Books & Authors: Award-Winning Fiction (Ha-Ke)
Literature Reference: American Literature, English Literature, Classics & Modern Fiction
Harris, Wilson
(Guyanese/British, 1921– ) Wilson Harris and George Lamming vie for the title of most significant West Indian novelist; and Harris is the more innovative. He counsels against the ‘narrative realist fallacy’, and without himself being a magic realist, ignores the boundaries between genres. His first novel, Palace of the Peacock (1960), presents us with a crew making the …
Harrison, Jim
(US, 1937– ) Born in Michigan, Harrison contrasts the serenity of the American landscape and natural world with the squalid antagonism of human relations. His fiction typically depicts a post-Vietnam America of drugs, guns, bluecollar bars, and potential violence. His style is, however, poetic and richly allusive; masculine concerns are sometimes viewed satirically. A Good Day to Die (1973)…
Hartley, L(eslie) P(oles)
(British, 1895–1972) Born in Cambridgeshire, educated at Harrow and Oxford, Hartley served in the First World War, after which he became a critic and writer, publishing short stories and a novella besides his novels. Begin with the trilogy, The Shrimp and the Anemone (1944), The Sixth Heaven (1946), and the title volume, Eustace and Hilda (1947), for which Hartley was awarded the James Tait…
Harvey, John
(British, 1938– ) Poet, scriptwriter, and novelist John Harvey learned his craft writing pulp Westerns and young adult novels, but finally found the perfect vehicle for his talents with the ten detective novels featuring scruffy, jazz-loving, sandwich-munching Detective Inspector Charlie Resnick and his team. Set against the beautifully realized background of Nottingham, the series explores…
Hawthorne, Nathaniel
(US, 1804–64) Born at Salem, Massachussetts, Hawthorne's imaginative preoccupation with New England's puritan past grew out of his own ancestry, and solitary apprenticeship as a writer. The result was a haunting body of work, full of characters oppressed by consciousness of sin, guilt, and retribution, but also full of symbols and the supernatural, which he called ‘the …
Hazzard, Shirley
(Australian/US, 1931– ) Hazzard has published five works of fiction and a memoir of Graham Greene. Her novels reflect the variety of countries she has lived in (Australia, Hong Kong, New Zealand, Italy, USA) and her work in Intelligence and for the United Nations. People in Glass Houses (1967) is a book of linked short stories which deal satirically with life in the UN. Transit of Ve…
Head, Bessie
(South African, 1937–86) In 1964, after training as a teacher and working in South Africa as a journalist, Head took a one-way exit permit to Botswana. All of Head's writing draws on her own traumatic life. The Cardinals (1993), a captivating novella published posthumously and thought to have been written around 1960–2, is an incestuous love story, between Mouse, an illegitima…
Heinlein, Robert
(US, 1907–88) Heinlein was a graduate of the US Navy but had to retire, disabled, in 1934. He then read mathematics and physics at the University of California and began writing in 1939, becoming a pioneer of the ‘future history’ in science fiction. Heinlein's early novels tended to be rites of passage, typically depicting young men on some kind of frontier, undergoing …
Heller, Joseph
(US, 1923–99) Heller was born and brought up during the Depression in Coney Island, New York. Aged 19, he enlisted and served as a bombardier, flying missions from Corsica, which provided the inspiration for Catch-22 (1961), his first novel, which has attained, and deservedly so, the status of a cult classic. The title is based on the absurd logic that an aircrew can be relieved from duty b…
Hemingway, Ernest
(US, 1899–1961) Raised in the Chicago suburbs, Hemingway worked briefly as a reporter for the Kansas City Star before volunteering as an ambulanceman in the First World War. Badly wounded on the Italian front, he eventually moved to Paris where he associated with the experimental writers Ezra Pound and Gertrude Stein. These experiences informed Hemingway's finest work. His first book…
Hensher, Philip
(British, 1965– ) Hensher has worked as a House of Commons clerk, and now reviews and writes novels and short stories. Begin with his stories collected in The Bedroom of the Mister's Wife (1999). These are written with beautiful simplicity, mostly narrated in the first person by a character who is bemused by his own situation. The most extreme example of this is ‘God’, …
Heyer, Georgette
(British, 1902–74) A prolific and popular writer of historical romances set in the Regency period of the early nineteenth century. The background is carefully researched; the narrative lively and good humoured. It is a world of rakes, dandies, lace, and ruffles, in which life is a game and the making of a good marriage the biggest prize. However, her main protagonists are given more substan…
Hiaasen, Carl
