Arthur Phillips (1) (1969–)
Autor/a de L'egiptòleg
Per altres autors anomenats Arthur Phillips, vegeu la pàgina de desambiguació.
Sobre l'autor
Arthur Phillips was born in Minneapolis and educated at Harvard. He has been a child actor, a jazz musician, a speechwriter, a failed entrepreneur and a five-time Jeopardy champion. He lived in Budapest from 1990 to 1992 and now lives in Paris with his wife and son. (Publisher Fact Sheets)
Crèdit de la imatge: (C) Andreas Von Lintel
Obres de Arthur Phillips
Obres associades
Etiquetat
Coneixement comú
- Nom normalitzat
- Phillips, Arthur
- Nom oficial
- Phillips, Arthur Monroe
- Data de naixement
- 1969-04-23
- Gènere
- male
- Nacionalitat
- USA
- Lloc de naixement
- Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA
- Llocs de residència
- New York, New York, USA
Paris, France
Budapest, Hungary - Educació
- Harvard University
Berklee School of Music
The Blake School, Minneapolis - Professions
- Author
- Relacions
- Phillips, Michael (brother)
- Premis i honors
- Jeopardy Champion (five-time)
LA Times Book Prize for First Fiction (Prague) - Agent
- Marly Rusoff (The Rusoff Agency)
- Biografia breu
- Arthur Phillips was born in Minneapolis and educated at Harvard. He has been a child actor, a jazz musician, a speechwriter, a dismally failed entrepreneur, and a five-time Jeopardy! champion.
His first novel, Prague, was named a New York Times Notable Book, and receivedThe Los Angeles Times/Art Seidenbaum Award for best first novel. His second novel, The Egyptologist, was an international bestseller, and was on more than a dozen “Best of 2004” lists. Angelica, his third novel, made The Washington Post best fiction of 2007 and led that paper to call him "One of the best writers in America." The Song Is You was a New York Times Notable Book, on the Post's best of 2009 list, and inspired Kirkus to write, "Phillips still looks like the best American novelist to have emerged in the present decade."
His work has been published in twenty-seven languages, and is the source of three films currently in development.
His fifth book, The Tragedy of Arthur, will be published April 19, 2011.
He lives in New York with his wife and two sons.
Membres
Ressenyes
The King at the Edge of the World: A Novel de Arthur Phillips
This is a tongue-in-cheek entertainment, not an historical novel.
I thought that this would be a Nick Hornby-esque meditation on music and relationships by someone who actually likes music, but here we have only a perfunctory taste of what the music mentioned in this book actually sounds like. We are presented with a live recording of Billie Holiday singing "I Cover the Waterfront", and the narrator's father's obsession with the song and memories associated with it, to show us how music and love are entwined with obsession. Or something. None of it is very convincing, especially the fact that the narrator, Julian Donahue, and an up-and-coming rock singer, Cait O'Dwyer, have a very strange and compulsive relationship based on nothing more on some drawings Julian left for Cait on some bar coasters. The lyrics to Cait's songs are not very good, and Julian seems to listen to nothing else on his iPod, which leaves his love of music in question. Also, no spoilers, but our hero Julian also turns out to be a weird, selfish dick in the end. I don't recommend this one. Cheers.… (més)
My reaction to this book is very complicated. My first thought, my first feeling, was oh, how we hated these men in Prague, with their gold cards and their expat cafes and their ivy league theories and their inability to learn anything but pickup lines. But then, the author doesn't treat them with undue forgiveness, and I'm embarrassingly reminded I might want some of that forgiveness myself... And there are the one or two things that awaken my nostalgia, and then the quite interesting monologue about nostalgia... but then again, some rather unresolved character arcs, and a general rephrasing of life is elsewhere, with actual reference to Life is Elsewhere... oh, I don't know, it's complicated.… (més)
In 1591, Mahmoud Ezzedine lives a fulfilling life. As court physician to the Sultan Murad in Constantinople, Mahmoud is highly respected, and his general practice gives him a deserved reputation as a skilled, empathic healer. He has a comfortable house, a beautiful, loving wife, and a son whom he dotes on. Truly, Allah has blessed him.
But a diplomatic mission to London, of all places, is setting forth, and Mahmoud, who’d rather not go anywhere, is dragged along. He has little choice, really, for Murad the Great’s command is law. However, the official who gives the Caliph of Caliphs the idea to send the doctor with the diplomats lusts after Mahmoud’s wife. As a kind, honest person who prefers directness to invasion or suggestion, Mahmoud’s no match for that particular courtier, or any other, for that matter. And you just know, even if you haven’t read the jacket flap — don’t — that the good doctor will make an innocent mistake, for which he’ll pay dearly.
If you’re like me and get upset when you read about decent people suffering for their virtues while the evil triumph, The King at the Edge of the World will make you ache. For that reason, short as the novel is, and recounting as riveting a story as you could want, the threats to our hero kept me from plowing through. Do read the book, though — but not, repeat, the jacket flap, about as potent a spoiler as you’ll ever find.
