James Lasdun

Writer - Fiction and Non-fiction

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Photograph: Nina Subin

Books

Associate: Seren Adams

Books

James Lasdun was born in London in 1958 and now lives in the US. He has published three novels, four collections of poetry and four books of short stories, including the selection The Siege, the title story of which was made into a film by Bernardo Bertolucci (Besieged). His most recent books are Bluestone: New and Selected Poems and The Fall Guy, a novel. With Jonathan Nossiter he co-wrote the films Sunday, which won Best Feature and Best Screenplay awards at Sundance, and Signs and Wonders, starring Charlotte Rampling and Stellan Skarsgaard. With Michael Hofmann he edited the anthology After Ovid: New Metamorphoses. With his wife Pia Davis he has written two guide books, Walking and Eating in Tuscany and Umbria, and Walking and Eating in Provence. His essays and reviews have appeared in Harper’s, Granta, the London Review of Books, The New York Times, the Guardian and the New Yorker.

His work has been widely translated and won numerous awards, including the inaugural BBC National Short Story Award. He has been a finalist for the T.S. Eliot Prize, the Forward Prize and the LA Times Book Prize. His first novel, The Horned Man, was a New York Times Notable Book, and his second, Seven Lies, was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize. 

VICTORY, which comprises the novellas 'Feathered Glory' and 'Afternoon of a Fawn', was published by Jonathan Cape in February 2019, and was selected for The Sunday Times list of 'Must Reads: the 20 best books of 2019 so far'.

His next non-fiction book, THE FAMILY MAN, on the Murdaugh murders, will be published by Jonathan Cape in 2025, followed by his novel-in-progress, THE IRON GATES.

Praise for VICTORY (2019):

‘[Victory makes] a convincing case for James Lasdun as one of the most incisive investigators of the human heart writing in English today. [Feathered Glory is] a subtle, well-judged story about restraint, rapture and regret. But it’s Afternoon of a Faun that feels like the main event, an instant masterpiece that brings the taut psychological precision of a Chekhov story to a hyper-modern, post-#MeToo setting. […] [The narrator] calls to mind the storytellers of The Great Gatsby and Le Grand Meaulnes: passive, voyeuristic and finally implicated. […] Lasdun’s limpid, muscular prose cuts to the heart of midlife anxieties […] [he] doesn’t put a foot wrong in either story: both are suspenseful and truthful, familiar in their subject matter but audacious in their conclusions. If future scholars want to know what the hell was going on with sex and power at this moment in history, Victory won’t be a bad place to start.’ Johanna Thomas-Corr, Observer

‘In 1999, the critic James Wood described James Lasdun as “one of the secret gardens of English literature”. Twenty years on, this description still seems apt. […] What both novellas do is expertly unpick the webs of deceit men weave through their lives – the lies that not only help advance their interests, but also prop up their ideas of themselves. […] [Feathered Glory is] fascinating about the warped thought processes that often underpin male duplicity. In elegant and supple prose, Lasdun documents the leaps of logic and sly rationalisations by which Richard commits himself to a course of betrayal, even while reassuring himself of his essential goodness. […] [Afternoon of a Faun] has a propulsive energy, as both reader and narrator yearn for an answer to the question: is Rosedale’s accuser telling the truth? The denouement, when it arrives, is shocking […] [These are] stories that ought to be read – not just for their insights into “toxic masculinity”, but for what they tell us about ways in which men think.’ William Skidelsky, Financial Times

‘The unsavoury behaviour of men reverberates through Lasdun’s Victory, which comprises two mesmeric, stand-alone stories. […] These are impressive stories, containing beautiful descriptions and subtle twists.’ Sunday Times

Eerie […] Afternoon of a Faun succeeds because its villain is our narrator. […] [It] is a highly conscientious novel, elegant in its execution and almost humble in its refusal to grandstand, or to turn a story about rape allegations into some didactic allegory.’ Josephine Livingstone, New Republic

‘Lasdun explores the social and psychological aspects of an abuse accusation in an expertly orchestrated and engaging novel set during the run-up to the 2016 [US] election. […] [He] hooks the reader on his narrative with brief, tautly controlled chapters, each one adding new evidence and detail and relying on acute observation of the sometimes-bizarre machinations of the psyche. […] Of the novels to come out of the #MeToo moment to date, none is more riveting, insightful and unsettling. Lasdun is the perfect writer to navigate these troubled waters from the male perspective.’ Kirkus Reviews (*)

