Bøger af Francine Prose

In her entertaining and edifying New York Times bestseller, acclaimed author Francine Prose invites you to sit by her side and take a guided tour of the tools and tricks of the masters to discover why their work has endured.

Long before there were creative-writing workshops and degrees, how did aspiring writers learn to write? By reading the work of their predecessors and contemporaries, says Francine Prose.In "Reading Like a Writer," Prose invites you to sit by her side and take a guided tour of the tools and the tricks of the masters. She reads the work of the very best writers—Dostoyevsky, Flaubert, Kafka, Austen, Dickens, Woolf, Chekhov—and discovers why their work has endured. She takes pleasure in the long and magnificent sentences of Philip Roth and the breathtaking paragraphs of Isaac Babel; she is deeply moved by the brilliant characterization in George Eliot's "Middlemarch." She looks to John Le Carre for a lesson in how to advance plot through dialogue, to Flannery O'Connor for the cunning use of the telling detail, and to James Joyce and Katherine Mansfield for clever examples of how to employ gesture to create character. She cautions readers to slow down and pay attention to words, the raw material out of which literature is crafted.Written with passion, humor, and wisdom, "Reading Like a Writer" will inspire readers to return to literature with a fresh eye and an eager heart.

Did they, or didn't they?Did she, or didn't she?Something happened to fourteen-year-old Maisie Willard?something involving her three friends, all boys. But their stories don't match, and the rumors spin out of control. Then other people get involved . . . the school, the parents, the lawyers. The incident at the back of the bus becomes the center of Maisie's life, the talk of the school and, horribly, it becomes news. With just a few words and a touch, the kids and their community are changed forever.From nationally acclaimed author Francine Prose comes an unforgettable story about the difficulties of telling the truth, the consequences of lying, and the most dangerous twist of all?the possibility that you yourself will come to believe something that you know isn't true.

"In this remarkable memoir, the qualities that have long distinguished Francine Prose's fiction and criticism--uncompromising intelligence, a gratifying aversion to sentiment, the citrus bite of irony--give rigor and, finally, an unexpected poignancy to an emotional, artistic, and political coming-of-age tale set in the 1970s--the decade, as she memorably puts it, when American youth realized that the changes that seemed possible in the '60s weren't going to happen. A fascinating and ultimately wrenching book."--Daniel Mendelsohn, author of The Lost: A Search for Six of Six MillionThe first memoir from critically acclaimed, bestselling author Francine Prose, about the close relationship she developed with activist Anthony Russo, one of the men who leaked the Pentagon Papers--and the year when our country changed.During her twenties, Francine Prose lived in San Francisco, where she began an intense and strange relationship with Tony Russo, who had been indicted and tried for working with Daniel Ellsberg to leak the Pentagon papers. The narrative is framed around the nights she spent with Russo driving manically around San Francisco, listening to his stories--and the disturbing and dramatic end of that relationship in New York.What happens to them mirrors the events and preoccupations of that historical moment: the Vietnam war, drugs, women's liberation, the Patty Hearst kidnapping. At once heartfelt and ironic, funny and sad, personal and political, 1974 provides an insightful look at how Francine Prose became a writer and artist during a time when the country, too, was shaping its identity.

Francine Prose's life of Michelangelo Merisi (da Caravaggio) evokes the genius of this incomparable artist through a brilliant reading of his paintings. Caravaggio's use of ordinary people, realistically portrayed?street boys, prostitutes, the poor, the aged?was a profound and revolutionary innovation that left its mark on generations of artists. Revered and successful, Caravaggio was protected by powerful patrons, yet he was also a man of the street who couldn't free himself from its brawls and vendettas. In Caravaggio, bestselling author Francine Prose presents the brief but tumultuous life of one of the greatest of all painters with passion and acute sensitivity.

At the center of Francine Prose's profoundly moving new novel is a young girl facing the consequences of sudden loss after the death of her sister. As her parents drift toward their own risky consolations, thirteen-year-old Nico is left alone to grope toward understanding and clarity, falling into a seductive, dangerous relationship with her sister's enigmatic boyfriend.Over one haunted summer, Nico must face that life-changing moment when children realize their parents can no longer help them. She learns about the power of art, of time and place, the mystery of loss and recovery. But for all the darkness at the novel's heart, the narrative itself is radiant with the lightness of summer and charged by the restless sexual tension of teenage life.Goldengrove takes its place among the great novels of adolescence, beside Henry James's The Awkward Age and L. P. Hartley's The Go-Between.