(US, 1953– ) Carl Hiaasen is a columnist for the Miami Herald who has single-handedly created a new school of modern crime writing that could be characterized as Florida comic noir. Passionately opposed to the destruction of the Florida ecology by tourism and building speculation, Hiaasen sides with the eco-terrorists and often bungling crooks who muddle their way through his novels to dark…
Higgins, Jack
(British, 1929– ) Born in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Higgins worked as a teacher and lecturer before becoming a best-selling thriller writer in the early 1970s. Begin with The Eagle Has Landed (1975), which typifies Higgins's dramatic fictionalizations of events in closely researched historical contexts. Set at the height of the Second World War, the book deals with a group of Nazi paratro…
Highsmith, Patricia
(US, 1921–95) Patricia Highsmith is the mother of the modern psychological suspense novel, once described by Graham Greene as ‘a poet of apprehension’. In a series of often grim and always unflinching tales, she explored the psychology of guilt and the impact of love and crime on the individual. In spite of the darkness of her work, it is often shot through with shafts of dry …
Hill, Reginald
(British, 1936– ) Although Hill's roots are firmly in the traditional English detective novel, he brings to it an ambivalence and ambiguity that allows him to display the complexities of contemporary life, both moral and social. Among the most literate of writers in the field, he brings to life a cast of characters who change and develop in response to their experiences. He is best k…
Hill, Susan
(British, 1942– ) Susan Hill's work is characterized by a deeply serious, often bleak view of life. Expert at building tension and evoking atmosphere, she approaches her withdrawn, interior characters with insight and sensitivity, revealing them through quiet, measured prose and tense, sometimes almost stylized dialogue. Air and Angels (1991) is a good starting-point. Containing some…
Hillerman, Tony
(US, 1925– ) Born in Oklahoma, Tony Hillerman was brought up on a farm and went to a school for Indian children. This initiated his fascination with American Indian culture and he tackles tribal culture with empathy and compassion in his popular whodunits featuring detective Joe Leaphorn of the Navajo Tribal Police and the younger detective, Jim Chee. Dance Hall of the Dead (1973) introduce…
Himes, Chester
(US, 1909–84) Chester Himes was the first important African-American mystery novelist, and his books, in particular those forming the Harlem series, featuring ‘Coffin’ Ed Johnson and ‘Grave Digger’ Jones, occupy a singular place in the history of crime writing. The series begins with A Rage in Harlem (1957), about the violent consequences of a con job gone bad, a…
Hoban, Russell
(US, 1925– ) Russell Hoban was born in Pennsylvania but has lived in London since 1965. He was an illustrator of children's books before turning to writing himself, and his output for children is huge. In The Mouse and His Child (1967) a clockwork mouse and his child are thrown out of the toy-shop. The book chronicles their attempts to regain their home, their happiness, and the powe…
Hollinghurst, Alan
(British, 1954– ) Born in Stroud and educated at Magdalen College, Oxford, Hollinghurst is among the best of gay male authors. His novels all deal with gay life, although the clarity, stylishness, and precision of his writing have universal appeal. The Swimming Pool Library (1988) looks at the relationship between a younger and older man, and casts a sombre look backwards at the effect of a…
Hope, Christopher
(South African, 1944– ) Hope's early (and, some think, his best) novels were satirical, blisteringly powerful attacks on South African apartheid laws. Start with A Separate Development (1980), about the decline of a mixed-race boy, Harry Moto, who leaves his home in a privileged white community and begins to live as a black. Move on to Kruger's Alp (1984), an allegorical quest…
Hornby, Nick
(British, 1957– ) Hornby worked as a teacher before becoming a full-time writer. His first book, the autobiographical Fever Pitch (1992), about his obsession with football, was a bestseller; a funny, moving exploration of not just football but families, loyalty, masculinity, and identity. His first novel, High Fidelity (1995) also uses a firstperson, male narrator, speaking in the present t…
Hospital, Janette Turner
(Australian, 1942– ) Hospital grew up in Brisbane and moved to the United States in 1965. She has also lived in Britain, India, and Canada. Her novels often explore multiple versions of stories. Start with Borderline (1985) which begins at the US/Canadian border when illegal immigrants in a butcher's van are arrested. Two onlookers, an insurance salesman and an art curator, en…
Houellebecq, Michel
