Background
James Hamilton-Paterson was born on 6 November 1941 in London, England.
( "A playful book, full of fun and games. There is so muc...)
"A playful book, full of fun and games. There is so much pleasure to be had from Hamilton-Paterson's delight in language and wicked way with unreliable narrators. . . . The book's effect is achieved almost entirely through the comic magnetism of a single character."-The Times Literary Supplement "A skillful, highly original writer. . . . The elegant language, witty asides and vivid observations are memorable."-The Literary Review "I'm bowled over by the sheer imaginative brilliance of the man."-Barry Humphries "I love his elegant and intensely evocative style: strangeness lifts off his pages like a rare perfume."-J.G. Ballard "A work of comic genius."-The Independent "A wonderfully rich alloy of sub-Wildean witticisms and nonsense, Cooking with Fernet Branca had me laughing out loud and uproariously."-Ian Thomson, Sunday Telegraph Gerald Samper, an effete English snob, has his own private hilltop in Tuscany, where he wiles away his time working as a ghostwriter for celebrities and inventing wholly original culinary concoctions-including ice cream made with garlic and the bitter, herb-based liqueur of the book's title. Gerald's idyll is shattered by the arrival of Marta, on the run from a crime-riddled former soviet republic. A series of hilarious misunderstandings brings this odd couple into ever closer and more disastrous proximity. James Hamilton-Paterson's first novel, Gerontius, won the Whitbread Award. He is an acclaimed author of nonfiction books, including Seven-Tenths, Three Miles Down, and Playing with Water. He currently lives in Italy.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/193337201X/?tag=2022091-20
(A wasteland city whose factory processes the skeletons of...)
A wasteland city whose factory processes the skeletons of derelicts for science harbors four people--a television journalist, an archaeologist, an embattled and poor Filipina, and a corrupt cop--who reflect on unresolved pasts and obsess upon the world around them.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0374161909/?tag=2022091-20
( "Imagine a British John Waters crossed with David Sedar...)
"Imagine a British John Waters crossed with David Sedaris."-The New York Times Book Review Set both in Tuscany and in the trendy haunts of London, this hilarious sequel to the popular Cooking with Fernet Branca is further evidence of Hamilton-Paterson's wit and comic inventiveness. The inimitable Gerald Samper is back, with his musings on the absurdities of modern life and his entertaining asides during which he comments on everything from publishing to penile implants, celebrity sportswomen to Australian media moguls. Plus, there's his marvelously eccentric recipes. A smart literary romp featuring a cavalcade of misadventures and memorable characters.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1933372192/?tag=2022091-20
(In the wake of World War II, an eccentric European curato...)
In the wake of World War II, an eccentric European curator struggles to keep alive a greenhouse full of exotic, nocturnal plants, fending off financial threats to their survival and his own creeping insanity.
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(Book three in the ?Gerald Samper? series "(Cooking with F...)
Book three in the ?Gerald Samper? series "(Cooking with Fernet Branca, Amazing Disgrace)" When we last saw our hero he had taken to his bed in England, his beloved home in Tuscany having inexplicably capsized into a ravine. As Rancid Pansies opens, Samper is recuperating in Sussex at the home of the famous conductor Max Christ when he learns that film rights to his book on Millie Cleat?the one-armed yachtswoman whose inadvertent hari-kari, televised on Christmas day, gave his book an enormous boost?have been sold. This windfall is sufficient to finance a return to Italy and provide the time to indulge a long suppressed aspiration: writing the libretto for an opera (if only he can find a suitable subject). Before departing, the ever-gracious Gerald insists on preparing a farewell dinner for Max, his family and friends. The meal of liver smoothies and field mouse vol-au-vent is a memory-maker?and the assembled company's gag reflex is one of heroic proportions. Back in Italy, Gerald discovers that an offhand remark he had made while surveying the wreckage of his house, claiming he and his friends were saved by an apparition of the late Princess of Wales, has found its way into the Italian newspapers. Now, religious pilgrims and curious tourists have erected an ad hoc shrine on what is left of his property. Annoying to be sure, but there is the kernel of a grand idea here. Opera requires romance and tragedy, right? And who more than the People's Princess had such theatrics in super-sized quantities? And, if Princess Diana were to become Saint Diana, think of the promotional possibilities, the merchandising! So fasten your seat belts: it's going to be a hilarious journey with some of the most appealing comic characters and sumptuous writing in recent literature.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1933372621/?tag=2022091-20
( Griefwork, James Hamilton-Paterson's third novel, was f...)
Griefwork, James Hamilton-Paterson's third novel, was first published in 1993. 'This book had its genesis in a vivid dream about a Holland-like landscape of dykes which caused me to catch the next plane to Amsterdam. The story is set in the tropical palm house of a botanical garden - possibly in the Netherlands - just after the Second World War. Its single-minded and distinctly odd curator, Leon, has brought his precious ark of exotic plants safely through the war but is now struggling amid the snows of winter to keep its boilers going in fuel-starved Europe.' James Hamilton-Paterson 'Beautifully written. The author explores the tangled roots of his subject with brains and imagination, sustaining a tautness between Leon's affirmation of nature and the creeping truth that will expose its provisionality.' Observer 'Hamilton-Paterson's strange and compelling novel puts down enduring roots in the reader's mind.' Sunday Times
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(1961. A squadron of Vulcan aircraft, Britain's most letha...)
