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
solved sorted
The problems of the world are not going to be engaged with and solved in Faversham, they're going to be sorted out in cities like Birmingham.
I should have been kinder when I was younger.
prizes sell
I've been very lucky with prizes. But the thing about prizes is that, when you talk about a prize-winning author, you can be talking about one that is well-regarded but doesn't sell any books.
defending politics
English politics is so much more concerned with the proprieties than with defending dogmas.
thrilled
Privately, I'm thrilled with what I do, but publicly, I hold it in disdain.
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.
brought flat north south virtually
I was brought up in a flat in North London - virtually the last building in London, because north of us was countryside all the way to the coast, and south of us was non-stop London for 20 miles.
affected creature debates destroyed narrative
While we're having all these debates about how the book is being destroyed by the Kindle, we have to remember that narrative will not be affected at all because it's part of our makeup as a creature on this planet.
stopped
I stopped being an engaged journalist and became a disengaged novelist.
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.
ancient book french impress middle reading relate seemed sick smart tired writer
I was sick and tired of reading other people's epigraphs. They all seemed to be in ancient Greek, middle French or, when they were translated, they never seemed to relate to the book at hand. Basically, they seemed to be there just to baffle you and to impress you with how smart the writer is.
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.