Adam Mars-Jones
Adam Mars-Jones | |
|---|---|
| File:Adam Mars Jones (8048688703).jpg Mars-Jones in 2012 | |
| Born | 26 October 1954 London, UK |
| Occupations | Novelist and literary critic |
| Notable work | Lantern Lecture (1981) |
| Awards | Somerset Maugham Award |
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Adam Mars-Jones (born 26 October 1954) is a British novelist and literary and film critic.
Early life and education
[edit | edit source]Mars-Jones was born in London, to Sir William Mars-Jones (1915–1999), a Welsh High Court judge, and Sheila Cobon (1923–1998), an attorney, daughter of Charles Cobon, a marine engineer.[1][2][3][4] Mars-Jones attended Westminster School, and studied English at Trinity Hall, Cambridge.[5][6]
Career
[edit | edit source]Mars-Jones is a regular contributor to The Guardian, The Observer, The Times Literary Supplement, and the London Review of Books. He also participated in BBC Television's Newsnight Review.
His first collection of stories, Lantern Lecture (1981), won a Somerset Maugham Award. In 1983, he edited the collection Mae West Is Dead: Recent Lesbian and Gay Fiction. His own short fiction was collected in The Darker Proof: Stories from a Crisis (1987), co-written with Edmund White, and in Monopolies of Loss (1992); both works address the AIDS crisis. His essay "Venus Envy", a polemic against Martin Amis, was originally published in the CounterBlasts series in 1990.
Mars-Jones' first novel, The Waters of Thirst, was published in 1993. His second novel, Pilcrow (2008), was followed by two sequels, Cedilla (2011) and Caret (2023), which together form the first three volumes of a projected series.[7]
He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2007.[8]
Noriko Smiling, a book concerning the Yasujirō Ozu-directed film Late Spring, was published in 2011.[9][10]
In 2012, he was awarded the inaugural Hatchet Job of the Year Award for his review of Michael Cunningham's By Nightfall.[11]
On 2 January 2015, Mars-Jones was captain of the winning team on the television quiz show Christmas University Challenge, representing Trinity Hall, Cambridge, who defeated Balliol College, Oxford, the University of Edinburgh and the University of Hull. His teammates were international rower Tom James, world champion cyclist Emma Pooley and actor Dan Starkey.[12]
His 2020 novel Box Hill was adapted into the 2025 film Pillion, starring Harry Melling and Alexander Skarsgaard.[13]
Personal life
[edit | edit source]Mars-Jones' 1997 "Blind Bitter Happiness" re-tells the difficult life of his mother and his relationship to her.[14] His memoir Kid Gloves: A Voyage Round My Father (2015) deals with his father's struggle to come to terms with his son's homosexuality and his father's later slide into dementia in old age.[15]
Bibliography
[edit | edit source]| Date | Title |
|---|---|
| 1981 | Lantern Lecture |
| 1987 | The Darker Proof: Stories from a Crisis (with Edmund White) |
| 1990 | "Venus Envy" |
| 1992 | The Monopolies of Loss |
| 1994 | The Waters of Thirst |
| 1997 | "Blind Bitter Happiness" |
| 2008 | Pilcrow |
| 2011 | Cedilla |
| 2011 | Noriko Smiling[9] |
| 2015 | Kid Gloves: A Voyage Round My Father |
| 2020 | Box Hill[16] |
| 2021 | Batlava Lake |
| 2023 | Caret |
References
[edit | edit source]- ^ Graya: A Magazine for Members of Gray's Inn, issue 107, 1999, p. 110.
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- ^ Who was Who, St Martin's Press, 1996, p. 386.
- ^ Robertson, Geoffrey (12 January 1999), "Sir William Mars-Jones obituary", The Guardian.
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- ^ Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration at line 2172: attempt to index field '?' (a nil value).
- ^ Mars-Jones, Adam (23 January 2011), "By Nightfall by Michael Cunningham – review", The Observer.
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- ^ "Blind Bitter Happiness" in Sons and Mothers, ed. Matthew and Victoria Glendinning, London, 1996, Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration at line 2172: attempt to index field '?' (a nil value).
- ^ Kid Gloves: a Voyage Round my Father, London, 2015, Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration at line 2172: attempt to index field '?' (a nil value)..
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External links
[edit | edit source]- Adam Mars-Jones at British Council: Literature
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- Living people
- 1954 births
- 20th-century British novelists
- 21st-century British novelists
- 20th-century English male writers
- 21st-century English male writers
- Alumni of Trinity Hall, Cambridge
- British gay writers
- British LGBTQ broadcasters
- British male novelists
- English LGBTQ writers
- English people of Welsh descent
- Fellows of the Royal Society of Literature
- The Guardian journalists
- LGBTQ people from London
- People educated at Westminster School, London
- Writers from London
- The Times people
- 21st-century English LGBTQ people
- English male journalists