Phillips excels at re-creating historical attitudes, prejudices, and ways of reasoning. Mahmoud’s adventures in England also resemble a thriller’s in their ever-increasing intensity; combined, these elements make a strong, thought-provoking narrative. At its center, Phillips puts the England riven by conflict between Protestant and Catholic and imagines how a Muslim would view that.
It will be recalled that Elizabethan politics and diplomacy revolved around who prayed where, and in what way, and how many people died, often in hideous fashion, for doing it wrong or attempting to make everyone else do it their way. Hard to imagine that all this idiocy happened during an age blessed with cultural triumph — and Mahmoud, the observant Muslim, remains unimpressed.
The physician, if he weren’t a member of a diplomatic mission, would be called a heretic and a savage to his face (as some English folk manage to imply even as they think they’re being polite). But who’s the person who embodies religious virtue, and who are the real heretics? Who’s the savage, and who’s the civilized, cultured man? This is how Phillips casts the sceptered isle in its glory. To be sure, he also creates an English narrator who insists that Catholic plots against the realm do exist and, if not crushed, would cause widespread bloodshed. Since he’s utterly credible, the question then becomes how to square the civilization and the savagery; and of course, there is no real answer.
My only objections to this novel — have I mentioned the too-revealing jacket flap? — concern Mahmoud’s role as a political actor. How could such a guileless innocent occupy any court position, let alone that of a physician, with the power to kill as well as heal? After all, history records how Ottoman crown princes, on attaining the throne, might have their brothers strangled with a silken cord, as Murad did. Only the politically adept would survive such an atmosphere, or even be invited into it.
Similarly, as the narrative progresses, Mahmoud learns a thing or two about survival — not easily, mind you, and requiring excruciating mental gymnastics, which Phillips ably portrays. For that reason I don’t entirely accept the end, which the author fudges somewhat, unwelcome in itself.
But The King at the End of the World is a marvelous book nonetheless.… (més)
But a diplomatic mission to London, of all places, is setting forth, and Mahmoud, who’d rather not go anywhere, is dragged along. He has little choice, really, for Murad the Great’s command is law. However, the official who gives the Caliph of Caliphs the idea to send the doctor with the diplomats lusts after Mahmoud’s wife. As a kind, honest person who prefers directness to invasion or suggestion, Mahmoud’s no match for that particular courtier, or any other, for that matter. And you just know, even if you haven’t read the jacket flap — don’t — that the good doctor will make an innocent mistake, for which he’ll pay dearly.
If you’re like me and get upset when you read about decent people suffering for their virtues while the evil triumph, The King at the Edge of the World will make you ache. For that reason, short as the novel is, and recounting as riveting a story as you could want, the threats to our hero kept me from plowing through. Do read the book, though — but not, repeat, the jacket flap, about as potent a spoiler as you’ll ever find.
Phillips excels at re-creating historical attitudes, prejudices, and ways of reasoning. Mahmoud’s adventures in England also resemble a thriller’s in their ever-increasing intensity; combined, these elements make a strong, thought-provoking narrative. At its center, Phillips puts the England riven by conflict between Protestant and Catholic and imagines how a Muslim would view that.
It will be recalled that Elizabethan politics and diplomacy revolved around who prayed where, and in what way, and how many people died, often in hideous fashion, for doing it wrong or attempting to make everyone else do it their way. Hard to imagine that all this idiocy happened during an age blessed with cultural triumph — and Mahmoud, the observant Muslim, remains unimpressed.
The physician, if he weren’t a member of a diplomatic mission, would be called a heretic and a savage to his face (as some English folk manage to imply even as they think they’re being polite). But who’s the person who embodies religious virtue, and who are the real heretics? Who’s the savage, and who’s the civilized, cultured man? This is how Phillips casts the sceptered isle in its glory. To be sure, he also creates an English narrator who insists that Catholic plots against the realm do exist and, if not crushed, would cause widespread bloodshed. Since he’s utterly credible, the question then becomes how to square the civilization and the savagery; and of course, there is no real answer.
My only objections to this novel — have I mentioned the too-revealing jacket flap? — concern Mahmoud’s role as a political actor. How could such a guileless innocent occupy any court position, let alone that of a physician, with the power to kill as well as heal? After all, history records how Ottoman crown princes, on attaining the throne, might have their brothers strangled with a silken cord, as Murad did. Only the politically adept would survive such an atmosphere, or even be invited into it.
Similarly, as the narrative progresses, Mahmoud learns a thing or two about survival — not easily, mind you, and requiring excruciating mental gymnastics, which Phillips ably portrays. For that reason I don’t entirely accept the end, which the author fudges somewhat, unwelcome in itself.
But The King at the End of the World is a marvelous book nonetheless.… (més)
Llistes
Premis
Potser també t'agrada
Autors associats
Estadístiques
- Obres
- 6
- També de
- 1
- Membres
- 4,949
- Popularitat
- #5,077
- Valoració
- 3.4
- Ressenyes
- 255
- ISBN
- 127
- Llengües
- 16
- Preferit
- 8
- Pedres de toc
- 330