(French, 1958– ) Houellebecq's controversial masterpiece, Atomised (1999) is best read as science fiction, despite being set almost entirely in the recent past or present. It's a politically incorrect, Swiftian dystopia about two damaged brothers failing to find salvation in sex, science, or love, and in the process, anatomizing for us just what Houellebecq feels to be wrong w…
Howatch, Susan
(British, 1940– ) Howatch worked in a solicitor's office, until, determined to become a novelist, she moved to New York, and while working as a secretary there wrote a series of successful stories. Her first best-seller was Penmarric (1971), the saga of two Cornish families from Victorian times until the Second World War. In 1979 this was made into a BBC television series. Howatch we…
Hoyle, Fred
(British, 1915–2001) Born in Bingley, Yorkshire, Hoyle was educated at Emmanuel College, Cambridge. A leading figure in twentieth-century astronomy, his science fiction gains credibility from his authoritative use of scientific speculation. Begin with The Black Cloud (1957), his first novel, in which an alien intelligence in the form of a cloud blots out the sun, threatening ecological disa…
Hughes, Richard
(British, 1900–76) Richard Hughes's first novel, A High Wind in Jamaica (1929, published in the USA as The Innocent Voyage), remains his best. The Thornton family live in Jamaica but put their children on a ship for England after a hurricane strikes. The ship gets captured by pirates, however. The situation is grim, but we come to realize that the children are even worse than their c…
Hugo, Victor(-Marie)
(French, 1802–85) One of the major writers of nineteenth-century France, Victor Hugo was the most prolific and influential figure of French Romanticism, writing poetry and verse-drama as well as his acclaimed novels. Hugo enjoyed an early success with The Hunchback of Notre Dame, a high romantic melodrama set in the year 1482. Frollo, the corrupt archdeacon, is foiled in his efforts to kidn…
Humphreys, Emyr
(British, 1919– ) Humphreys is a Welsh Nationalist, poet, and dramatist. His many novels are realistic, concerning moral questions, the nature of love, freedom, and conscience in post-Nonconformist Wales. Start with A Toy Epic (1958), following the development of three youths from contrasting social backgrounds in 1930s’ Wales. Seven novels centre on Amy Parry, beginning near her dea…
Hunter, Evan
(US, 1926– ) Since the publication of Blackboard Jungle (1954) Evan Hunter (who also writes as Ed McBain) has written over eighty works of fiction under several names and has won awards in the United States and Britain. Privileged Conversation (1996) depicts a heady sexual affair leading to inescapable tragedy. As Ed McBain he is renowned for his 87th precinct series, centred on a team of d…
Huth, Angela
(British, 1938– ) Huth is a journalist and has written for radio and television. Her stories and novels are sharp and entertaining, full of acute psychological insights. Begin with The Land Girls (1994), a compelling read about three girls in the Second World War working on a Dorset farm; Prue, fresh from her mother's hairdressing shop, determined on romance but also surprisingly har…
Huysmans, Joris-Karl
(French, 1848–1907) Set amongst the working class or the very poor, Huysmans's early novels were in the realist mode of Émile Zola. Marthe (1876) typically recounts the life of a young prostitute working in a licensed brothel. A better introduction is Against Nature (A Rebours; 1884), in which the aesthete Des Esseintes, probably the first openly bisexual hero in modern litera…
Isherwood, Christopher
(British, 1904–87) Christopher Isherwood maintained that his works amounted to a fictionalized autobiography. They draw upon his life and times in pre-war Berlin and post-war America, and reflect his friendships, politics, adoption of Eastern religious beliefs and pacifism, as well as increasingly open depiction of gay lifestyles. His prose is witty and engaging, typically placing relations…
Ishiguro, Kazuo
(British, 1954– ) Ishiguro was born in Japan but moved to England at the age of 6. He writes beautifully understated, transparent prose which exposes every fluctuation of mood and feeling between his characters. The first two novels are set in Japan; begin with An Artist of the Floating World (1986) set in the aftermath of the Second World War, about an ageing painter whose best pictures no…
Jacobson, Dan
(South African, 1929– ) After completing his studies at the University of Witwatersrand, Jacobson left South Africa, eventually settling in London where he has become a prominent writer and critic. Most of his writing concerns itself with South Africa under the apartheid regime. In A Dance in the Sun (1956) characters range from the white boss, struggling to maintain his authority, to the r…
James, Henry
(US/British, 1843–1916) James was born in New York, son of a prominent theologian and philosopher, who took his children to Europe repeatedly. In 1875 Henry James settled in Paris, then moved to London, living in England for the rest of his life, becoming a British citizen in 1915. Cultural differences between America and Europe are a central theme in many of his novels, with America…