Eerie […] Afternoon of a Faun succeeds because its villain is our narrator. […] [It] is a highly conscientious novel, elegant in its execution and almost humble in its refusal to grandstand, or to turn a story about rape allegations into some didactic allegory.’ Josephine Livingstone, New Republic

‘Discomfiting new fiction […] A story for our times, Afternoon of a Faun goes to the heart of questions of male irresponsibility and sexual self-control. Feathered Glory [is] an equally brilliant morality […] [and] confirms Lasdun as one of the great serio-comic writers of the age. The writing, alternately poetic and razor-sharp cynical, absorbs from start to finish.’ Ian Thomson, Tablet

‘Lasdun has always plumbed the murkier depths of desire […] it’s no surprise to find that his electric new book – two novellas – speaks to the post-Weinstein reckoning with the abuse of male power. […] The first is absorbing […] But it’s the second that’s the showstopper, an intricately layered tale of a New reporter, Marco, fighting dirty to deny an historical allegation of rape. […] [Unfolds] with grim irony against Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.’ Daily Mail

‘[T]wo powerful novellas […] Both explore uncomfortable corners of the male psyche with eerie clarity, but Afternoon of a Faun goes darker and further, with a timely and irresistible unpleasant story that is sure to provoke passionate discussion. […] In an age of loud invective and binary solutions, there is something wonderful about Lasdun’s scrupulous recording of doubts and uncertainty. I like his unapologetic literariness and the unexpected way his books draw strength from artefacts of high culture. […] Feathered Glory offers quieter pleasures; it’s Afternoon of a Faun that lingers after you have closed the book with a vividness that testifies to the compact virtues of the novella.’ Marcel Theroux, Guardian

‘Lasdun is my favourite ‘should be famous’ writer, his work extraordinarily taut and compelling. His eye-boggling psychological thrillers are understated, yet perspicacious and hilarious. […] Unwittingly (because he started them before the furore), Lasdun has written two superb novellas for the #MeToo age, published together in Victory. […] [In ‘Feathered Glory’ he] expertly demonstrates how inner moral structure is often built on the scaffolding of tenuous and arbitrary rules and self-justification. The complexity of male friendship is also wryly assessed. […] [‘Afternoon of a Faun’] is enthralling. The conversations and events ring true; the characters are believable. We know that either the alleged rapist or the accuser will have their life destroyed. […] Full of contemporary resonanceSpectator

‘[Victory] will no doubt be hailed as timely, but the subjects it explores – the fallibility of memory, the nature of reputation, voyeurism, harassment and the public life of private acts – run deep through much of the prose Lasdun has produced over the last twenty years. Rather than chasing the times, the times have come to him.’ Frank Lawton, Literary Review

Feathered Glory and Afternoon of a Faun [are] both darkly humorous and compelling portraits of men wrestling with guilt and desire.’ Guardian

Praise for THE FALL GUY (2017):

Exceptionally entertaining… [The Fall Guy is] a cross of literary fiction, thriller and mystery; as David Shields has said, and as good writers realize quickly, “genre is a minimum-security prison.” Maybe the title places it most accurately: Lasdun, after pathogenic proliferation of Girls in crime fiction – gone ones, good ones, train ones, through glass ones – offers us two guys with enigmatic motives, in restrained competition over a woman to whom one of them is married. Which of them will be the fall guy? […] There’s something reptilian in Lasdun’s gaze, a cold-blooded interest in furtiveness, in the lithe selfishness of the genteel. “The Fall Guy” reads like early Ian McEwan or late Patricia Highsmith, and while often novelists who write as finely as he does seem to feel above what Jonathan Franzen once called the “stoop work” of narrative, Lasdun is masterly in his story’s construction. His clues never seem like clues until they bind tightly around one of the three leads. This is exactly what a literary thriller should be: intelligent, careful, swift, unsettling. Its author deserves to find more readers on these shores.’ The New York Times Book Review

'As James Lasdun’s engaging, effortlessly readable literary thriller begins, we have no immediate reason to distrust or dislike 39-year-old Matthew (like the author, a Londoner transplanted to New York) through whose eyes the story unfolds. But on reexamination, the first chapter is sown with the seeds of creepiness that readers of, say, Ian McEwan’s skincrawler Enduring Love will recognise... the whole premise of the novel feels a touch off — deliberately and oh-so-promisingly off... This delight to read is also a fine study in the classic unreliable narrator. Only towards the end are other characters allowed to hold mirrors up to Matthew and reflect very different visions from the one Matthew presents to the reader. A dissonance between the self as experienced from the inside and the self as perceived from without is standard for all of us to a degree, but often widens in a good psychological thriller. Lasdun’s writing style is clean and straightforward. All the complexity resides in character and detail. This is masterfully controlled 2am noir. Who knows what’s up with the option, but me, I’d film this one in black and white.' Lionel Shriver, Financial Times