A distinguished novelist and critic inspires readers and writers with this inside look at how the professionals read--and write Long before there were creative writing workshops and degrees, how did aspiring writers learn to write? By reading the work of their predecessors and contemporaries, says Francine Prose. As she takes us on a guided tour of the tools and the tricks of the masters--Dostoyevsky, Flaubert, Kafka, Austen, Dickens, Woolf, Chekhov--Prose discovers why these writers endure. She takes pleasure in the signature elements of such outsatanding writers as Philip Roth, Isaac Babel, John Le Carré, James Joyce, and Katherine Mansfield. Throughout, she cautions readers to slow down and pay attention to words, the raw material out of which literature is crafted. Written with passion, humor, and wisdom, Reading Like a Writer will inspire readers to return to literature with a fresh eye and an eager heart.

The National Book Award Finalist from acclaimed New York Times bestselling author Francine Prose--now the major motion picture Submission "Screamingly funny ... Blue Angel culminates in a sexual harassment hearing that rivals the Salem witch trials." --USA TodayIt has been years since Swenson, a professor in a New England creative writing program, has published a novel. It's been even longer since any of his students have shown promise. Enter Angela Argo, a pierced, tattooed student with a rare talent for writing. Angela is just the thing Swenson needs. And, better yet, she wants his help. But, as we all know, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.Deliciously risqué, Blue Angel is a withering take on today's academic mores and a scathing tale that vividly shows what can happen when academic politics collides with political correctness.

"Francine Prose has a knack for getting to the heart of human nature. . . . We are allowed to enter the moral dilemmas of fascinating characters whose emotional lives are strung out by the same human frailties, secrets and insecurities we all share." --USA TodayOne spring afternoon, Vincent Nolan, a young neo-Nazi walks into the office of a human rights foundation headed by Meyer Maslow, a charismatic Holocaust survivor. Vincent announces that he wants to make a radical change. But what is Maslow to make of this rough-looking stranger with Waffen SS tattoos who says that his mission is to save guys like him from becoming guys like him? As Vincent gradually turns into the sort of person who might actually be able to do that, he also begins to transform everyone around him, including Maslow himself. Masterfully plotted, darkly comic, A Changed Man poses essential questions about human nature, morality, and the capacity for change, illuminating the everyday transactions, both political and personal, in our lives.

Francine Prose's life of Caravaggio evokes the genius of this great artist through a brilliant reading of his paintings. Caravaggio defied the aesthetic conventions of his time; his use of ordinary people, realistically portrayed?street boys, prostitutes, the poor, the aged?was a profound and revolutionary innovation that left its mark on generations of artists. His insistence on painting from nature, on rendering the emotional truth of experience, whether religious or secular, makes him an artist who speaks across the centuries to our own time.Born in 1571 near Milan, Michelangelo Merisi (da Caravaggio) moved to Rome when he was twenty-one years old. He became a brilliant and successful artist, protected by the influential Cardinal del Monte and other patrons. But he was also a man of the streets who couldn't seem to free himself from its brawls and vendettas. In 1606 he fled Rome, apparently after killing another man in a dispute. He spent his last years in exile, in Naples, Malta, and Sicily, at once celebrated for his art and tormented by his enemies. Through it all, he produced masterpieces of astonishing complexity and power. Eventually he received a pardon from the Pope, only to die, in mysterious circumstances, on the way back to Rome in 1610.Francine Prose presents the brief but tumultuous life of one of the greatest of all painters with passion and acute sensitivity.

School has become a prison.No one knows why.There's no way to stop it.

All loved, and were loved by, their artists, and inspired them with an intensity of emotion akin to Eros.In a brilliant, wry, and provocative book, National Book Award finalist Francine Prose explores the complex relationship between the artist and his muse. In so doing, she illuminates with great sensitivity and intelligence the elusive emotional wellsprings of the creative process.