James, P(hyllis) D(orothy)
(British, 1920– ) Although P. D. James left school at 16, she went on to work in the criminal policy department of the Home Office. This experience fuelled her detective fiction writing, which began in 1962 with Cover Her Face. Introducing her poetry-writing detective Adam Dalgleish, the novel is set in a backward-thinking village where Sally Jupp, from a home for unmarried mothers, meets a…
Jewett, Sarah Orne
(US 1849–1909) Jewett lived most of her life in the small town of South Berwick, Maine, and was a popular contributor to magazines such as the Atlantic Monthly. Her collections of linked stories, most famously The Country of the Pointed Firs (1896), portray the characters and places of her native state with great sympathy and sly humour. This collection unfolds a writer's summer in t…
Johnson, B(ryan) S(tanley)
(British, 1933–73) Johnson was an experimentalist, most famously subverting fiction's conventions in The Unfortunates (1969), his novel-in-a-box which consists of loose-leaf sections to be shuffled and read in any order. Another of his books features a hole in the page. His first novel, Travelling People (1963), disrupts narrative continuity by switching between styles. Prefigured by…
Jolley, Elizabeth
(British/Australian 1923– ) Although she didn't move to Australia until she was 36, Jolley regards herself and is generally thought of as an Australian writer. She writes about women who are loners or outsiders, often with wicked humour and sharp (verging on painful) insight. Begin with Miss Peabody's Inheritance (1983), a beautifully constructed comic novel in which Mi…
Jones, James
(US, 1921–77) Jones served with distinction in the Second World War and the nature of military life was to be the major subject of his fiction. From Here to Eternity (1951) was the first book of a planned trilogy about soldiering, followed by The Thin Red Line (1962) and the unfinished Whistle (1978). From Here to Eternity dramatizes the brutal camaraderie of life in an army barracks in a d…
Joyce, James
(Irish, 1882–1941) James Joyce's reputation for inaccessibility is greatly exaggerated. Like Shakespeare, who could please royalty and hoi polloi, Joyce is a high intellectual for the erudite, a teller of filthy jokes to rival Chaucer, and simply a plain good story-teller. Granted, Finnegans Wake (1939) is formidable, but once you realize that it's permissible to browse, grazi…
Judd, Alan
(British, 1946– ) ‘Alan Judd’ is the pseudonym of Alan Petty, who has worked for the Foreign Office and became Private Secretary to the Head of MI6. His satirical novels typically blend farce and tragedy in dealing with their subjects—the army, university life, the diplomatic service, and espionage—though they handle serious themes equally well. His first, A Bree…
Kafka, Franz
(Czech, 1883–1924) Kafka was born in Prague, into a wealthy German-speaking Jewish family. During his lifetime he published only a handful of short fragments and prose pieces, and left instructions to his friend from youth and literary executor, Max Brod, to destroy all his unpublished writings. After Kafka's death from tuberculosis, Brod disregarded this wish, and so the major works…
Keane, Molly
(Anglo-Irish, 1904–96) Molly Keane's novels are witty studies of Anglo-Irish upper-class society which centre on hunting, fashion, and romance, but also consider the hidden tensions and dangers of her characters’ private lives. Those written up to 1952 are under the pen-name of M. J. Farrell. Begin with Good Behaviour (1981, Booker Prize shortlisted), a black comedy narrated b…
Keating, H(enry) R(aymond) F(itzwalter)
(British, 1926– ) Keating was born in St Leonards and educated at Trinity College, Dublin. He was a journalist before becoming a full-time writer. Begin by meeting his best-known creation, the amiable Inspector Ganesh Ghote of the Bombay Police. The detective's many appearances include Inspector Ghote Caught in the Meshes (1967), in which the investigation of an American visitor�…
Kellerman, Jonathan
(US, 1949– ) Jonathan Kellerman is a former child psychologist. Dr Alex Delaware, the hero of his crime novels, is an academic and psychologist who assists the police, in particular his friend Milo Sturgis, with cases using his skills as a psychological profiler. Gripping and intelligent, the stories expose the disturbance and sickness of contemporary American society. When the Bough Breaks…
Kelman, James
(British, 1946– ) Born in Glasgow, Kelman left school at 15 and after labouring jobs and a stint as a bus conductor, entered the University of Strathclyde at the age of 28. His writing derives from both a Scottish and a European tradition, and has been compared to that of Zola, Dostoevsky, and Kafka for its portrayal of people in socially alienated situations. His characters tend to be work…