THE ALCHEMY OF STORY: IN CONVERSATION WITH RICHARD FLANAGAN

Friday, March 16, 8pm | 60 RMB 

Over the course of seven novels, Richard Flanagan has ranged from stories of intense personal meaning to subjects of burning social and historical significance. In The Narrow Road to the Deep North the author combined these two elements into a potent organic whole that won the 2014 Man Booker Prize. His work continually fuses, in different configurations, story in its many guises: Tasmanian history, personal recollection, deliberate myth-making and, in his formal experimentation and ever-changing voice, the story and history of the novel itself. Tonight he speaks on the nature of an author’s relationship to material, and the dissolution of the self within story. 

Born in Tasmania in 1961, Richard Flanagan is considered one of Australia’s finest novelists. He is also a journalist and producer. Each of his novels has attracted major praise and awards. His debut Death of a River Guide in 1994 was described by The Times Literary Supplement as “one of the most auspicious debuts in Australian writing”. His next book, The Sound of One Hand Clapping sold more than 150,000 copies in Australia alone, and its film adaptation was nominated for the Golden Bear at that year’s Berlin Film Festival. In 2001, Richard wrote a novel based on the life of William Buelow Gould, a convict artist, which went on to win the 2002 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize. As well as being a New Yorker Book of the Year and Observer Book of the Year, Wanting, published in 2008, won the Queensland Premier’s Prize and Tasmania Book Prize. In 2014, he was awarded the 2014 Man Booker Prize for The Narrow Road to the Deep North, a book hailed by The Guardian as ’a masterpiece’. This author is presented as part of the Australian Writers Week 2018, supported by the Australian Embassy, Beijing and the Australian Copyright Agency limited. 

理查德·弗兰纳根

理查德·弗兰纳根1961年出生于澳大利亚塔斯马尼亚，是澳大利亚最优秀的作家之一。同时他还是一名记者、电影制片人。他的每一部小说都收获了大量的赞誉与重要奖项。1994年，他的处女作《河流领路人之死》（Death of a River Guide ）被《泰晤士报文学增刊》称为“澳大利亚文学史上最让人期待的处女作之一”。他的第二本书《一个巴掌能拍响》（又译《单手掌声》）仅在澳大利亚的销售量就超过15万册，由该小说改编的同名电影获得1998年柏林电影节金熊奖提名。2001年，弗兰纳根创作了一部以罪犯艺术家威廉·布洛·古尔德的生平为原型的小说《顾尔德的钓鱼书》（Gould's Book of Fish），该小说于2002年获得英联邦作家奖。2008年出版的作品《欲望》（Wanting）被《纽约客》与《观察家报》同时评为“年度图书”。2014年，《深入北方的小路》（The Narrow Road to the Deep North）斩获英国布克文学奖，《卫报》盛赞这部小说为“杰作”。