1961. A squadron of Vulcan aircraft, Britain's most lethal nuclear bomber, flies towards the east coast of the United States. Highly manoeuvrable, the great delta-winged machines are also equipped with state of the art electronic warfare devices that jam American radar systems. Evading the fighters scrambled to intercept them, the British aircraft target Washington and New York, reducing them to smoking ruins. They would have done, at least, if this were not an exercise. This extraordinary raid (which actually took place) opens James Hamilton-Paterson's remarkable novel about the lives of British pilots at the height of the Cold War, when aircrew had to be on call 24 hours a day to fly their nuclear-armed V-bombers to the Western USSR and devastate the lives of millions. This is the story of Squadron-Leader Amos McKenna, a Vulcan pilot who is suffering from desires and frustrations that are tearing his marriage apart and making him question his ultimate loyalties. Relations with the American cousins are tense; the future of the RAF bomber fleet is in doubt. And there is a spy at RAF Wearsby, who is selling secrets to his Russian handlers in seedy East Anglian cafes. A macabre Christmas banquet at which aircrew under intolerable pressures go crazy, with tragic consequences, and a dramatic and disastrous encounter with the Americans in the Libyan desert, are among the high points of a novel that surely conveys the beauty and danger of flying better than any other in recent English literature.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/057127398X/?tag=2022091-20
( First published in 2001, Loving Monsters begins with a ...)
First published in 2001, Loving Monsters begins with a British writer, now living in Italy, being propositioned to write the biography of a strange near-neighbour, a man named Jebb whose life has taken in 1920s London, wartime Egypt and modern Tuscany. 'I suppose the book is a reflection on the nature of biography', James Hamilton-Paterson has written, 'but it is also about how love can appear to make a life monstrous while explaining and even redeeming it.' 'Thoughtful, provocative and extremely well written.' Sunday Times 'Fresh with the imaginative vigour and moral urgency that make Hamilton-Paterson an important writer.' Spectator
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0571320864/?tag=2022091-20
(This title is longlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2004. "...)
This title is longlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2004. "Cooking with Fernet Branca" is a gleefully tasteless bad dream of modern Italy, told through the eyes of Gerald Samper - effete Englishman, culinary adventurer, and ghostwriter to the stars. "Wickedly witty...Anyone who does not add this hilarious divertimento to their summer reading list should be put on a forced diet of Gerald's inimitable Alien Pie". (Michael Dibdin, "Guardian"). "A deliciously nasty farce set in Hamilton-Paterson's adopted Tuscany..."Cooking with Fernet Branca" had me laughing out loud and uproariously. All Tuscanites should read it, preferably over a plate of stewed otter chunks in lobster sauce". ("Sunday Telegraph"). "Larded with bitter satire and piquant wit, at the expense, often, of its readers and their dreams of Italy...I laughed out loud several times a chapter". ("The Times").
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B018M3IFGW/?tag=2022091-20
James Hamilton-Paterson was born on 6 November 1941 in London, England.
He was educated at Windlesham House, Sussex, Bickley Hall, Kent, King"s School, Canterbury and Exeter College, Oxford.
He is one of the most reclusive of British literary exiles, sharing his time between Austria, Italy, and the Philippines. Having worked as a hospital orderly at Saint Stephen"s Hospital between 1966–1968, Paterson earned his first break in 1969 as a reporter for New Statesman until 1974 when he became features editor for Nova magazine. Hamilton-Paterson is generally known as a commentator on the Philippines, where he has lived on and off since 1979.
His novel portrayed the Philippine capital in all its decay and violence and was highly critical of the Marcoses - a view he rescinded with the publication of America"s Boy (1998), which sets the Marcos regime into the geopolitical context of the time.
In 1989, Gerontius was published, a reconstruction of a journey made by the composer Sir Edward Elgar along the River Amazon in 1923. In 1992, he published Seven-Tenths, a far-ranging meditation upon the sea and its meanings.
A mixture of art, science, history and philosophy, this book is a deep, abstract lament on loss and the loss of meaning. In 2000, he returned to the magazine industry as a science columnist for Das Magazin (Zurich) for two years before becoming a science columnist for Die Weltwoche.
(A wasteland city whose factory processes the skeletons of...)
( First published in 2001, Loving Monsters begins with a ...)
(Book three in the ?Gerald Samper? series "(Cooking with F...)
(In the wake of World War II, an eccentric European curato...)
( Griefwork, James Hamilton-Paterson's third novel, was f...)
( "Imagine a British John Waters crossed with David Sedar...)
(This title is longlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2004. "...)
( "A playful book, full of fun and games. There is so muc...)
(1961. A squadron of Vulcan aircraft, Britain's most letha...)