'To judge from Lasdun's new novel, [Patricia] Highsmith has been an inspiration as well as a consolation. A stealthily nasty tale of social envy and sexual deceit, sifted through the worldview of a damaged outsider akin to a not-so-talented Tom Ripley, The Fall Guy looks very much like Lasdun's stab at a 21st-century remix of his favoured comfort reading, with the comfort stripped out. The early pages crackle with a gut-level sense of malace that it's tricky to pinpoint... Blood spills - I think I can tell you that - and a brilliantly unbearable pivotal scene is erotic, tense and absurd. Even after we get an idea of what's going on, it's still a shock to see the method by which Lasdun relieves the tension he builds so well. Little time bombs of detail are satisfyingly detonated... First time around, you read to find out what happens; but the artistry in this morally complex, coolly seductive portrait of an imploding psyche means that there is plenty to admire on a repeat visit.' Literary Review 

'[A] menacing thriller of money and betrayal... The gothic lies in wait, even in the positioning of the guest house where Matthew stays when the main house is full, "an octagonal wooden eyrie with towering black pines behind and the abyss of the vast valley dropping almost sheerly in front". Lines like this prepare us for the catastrophe: though when it comes it's not entirely what we expected and somehow so much worse than we imagined. With its deftly constructed narratives of guilt and buried resentmentThe Fall Guy is more accessible than Lasdun's previous novels, and filmic to the point where it can seem like a cleverly fleshed-out screenplay... Matthew shifts and changes with the light, and in the end we're left with the sense of an identity both menaced and menacing, a psyche swinging between anxiety, deep-seated aggression and constant mourning for a life that never quite got going.' Guardian 

'Nothing is straightforward in this slick, Highsmithian thriller, and while the damaged Matthew's capacity for self-deception is flagged early, Lasdun's skill lies not least in letting us think that we might therefore have his number. Wrong - and yet the novel's denouement feels fated even as it smoothly steals the breath.' Observer

'The Fall Guy, a thriller of manners, is written in third-person. But so adroit is Lasdun at allowing a reader access to Matthew's past and present thoughts and feelings that it seems like a first-person narrative... This simple-seeming novel, so graceful in its unfolding, proves dense with psychological detail and sly social observations. Its natural momentum is jarred ahead at a crucial point by a dramatic and effective flash-forward, but the plot's inevitable-seeming denouement still delivers the shock of surprise.' Wall Street Journal

'The Fall Guy is a thriller that belongs on the literary top shelf with Graham Greene and Charles McCarry, a thriller in the way Henry James’s The Turn Of The Screw is a ghost story. The thrills it offers are those of narrative and philosophy. It is a moral tale in which Good and Evil do battle in the minds of its characters, andthe story teller is lying to himself — and so to us... Lasdun may be touched with greatness.' Hudson Valley One

Fiction

Publication DetailsNotes
2019

Jonathan Cape

Love and hate, desire and guilt, friendship and betrayal form the coordinates of these two intensely dramatic stories of men and women caught between their irrational passions and the urge for control.

In 'Feathered Glory' the seemingly happy marriage of a school principal and his artist wife reveals dangerous fault-lines as an old lover reappears in the husband’s life and the wife, fascinated by a charismatic wildlife rehabilitator, brings an injured swan into their home. The poignant denouement leaves every character irreversibly transformed.

The past also haunts the present in 'Afternoon of a Faun', where an accusation of historic sexual assault plunges Marco Rosedale, an English journalist in New York, into a series of deepening crises. Set during the months leading up to Trump’s election, this is at once a study of our shifting social and sexual mores, and a meditation on what makes us believe or disbelieve the stories of other people.

These gripping, darkly comic novellas reflect and complement each other, offering a sharply observed vision that will resonate with anyone interested in the clash of power and desire in our embattled contemporary lives.

2017

UK: Jonathan Cape; US: Norton; Translation Rights: Irene Skolnick Agency

It is summer, 2012. Charlie, a wealthy banker with an uneasy conscience, invites his troubled cousin Matthew to visit him and his wife in their idyllic mountain-top house. As the days grow hotter, the friendship between the three begins to reveal its fault lines, and with the arrival of a fourth character, the household finds itself suddenly in the grip of uncontrollable passions. Who is the real victim here? Who is the perpetrator? And who, ultimately, is the fall guy?

