Jonathan Raban

Jonathan Raban (born 14 June 1942, Hempton, Norfolk, England) is a British travel writer, critic, and novelist. He has received several awards, such as the National Book Critics Circle Award,[1] The Royal Society of Literature's Heinemann Award,[2] the Thomas Cook Travel Book Award,[3] the PEN West Creative Nonfiction Award,[4] the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association Award,[5] and a 1997 Washington State Governor's Writer's Award.[6] Since 1990 he has lived with his daughter in Seattle.[7] In 2003, his novel Waxwings was long listed for the Man Booker Prize.

Jonathan Raban
Jonathan Raban, 2013
Born (1942-06-14) 14 June 1942
Hempton, Norfolk, England
NationalityBritish
OccupationWriter
A 2006 exhibit at the Henry Art Gallery honoring the Stranger Genius Award winners pays tribute to Raban.

Though he is primarily regarded as a travel writer, Raban's accounts often blend the story of a journey with rich discussion of the history of the water through which he travels and the land around it. Even as he maintains a dispassionate and often unforgiving stance towards the people he meets on his travels, he does not shirk from sharing his own perceived foibles and failings with the reader. Frequently, Raban's autobiographical accounts of journeys taken mirror transformations in his own life or the world at large: Old Glory takes place during the buildup to Ronald Reagan’s victory in the 1980 presidential election, Coasting as the Falklands War begins, and Passage to Juneau as the failure of the author’s marriage becomes apparent. Similarly melancholic and personal themes of turmoil and loss can be detected in his novels.

Bibliography
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Books
  • The Technique of Modern Fiction (1968)
  • Mark Twain: Huckleberry Finn (1968)
  • The Society of the Poem (1971)
  • Soft City (1974), ISBN 0-525-20661-2
  • Arabia Through the Looking Glass (1979), ISBN 0-00-654022-8
  • Old Glory: An American Voyage (1981), ISBN 0-671-25061-2
  • Foreign Land (1985), ISBN 0-670-80767-2
  • Coasting (1986), ISBN 0-00-272119-8
  • For Love & Money: A Writing Life, 1968-1987 (1989), ISBN 0-06-016166-3
  • God, Man and Mrs Thatcher (1989), ISBN 0-06-016166-3
  • Hunting Mister Heartbreak: A Discovery of America (1990), ISBN 0-002-72031-0
  • The Oxford Book of the Sea (1992), ISBN 0-19-214197-X
  • Bad Land: An American Romance (1996), ISBN 0-679-44254-5
  • Passage to Juneau: A Sea and Its Meanings (travel writing; 1999), ISBN 0-679-44262-6
  • Waxwings (2003), ISBN 0-375-41008-2
  • My Holy War: Dispatches From the Home Front (2006), ISBN 1-59017-175-6
  • Surveillance (2006), ISBN 978-0-375-42244-7
  • Driving Home: An American Journey (2011), ISBN 978-0-307-37991-7

Essays and reporting

Book reviews
Year Review article Work(s) reviewed
2010 "Cameron's crank". London Review of Books. 32 (8): 22–23. 22 April 2010. Blond, Phillip (2010). Red Tory : how Left and Right have broken Britain and how we can fix it. Faber.

Awards

Inspiration and writing style

Mr. Raban's ... style ... can be described as a sort of English Capote: vivid, funny, accurate, full of hyperbolic wit and outrageous metaphor; no reticence at all. But at least as important is the author's ability to make an instant connection with virtually any human being whomsoever. Noel Perrin, The New York Times

Notes
  1. "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 27 September 2007. Retrieved 20 January 2008.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  2. http://www.rslit.org/index.php?n=Awards.Heinemann
  3. "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 31 August 2005. Retrieved 4 January 2015.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  4. http://www.penusa.org/docs/Master%20List%20of%20PEN%20USA%20Awardees.pdf%5B%5D
  5. Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association Archived 14 October 2008 at the Wayback Machine
  6. http://www.spl.org/default.asp?pageID=audience_current_wsba_winners
  7. "Publishers website". Archived from the original on 26 March 2009. Retrieved 30 October 2010.

Articles

Interviews

  1. Dickson, Andrew (30 December 2016). "Jonathan Raban: 'I felt pretty happy that I was still alive'". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 19 August 2017.
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