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Hungarian British author David Szalay was named the winner of the Booker Prize 2025 for his novel Flesh', beating Kiran Desai's The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny' at a ceremony in London on Monday night. Szalay, 51, was presented with 50,000 pounds and a trophy by last year's Booker winner Samantha Harvey for his novel about an emotionally detached man who is unravelled by a series of events beyond his grasp. Using only the sparest of prose, this hypnotically tense and compelling book becomes an astonishingly moving portrait of a man's life, the Booker Prize judges said of their winning choice. Desai missed out on becoming only the fifth double winner in Booker Prize's 56-year history, having won the coveted literary prize for fiction back in 2006 for The Inheritance of Loss'. I wanted to write a book about global loneliness through the lens of a long, unresolved love story, Desai has said of her new novel. I wanted to write a present-day romance with an old-fashioned beauty. In t
Frederick Forsyth, the British author of The Day of the Jackal" and other bestselling thrillers, has died after a brief illness, his literary agent said Monday. He was 86. Jonathan Lloyd, his agent, said Forsyth died at home early Monday surrounded by his family. We mourn the passing of one of the world's greatest thriller writers," Lloyd said. Born in Kent, in southern England, in 1938, Forsyth served as a Royal Air Force pilot before becoming a foreign correspondent. He covered the attempted assassination of French President Charles de Gaulle in 1962, which provided inspiration for The Day of the Jackal, his bestselling political thriller about a professional assassin. Published in 1971, the book propelled him into global fame. It was made into a film in 1973 starring Edward Fox as the Jackal and more recently a television series starring Eddie Redmayne and Lashana Lynch. In 2015, Forsyth told the BBC that he had also worked for the British intelligence agency MI6 for many years
British author David Lodge, who was twice short-listed for the country's leading literary prize, has died. He was 89. Lodge's family said they were very proud of the prolific writer, who died on New Year's Day, according to a statement issued by his publisher, Penguin Random House. Lodge is probably best known for his two Booker Prize-nominated novels, 1984's Small World: An Academic Romance and Nice Works four years later. The two novels followed on from 1975's Changing Places, the first in a trilogy series about a fictional university. The trilogy was adapted successfully for television in the 1980s. Lodge, who also wrote memoirs and television scripts, taught in the English department at the University of Birmingham between 1960 and 1987 before retiring to focus on writing. It was interesting growing up with David Lodge as a father," his family said. Conversation over the supper table was always lively, our mother Mary very much held her own, meanwhile, David was ready with a .
British author Fay Weldon, known for novels including The Life And Loves Of A She-Devil, has died, her family said on Wednesday. She was 91. Weldon was a playwright, screenwriter and a prolific novelist, producing 30 novels as well as short stories and plays written for television, radio and the stage. She was one of the writers on the popular 1970s drama series Upstairs, Downstairs," receiving an award from the Writers Guild of America for the show's first episode. It is with great sadness that we announce the death of Fay Weldon (CBE), author, essayist and playwright. She died peacefully this morning January 4, 2023," her family said in a statement released by her agent. Much of Weldon's fiction explored issues surrounding women's relationships with men, children, parents and each other, including the 1971 Down Among The Women and Female Friends," published in 1975. The Life and Loves Of a She-Devil was the story of an ugly woman who alters her body and her life to seek revenge o