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Linda Grant

リンダ・グラント

Rinda Guranto

Profile

Gender
Female
Born
1951-02-15 （Liverpool, England）
Nationality
United Kingdom
Languages
English
Religion
Judaism
Residence History
Liverpool, England → York, England → Canada → England

Career

Occupations
Novelist, Journalist
Active Years
1993-2024
Affiliations
The Guardian, Royal Society of Literature
Memberships
Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature (FRSL)
Nominations
Man Booker Prize longlist (2002, Still Here), Man Booker Prize shortlist (2008, The Clothes on Their Backs), Orange Prize for Fiction longlist (2008, The Clothes on Their Backs), Jewish Quarterly-Wingate Literary Prize shortlist (2000), Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction longlist (2017, The Dark Circle)

Education

The Belvedere School
Country: United Kingdom
Secondary school
University of York
English
Degree: BA
Period: 1972-1975
Year of Graduation: 1975
Country: United Kingdom
McMaster University
English
Degree: MA
Country: Canada
MA in English
Simon Fraser University
Country: Canada
Post-graduate studies

Awards

David Higham Prize for Fiction
1996
Work: The Cast Iron Shore
Category: Fiction
Result: Winner
Mind Book of the Year
1998
Work: Remind Me Who I Am, Again
Organization: Mind
Result: Winner
Age Concern Book of the Year
1998
Work: Remind Me Who I Am, Again
Organization: Age Concern
Result: Winner
Orange Prize for Fiction
2000
Work: When I Lived in Modern Times
Category: Fiction
Result: Winner
Lettre Ulysses Award
2006
Work: The People on the Street: A Writer's View of Israel
Category: Art of Reportage
Result: First Prize
South Bank Show award
2008
Work: The Clothes on Their Backs
Category: Literature
Result: Winner

Awards & Nominations

Works

Major Works

When I Lived in Modern Times

2000 Historical Fiction

A novel about a young English woman's experiences in 1940s Mandate Palestine (Tel Aviv).

IdentityBelongingZionism

The Clothes on Their Backs

2008 Fiction

A story exploring family secrets and past.

Family historyJewish background

The Cast Iron Shore

1995 Fiction

Debut novel about a person with marginal identity.

MarginalityBelonging

Bibliography

  • Sexing the Millennium: A Political History of the Sexual Revolution (1993)
  • Remind Me Who I Am, Again (1998)
  • The People on the Street: A Writer's View of Israel (2006)
  • The Thoughtful Dresser (2009)
  • The Cast Iron Shore (1995)
  • When I Lived in Modern Times (2000)
  • Still Here (2002)
  • The Clothes on Their Backs (2008)
  • We Had It So Good (2011)
  • Upstairs at the Party (2014)
  • The Dark Circle (2016)
  • A Stranger City (2019)
  • The Story of the Forest (2023)

Style & Themes

Literary Style
Style heavily drawing on Jewish background, family history, and history of LiverpoolExploration of marginal identities and problems of belonging
Recurring Motifs
Jewish identityMarginality and belongingHistorical contexts

Legacy

English novelist and journalist of Polish-Russian Jewish descent from Liverpool. Winner of the 2000 Orange Prize for Fiction and other awards. Known for incorporating her Jewish heritage, family history, and Liverpool background into her fiction.

Quotes

  • I always wanted to make my living as a writer, but you couldn’t get a job as an author, so I got a job as a reporter on a local paper just before my eighteenth birthday. I always knew that sooner or later I would write fiction, although I didn’t realise it would be as late as it was. I didn’t write a novel until after the age of forty because it took me a long time to find a fictional voice, which was to do with being Jewish.
    Source: Interview in Wasafiri (2009)

Trivia

  • Parents were Polish-Jewish and Russian-Jewish immigrants who adopted the surname Grant in the early 1950s.
  • From Liverpool's Jewish community, which many people claimed they 'never knew existed'.
  • Wrote a memoir about her mother's battle with vascular dementia.