A book " Old Filth" by Jane Gardam

Jane Gardam

Born

Yorkshire, England

Genre

Children, Fiction, Non-Fiction, Short Stories

 

Biography

Novelist Jane Gardam was born Jean Mary Pearson in Coatham, North Yorkshire on 11 July 1928. She was educated at Saltburn High School for Girls, and won a scholarship to the University of London where she read English at Bedford College. In 1951 she worked as a Red Cross Travelling Librarian to Hospital Libraries, afterwards taking up editorial posts at Weldon Ladies Journal (sub-editor, 1952) and the literary weekly Time and Tide (Assistant Editor, 1952-4). Her first book for adults, Black Faces, White Faces (1975), a collection of linked short stories about Jamaica, won both the David Higham Prize for Fiction and the Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize. Subsequent collections of short stories include The Pangs of Love and Other Stories (1983), winner of the Katherine Mansfield Award; Going into a Dark House (1994), which was awarded the PEN/Macmillan Silver Pen Award (1995); and Missing the Midnight: Hauntings & Grotesques (1997).

 Jane Gardam's first novel for adults, God on the Rocks (1978), a coming-of-age novel set in the 1930s, was adapted for television in 1992. It won the Prix Baudelaire (France) in 1989 and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize for Fiction. Her other novels include The Queen of the Tambourine (1991), a haunting tale about a woman's fascination with a mysterious stranger, which won the Whitbread Novel Award; Faith Fox (1996), a portrait of England in the 1990s; and The Flight of the Maidens (2000), set just after the Second World War, which narrates the story of three Yorkshire schoolgirls on the brink of university and adult life. This book was adapted for BBC Radio 4's Woman's Hour. In 1999 Jane Gardam was awarded the Heywood Hill Literary Prize in recognition of a distinguished literary career.

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The book "Old Filth"

 

A book to love.

It is beautifully written and strangely moving. It is the story of Old Filth,nickname of Sir Edward Feathers, a successful colonial judge ,retired and living in Dorset at the beginning of the story. The novel moves back and forth in time , between the past and the present. The word 'filth' is an acronym for 'Failed In London, Try Hong Kong'.

He was one of the so-called Orphans of the Empire,children who were sent from the colonies of the British Empire back to England ,so that they could be brought up by strangers .He was born in Malaya before World War II,his mother dies three days later.He lived between the indigenous for four years and was sent to England. You will be surprised by the end of the book. I highly recommend you to read.

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Watch this video.Sorry, it is in Spanish but you will not regret.