Edward Docx

Edward Docx
Occupation Writer
Nationality British
Notable works

Novels: The Calligrapher, Pravda, The Devil's Garden

Essays: Postmodernism is Dead, Walking with Karl


Edward Docx (born 1972[1]) is a British writer. His first novel, The Calligrapher was published in 2003. He is an associate editor of Prospect Magazine.

Biography

Docx was born in 1972, brought up in Hale, Cheshire, and educated at St Bede's College, Manchester, and Christ's College, Cambridge.[1] At Christ's he read English Literature[1] and was also president of the Junior Common Room.[2]

Docx is distantly related to the Partridge literary family through his maternal grandfather, Ralph Partridge, who was an officer in the British army.[3] His father is a specialist dentist,[4] and his mother was a classical music agent, and is Russian.[4] He is the eldest son of a family of seven children. One of his brothers is a classical pianist.[4]

Works

Edward Docx's first novel, The Calligrapher (2003), was short-listed for both the William Saroyan prize[5] and the Guilford Prize. The San Francisco Chronicle called it the best debut book of the year.[6]

This was followed by Pravda (2007, entitled Self Help in the UK), which was long-listed for the Man-Booker Prize (2007)[7] and won the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize (2007).

His third novel was The Devil’s Garden (2011), which is in production with Mandabach Productions.

Docx's work is often extremely well received by critics in the UK[8][9] and America.[10][11] The New York Times has described him as 'fiendishly clever'[12] and The Independent as a 'virtuoso phrasemaker' and one of the most 'humane' writers of his generation.[13] Docx was cited as one of the 21 most gifted young writers from around the world by The Hay Festival Committee (2008).[14] But he has also been described as 'hyperbolic'.[15]

Docx's plays include The Nose, commissioned by BBC based on Gogol’s short story, and ‘Bounce’ or 'The President's Dog', a screenplay in conjunction with Riley Productions.

Themes & Style

Docx's novels are very different from one another in range, scope and subject. But all three deal broadly with antiphonal themes of masculinity and femininity, atheism and religious belief, love and exploitation, and all three are peopled with opposing moral and amoral characters who are uncertain actors in their own lives. His work is generally considered literary and though contemporary in tone and concern, it is evidently aware of both novelists and poets from the canon - explicitly so in the case of The Calligrapher, which centres on the poetry of John Donne. His style changes from novel to novel leading to comparisons with writers as diverse as Dickens,[8] Dostoyevsky[10] and Coetzee.[16] He has indicated in interviews that this is part of a deliberate attempt to avoid writing the same thing repeatedly. His writing is also noted for its vitality and the attention given to character as well as style: 'Docx has a gift for assessing “the exact shape and weight of other people’s inner selves, the architecture of their spirit” and even his most ancillary characters flare into being, vital and insistent.' The New Yorker. [17]

Quotes

"All art is philosophy and all philosophy is political."[18]

"Half the world is screaming for water and freedom while the other half is ordering cocktails and complaining about the service."[19]

"Idealism, as you will have noticed, has died a short but tragic death. Don Quixote rode in vain and Karl Marx is long forgotten, muttering the truth into his beard like a mad tramp lying on a broken box on the pavement outside King's Cross station." [20]

Journalism

Docx has contributed to most of the leading British and American newspapers and magazines. In the UK, his journalism most often appears in The Guardian [21] or Prospect Magazine.[22] Docx was short-listed for The George Orwell Prize for Journalism in 2012.[23] He was short-listed in 2014 for the Foreign Press Association Feature of the Year.[24] And Docx was again long-listed for the George Orwell Rowntree Prize in 2015.[25] He has worked in The House of Commons and has interviewed several of the British party political leaders.

Criticism, Radio & Television

Docx reviews fiction for The Guardian.[21] He has also worked extensively on television and radio. He presented his own show for BBC Television[26] and BBC Radio.[27] He has written widely on the cultural importance of literature and is a regular teacher of The Guardian's Masterclass series on fiction.[28]

References

External links

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