Misplaced Pages

James Scudamore (born 19 May 1976) is a British author.

Books

Scudamore's first novel The Amnesia Clinic won the 2007 Somerset Maugham Award and was shortlisted for the Costa First Novel Award, the Commonwealth Writers' Prize, the Glen Dimplex Award and the Dylan Thomas Prize. It was described by Hilary Mantel as "A wonderful debut – witty, polished, fluent and effortlessly entertaining" and by the judges of the Costa Award as a "delightful book ... full of tall tales and fantasy".

His second novel, Heliopolis, was published in 2009. Writing in The Guardian, Henry Shukman commented that "In his second novel, set in contemporary São Paulo, Scudamore does not embed a transplant from his own culture in foreign soil. Instead he takes the plunge and boldly invests himself in a first-person narrator. The novel is cleverly pitched to explore the two socioeconomic poles of modern urban Brazil. And the writing is exemplary: you feel the hand of a natural at work, one whose command of tone is strong, and who has an instinctive feel for handling a story." The novel was longlisted for the 2009 Man Booker Prize.

Following the publication in 2013 of his third novel, Wreaking, the BBC Today programme interviewed Scudamore inside the grounds of the derelict Severalls Hospital in Colchester, where he explained how visits to such sites, rendered defunct by the Care in the Community Act, had directly inspired the book. The novelist Alan Warner described Wreaking as "an immersion in the physical and psychic ruins of a contemporary Britain which enchants and disturbs, lures and repels".

English Monsters is Scudamore's fourth novel and was published in 2020. It depicts the effects of physical and sexual abuse at a boarding prep school on a group of friends over a thirty-year period. Edward Docx wrote of this "dark, tender, troubling novel" that "it is impossible to read these pages and not to think of the present blight of emotionally cauterised boarding-school politicians whose various pathologies, fantasies and defence mechanisms Britain must continue to endure."

Biography

Scudamore grew up in Japan, Brazil and the UK, and is a graduate of Christ Church, Oxford and of the University of East Anglia. He is married to Rose Grimond, the granddaughter of the Liberal politician Jo Grimond. He has taught at the University of East Anglia, the City University of Hong Kong, and is on the faculty of the International MFA in Creative Writing and Literary Translation at Vermont College of Fine Arts.

External links

• Author website
• Today programme audio slideshow
• Author interview on Man Booker website
• Author interview at nthWORD Magazine
• Author interview with Michael Leonard

Footnotes

1. ^ "The Amnesia Clinic" at James Scudamore website.
2. "Heliopolis" at James Scudamore website.
3. Henry Shukman, 'Flight from the favela", The Guardian, 31 January 2009.
4. "Longlist announced for Man Booker Prize 2009 : Man Booker Prize news". Archived from the original on 21 May 2012. Retrieved 26 April 2012.
5. ^ "Wreaking" at James Scudamore website.
6. "Derelict asylum: 'There is an energy here'", BBC News, 6 August 2013.
7. "English Monsters by award-winning British novelist James Scudamore". James Scudamore. Retrieved 13 November 2020.
8. Docx, Edward (14 March 2020). "English Monsters by James Scudamore review – the horrors of boarding school". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 13 November 2020.
9. "About us".
10. "Condé Nast Traveler - Travel Reviews, News, Guides & Tips".
11. "‘Wreaking’ by James Scudamore", University of East Anglia, 26 July 2013.
12. "MFA in Creative Writing | City University of Hong Kong". Archived from the original on 6 June 2010. Retrieved 12 December 2009.
13. "James Scudamore | Faculty, International MFA" Archived 28 September 2020 at the Wayback Machine, Vermont College of Fine Arts.

• 1976 births
• Living people
• Alumni of Christ Church, Oxford
• Alumni of the University of East Anglia
• British writers