The less-than-innocents abroad in these short novels are Americans in Europe, involved in what turn out to be pleasure tours of hell: shocking, bewildering trips that change forever their ideas about history, reality, politics, sex -- their entire lives.In the title novella, a third-rate American playwright named Landau attends a literary conference in Prague, where an organized group excursion to a former concentration camp degenerates into a battle of wills and an exercise in egomania and public humiliation. Nina, the heroine of the second novella, "Three Pigs in Five Days," is sent to Paris to write an article for her lover's travel journal -- a dizzying, erotic pilgrimage that forces her to see how sex has distorted her view of the world.

"An essay by Xavier F. Salomon, Frick Curator, paired with a contribution by author Francine Prose bring to life one of Titian's most personal and revealing portraits. Author of lives of saints, scurrilous verses, comedies, tragedies, and innumerable letters, Pietro Aretino (1492-1556) attained considerable wealth and influence, in part through literary flattery and blackmail. Little is known of his early years, but by 1527 he had settled permanently in Venice. Among Aretino's friends and patrons were some of the most prominent figures of his time, several of whom gave him gold chains such as the one he wears in this portrait. He was on intimate terms with Titian, who painted at least three portraits of him. Here the artist conveys his friend's intellectual power through the keen, forceful head and his worldliness through the solid, weighty mass of the richly robed figure."--Amazon.com

A deeply felt reappraisal of the work and its global impact.... [Prose] makes a persuasive argument for Anne Franks literary genius. New York Times Book ReviewIn June, 1942, Anne Frank received a diary for her thirteenth birthday, just weeks before she and her family went into hiding from the Nazis in an Amsterdam attic. For two years, she described life in hiding in vivid, unforgettable detail and grappled with the unfolding events of World War II. Before the attic was raided in August, 1944, Anne Frank furiously revised and edited her work, crafting a piece of literature that she hoped would be read by the public after the war. And read it has been.In Anne Frank, bestselling author Francine Prose deftly parses the artistry, ambition, and enduring influence of Anne Franks beloved classic, The Diary of a Young Girl. She investigates the diarys unique afterlife: the obstacles and criticism Otto Frank faced in publishing his daughters words; the controversy surrounding the diarys Broadway and film adaptations, and the social mores of the 1950s that reduced it to a tale of adolescent angst and love; the conspiracy theories that have cried fraud, and the scientific analysis that proved them wrong. Finally, having assigned the book to her own students, Prose considers the rewards and challenges of teaching one of the worlds most read, and banned, books. How has the life and death of one girl become emblematic of the lives and deaths of so many, and why do her words continue to inspire?Approved by both the Anne Frank House Foundation in Amsterdam and the Anne Frank-Fonds in Basel, run by the Frank family, Anne Frank unravels the fascinating story of a memoir that has become one of the most compelling, intimate, and important documents of modern history.

At the center of Francine Prose's profoundly moving new novel is a young girl facing the consequences of sudden loss after the death of her sister. As her parents drift toward their own risky consolations, thirteen-year-old Nico is left alone to grope toward understanding and clarity, falling into a seductive, dangerous relationship with her sister's enigmatic boyfriend.Over one haunted summer, Nico must face that life-changing moment when children realize their parents can no longer help them. She learns about the power of art, of time and place, the mystery of loss and recovery. But for all the darkness at the novel's heart, the narrative itself is radiant with the lightness of summer and charged by the restless sexual tension of teenage life.Goldengrove takes its place among the great novels of adolescence, beside Henry James's The Awkward Age and L. P. Hartley's The Go-Between.

Celebrates the pleasures of reading and pays homage to the works and writers the author admires above all others, from Jane Austen to Charles Dickens to Jennifer Egan.

This tale of a family in Little Italy is ';a minor miracle... documenting the madness and the grace of God in everyday life' (Newsweek). On a 1950s September night so hot that the devout Catholics of Little Italy wonder if New York City has slipped into hell, the butcher Joseph Santangelo invites his friends to play pinochle. At the end of a long, sweaty, boozy evening, his friend Lino Falconetti, addled by wine and heat, bets the hand of his daughter, Catherineand Santangelo wins. Santangelo's modern new wife clashes immediately with his superstitious, fiercely protective mother. But years later, it is Catherine who is horrified when the daughter they raise turns out to have more in common with the old world than the new. From a New York Timesbestselling author, this story of two generations of an Italian-American family is imaginative, evocative, funny, and warmand was made into an acclaimed film directed by Nancy Savoca, starring Tracey Ullman, Vincent D'Onofrio, and Lili Taylor.

