Ransom Center Magazine

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A nomad’s writing finds a home

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Q&A with Michael Ondaatje

Michael Ondaatje began his career as a poet but is best known as the author of the 1992 Booker Prize-winning novel The English Patient, which was made into a critically-acclaimed motion picture. He was born in Sri Lanka (formerly Ceylon) in 1943; he moved to Canada at age 18. [Read more…] about A nomad’s writing finds a home

Archive of Michael Ondaatje, author of “The English Patient,” acquired

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The archive of award-winning author Michael Ondaatje has been acquired by the Harry Ransom Center. Ondaatje, author of the Booker Prize-winning novel “The English Patient,” is widely regarded as one of the finest English-language novelists writing today. [Read more…] about Archive of Michael Ondaatje, author of “The English Patient,” acquired

The computer poetry of J. M. Coetzee’s early programming career

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Writer J. M. Coetzee’s early poetry is almost undecipherable. That’s because it was written in computer code.

Coetzee’s global reputation rests on his literary output, for which he received a Nobel Prize in 2003. Before he embarked on a career as a scholar and writer, the South African–born writer was a computer programmer in the early years of the industry’s development (1962–1965). I believe that this experience, while short, was vital for the development of Coetzee’s writerly project. While visiting the Ransom Center on a research fellowship, I examined Coetzee’s papers, which offer tantalizing clues about his neglected “other career.” [Read more…] about The computer poetry of J. M. Coetzee’s early programming career

The silent novel in Radclyffe Hall’s ground-breaking The Well of Loneliness

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The English writer Radclyffe Hall (1880–1943) is best known for her lesbian novel The Well of Loneliness (1928). Pronounced obscene after a sensational and scandalous court case, it was banned [Read more…] about The silent novel in Radclyffe Hall’s ground-breaking The Well of Loneliness

“Una historia de Cien años de soledad a través de sus documentos”

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“El problema es mío”, confesó García Márquez a un amigo por carta en julio de 1966, “que después de tantos años de trabajar como un animal, me siento agobiado de cansancio, sin perspectivas ciertas, salvo en el único terreno que me gusta y no me da de comer: la novela”. [Read more…] about “Una historia de Cien años de soledad a través de sus documentos”