A story of fracture in paradise, where ancient resentments and current desires lurch violently to the surface and an idyllic summer retreat becomes a stage for lies, lust and revenge, The Fall Guy is Lasdun’s most entertaining novel yet: a taut psychological thriller that is superbly written, darkly vivid, with an unforgettably febrile atmosphere of erotic danger.

WATER SESSIONS

2012

UK: Jonathan Cape/Vintage (for US & foreign rights: Irene Skolnick Agency)

James Lasdun's new book of poems, his first since his acclaimed collection LANDSCAPE WITH CHAINSAW, applies his characteristic blend of the celebratory and the elegiac to a rich variety of new themes and old obsessions.

At once personal and political, WATER SESSSIONS brilliantly registers the shock waves of global tumult in the most intimately domestic of settings, while at the same time constantly feeling its way outward through private experience into the larger arenas of social and civic drama. Fathers and sons, men and women, desire and repression, art and silence, form the book's central polarities. Recurrent motifs of water and gardens give its wide-ranging subjects a satisfying coherence while also supplying its sometimes darkly urgent poems with a note of intense lyrical beauty.

Much praised for the wit and tensile strength of his line, Lasdun moves in this volume from the tight formality of 'Stones' through the highly original patient/therapist dialogue form of the title poem, to the exuberant free verse of 'Dog Days', with a versatility and intelligence that ensure his standing as one of the most gifted poets writing today.

IT'S BEGINNING TO HURT

2010

UK: Jonathan Cape; US: Farrar, Straus & Giroux; Translation: Irene Skolnick; Media: Christine Glover, APW

James Lasdun is one of the finest short story writers we have. His new collection features the story 'An Anxious Man', which won the inaugural Prospect/BBC competition in 2006. Other stories include 'Caterpillars', which will be published in Granta's December 2008 issue. Set in Britain, France and America (where Lasdun has lived for many years), these stories are beautifully crafted and carry a powerful charge.

SEVEN LIES

2007

UK: Jonathan Cape; US: Norton; Translation: Irene Skolnick; Media: A P Watt

Stefan Vogel grew up in the Big Brother society of East Germany. He describes himself as a poet, and can point to work in obscure literary magazines as proof. But Stefan Vogel lives with a terrible secret. Drawn into the counter-culture world of East Berlin in the 1970s, he meets writers and artists who seem to take him seriously. He also meets a beautiful actress, Inge, and as the wall between east and west is falling, he quickly marries her and persuades her to follow him to New York. But Stefan Vogel's secret will follow him wherever he goes. SEVEN LIES is another virtuoso performance from one of our best younger novelists, the author of the highly-acclaimed THE HORNED MAN.

THE HORNED MAN

2003

UK: Cape; US: Norton; Translation: Irene Skolnick

When Lawrence Miller discovers that his bookmark has mysteriously moved thirty pages on in his current reading, this is only the beginning of a series of apparently inexplicable circumstances in his life. A professor at a minor state university near New York, he has inherited his office from the enigmatic Bogomil Trumilcik. What are these strange objects in this office, including a hefty steel bar? And what connection does Trumilcik have with a number of hideous murders of young women? More importantly, what connection do all these things have to our narrator, Lawrence Miller? In THE HORNED MAN, the distinguished author of short stories and poetry, whose latest collection, LANDSCAPE WITH CHAINSAW, was shortlisted for the Forward Prize, triumphantly pulls off a literary confidence trick.

Non-Fiction

Publication DetailsNotes

GIVE ME EVERYTHING YOU HAVE

2013

UK: Jonathan Cape; US: Farrar, Straus & Giroux

A true story of obsessive love turning to obsessive hate, GIVE ME EVERYTHING YOU HAVE chronicles James Lasdun's strange and harrowing ordeal at the hands of a former student, a self-styled “verbal terrorist,” who began trying, in her words, to “ruin him”. Hate mail—much of it violently anti-Semitic—online postings, and public accusations of plagiarism and sexual misconduct were her weapons of choice and, as with more conventional terrorist weapons, proved remarkably difficult to combat.

James Lasdun’s account, while terrifying, is told with compassion and humour, and brilliantly succeeds in turning a highly personal story into a profound meditation on subjects as varied as madness, race, Middle Eastern politics, and the meaning of honour and reputation in the Internet age.