Winner of the National Jewish Book Award: A novel of a Polish king and a rebellious rabbi, ';full of sudden delights and mocking humor' (The New York Times). The Polish monarch has outlawed a portion of the Jewish funeral rite, and none of the community's lawyers, judges, or scholars will come forward to defend the custom before the crown. Only one man dares challenge the sovereign: the spindly old Rabbi Eliezer of Rimanov, whose eccentric habits conceal the mind of a dreamer and the curiosity of a child. The rabbi is reduced to laughter at the sight of the king, for the country's ruler is but a boyand Rabbi Eliezer knows how to speak to youngsters. They make a bet: If the rabbi can convince him that there is more to the universe than meets the eye, the funeral rite will be restored. To make his case, Eliezer launches into the story of Judah ben Simon, a tale of such majesty and wonder that it promises to make a dreamer out of all who hear it, changing them forevermore.Judah the Pious is a lively, early novel set in seventeenth-century Poland by one of today's most accomplished writers, a National Book Award finalist and the New York Timesbestselling author of Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932; A Changed Man; and Reading Like a Writer.

An ';irresistibly readable' pair of novellas skewering Americans abroadby the New York Timesbestselling author and National Book Award finalist(The New York Times Book Review). ';In a style that is bold, witty, richly detailed, and suffused with a wry subtlety,' Francine Prose offers penetrating portraits of Americans in Europe who have brought all their baggageego, ambition, sexual desirewith them (Elle). Guided Tours of Hell When the insecure (and rightfully so) playwright Landau travels from New York to Prague to read at the first annual Kafka conference, he's certain this is his chance to prove himselfand his work. But he quickly finds himself upstaged by Jiri Krakauer, a charismatic Holocaust survivor whose claim to fame is a long-ago death-camp love affair with Kafka's sister. On a group tour to the camp-turned-tourist-attraction, Landau sets out to prove that Krakauer is lyingwith unexpected results. Three Pigs in Five Days Ambitious young journalist Nina has been stranded in Paris by her editor and sometimes boyfriend, Leo. When he finally shows up, playfully suggesting a romantic tour of the catacombs, prisons, and shadows of the City of Light, the bloom begins to come off the rose for the infatuated Ninawho must ask herself how much of herself she is willing to sacrifice for love.

A Haitian emigre's exposure to shallow suburbanites is ';social satire at its slyest and best' from the New York Timesbestselling author (Kirkus Reviews). When the heartbroken Simone flees her native Haiti, her best option to start a new life is a quick paper marriage to a Brooklyn cab driver and a job as an underpaid caregiver to two spoiled young children in the small community of Hudson Landing, New York. But her new boss is nothing like what she's been led to expect. The self-absorbed amateur sculptor Rosemary Porter and her morose, eccentric children George and Maisiedeserted by their philandering husband and fatherrattle aimlessly around their crumbling suburban mansion. The people of Hudson Landing seem welcoming at first, but as Simone settles into this new home, her sense of unease grows. Rosemary's sarcastic best friend, Shelly, seems as suspicious of her as her shallow boyfriend, Kenny, a children's hair salon owner who appears eager to befriend the new au pair. A neighbor known only as ';The Count' strings dead animals from trees for no reason anyone can understand. As the local community roils with secrets and attempts to outdo each other with self-importance, Simone begins to wonder just where on earth she has fled toand if it's any better than the violence and betrayal she left behind. As always, National Book Award finalist Francine Prose ';has a wickedly sharp ear for pretentious American idiom, and no telling detail escapes her observation' as Simone struggles to make sense of these odd people and this strange, new world (The New York Times Book Review).

Eleven ';impeccably crafted, painfully hilarious' tales of innocence lost and families in search of connection from the New York Timesbestselling author (San Francisco Chronicle). A reluctant trophy wife on her Italian honeymoon; a young woman in love with her sister's dead boyfriend; a lonely puppeteer flirting with the hostess of a children's party; a teenage girl traveling to Paris with her father and, unexpectedly, his young girlfriend. Francine Prose's characters inhabit a world of rich emotion and startling clarity, searching for connection in a world full of surprise and humor; they travel, love, break up, and start again. Even their animal companionsa gecko rescued from a wild party, a dog who bites a bride, a hamster who dies unexpectedly and sends a family on a journey to give it a proper funeralshine with the emotional complexity and sly satire that make Prose's work such a joy to experience. In this collection, the New York Timesbestselling author and National Book Award finalist demonstrates the craft, humor, and piercing human insight that make her, in the words of Gary Shteyngart ';one of a handful of truly indispensable American writers.'

