Jim Crace
Jim Crace
James "Jim" Craceis an award-winning English writer. His novels include Quarantine, which was judged Whitbread Novel of 1998, and Harvest, which won the 2015 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, the 2013 James Tait Black Memorial Prize, and was shortlisted for the 2013 Man Booker Prize...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionWriter
Date of Birth1 March 1946
avoided danger despised english life
I have, I must admit, despised the English countryside for much of my life - despised it and avoided it for its want of danger and adventure.
failings
I feel the political failings of the U.S.A. are presidential in length, but the aspirant narrative of the States is millennial in length.
country deeply prefer
I don't have a constituency, and I'm not autobiographical in any way. I write these deeply moral books in a country which would prefer irony to anything with a moral tone.
consider interested
I don't have any sense of an audience when I'm writing. I don't consider the audience. Because all I'm interested in is the problem on the page.
book changed dearly hearts love men minds political women
I'd dearly love to write a political book that changed the hearts and minds of men and women.
adore entertain happened
I adore falseness. I don't want you to tell me accurately what happened yesterday. I want you to lie about it, to exaggerate, to entertain me.
I didn't go to university straight after school. I went at night.
asking brazil historical intentions land method modern novel seized though
Even though the method of 'Harvest' was a historical novel, its intentions were that of a modern novel. I'm asking you to think about land being seized in Brazil by soya barons. It's also a novel about immigration.
act climbing fear feared fruit grabbing loved sent though
Even though my brother and I loved scrumping - we loved the act of climbing trees and grabbing fruit - there was always fear we would be caught. We feared we'd be imprisoned, sent to Australia.
history natural obsessed tone
Because I'm a walker, natural history is my subject; I've always been obsessed with landscape, and I have an elegiac tone in most of my books.
love
We're all blemished. Yet we do love and are loved.
background brought estate
When I was a youngster, I was brought up in a very political background on an estate in north London.
asked books deliver drive people side van work
When people asked me what I did, I'd say, 'I work in publishing', and when they then say, 'What side of it?', I say, 'Supply' - no doubt leaving them to think I drive the books around in a van and deliver them.
almost avoid bitterness bound deliver retiring
Retiring from writing is to avoid the inevitable bitterness which a writing career is bound to deliver as its end product in almost every case.