Information (1995).
His recent works include the novels The Pregnant Widow (2010) and Lionel Asbo (2012), as well as historical research including Koba the Dread (2002), the most notorious political bestseller of recent years.
Ned Beauman
Ned Beauman was born in 1985 in London. His first novel, Boxer, Beetle, won Beauman an S. Goldberg literary prize for Talented Newcomer and the Writers' Guild of Great Britain Award for Best Fiction Book. Beauman’s second novel, The Teleportation Accident, featured in the Booker Prize Longlist. In 2014, the UK is expecting his third novel Glow.
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