The New York Timesbestselling author takes on New Agers as one woman searches for meaning in this ';brilliantly satiric but... sweet-natured' novel (Publishers Weekly). Thirty-year-old Martha is stagnating in a demeaning, woefully underpaid job as a fact-checker at frothy fashion magazine Mode and an unhappy relationship with an unrepentant jerk. But she stumbles upon an unlikely new circle of friends when she interrupts a goddess-worshipping ceremony on Fire Island and ends up rescuing its accident-prone leader, Isis Moonwagon, from the waves. From the steel skyscrapers of Manhattan to a sweat lodge in the Arizona desert, Martha chases fulfillment and self-actualization in the company of this group of opinionated, bumbling women, but the revelations she receives are not necessarily what she expected. ';Prose's satiric vision could not be more sharply focused here, and her powers of observation and deadpan humor never falter' as she sends up the New Age movement and its over-earnest adherents (The Miami Herald).

';Reading [this book] is like driving down the road with a companion who is so smart and funny and insightful that her conversation transforms the landscape' (Jane Smiley, Pulitzer Prizewinning author of A Thousand Acres). The twelve ';meticulously observed' stories of Women and Children First showcase New York Timesbestselling author and National Book Award finalist Francine Prose at her finestoffering a glimpse into the lives of men and women searching for connection and meaning in a world that often seems pre-programmed for absurdity (The New York Times). An adult daughter struggling to understand her father's newfound Hasidic faith, an alcoholic trying to improve himself by fasting, a housewife enrolled in the New Consciousness Academy, a French literature professor who's begun to fear Madame Bovary, and a young woman seeking direction from a Tibetan master in the company of neurotic, overeager followersthese are the achingly, hilariously real people who inhabit these ';wise and witty' stories (Minneapolis Star-Tribune).

The story of a troupe of actors in seventeenth-century Italy, from ';one of a handful of truly indispensable American writers' (Gary Shteyngart).The Glorious Ones are an unlikely troupe of actors, traveling up and down the seventeenth-century Italian countryside performing commedia dell'arte for kings, for peasants, for anyone with coin. There is Armanda, the cheerful dwarf and ex-nun; chattering Columbina; Pantalone the miser; and the wicked Brighellaall led by Flaminio Scala, the self-proclaimed most courageous man in Christendom.But for all their wild differences, not one of them is prepared for the arrival of Isabella, their mysterious new director, who is about to turn their whole world upside down.Dramatic and imaginative, this tale of adventure, love, and theater is a historical romp from the award-winning, New York Timesbestselling author of novels, including Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932, and Household Saints, as well as the literary guide book Reading Like a Writer.

From the ';wonderfully quirky imagination' of the New York Timesbestselling author: A tabloid reporter is surprised to find magic in a mundane world (The New York Times). Vera Pearl is a staff writer for This Week, a supermarket tabloid which trades in the bizarre and the absurdthough rarely, if ever, the true. No one is better than Vera at imagining these weird, wild stories, because more than anything, she wants them to be real. During one particularly slow week, Vera takes a photograph snapped by a colleague showing two children selling lemonade outside their Brooklyn home and drafts up a scoop to fit the snap, the story of two enterprising children who have discoveredand are profiting off ofthe literal Fountain of Youth. By astonishing coincidenceor perhaps by magicthe details she concocts about the children (except for the properties of the tap water) turn out to be true, and hundreds of miracle-seekers descend upon this modern Lourdes-in-Flatbush. The resulting lawsuit sends this master of hoaxes into a very real tailspin: she is fired, her estranged husband flies in from Los Angeles to whisk away their precocious young daughter, and Vera takes off for Arizona to attend a meeting of the Cryptobiological Society, hoping for evidence of their furry quarry, Bigfoot. Just one glance, and Vera's longing to finally transcend the quotidian may come true...