Friday, November 2, 2012

Top ten reimagined classics

Ronald Frame is the author of thirteen internationally published works of fiction, and is an award-winning television and radio scriptwriter. His debut novel, Winter Journey, was the joint winner of the first Betty Trask Prize for Fiction. The Lantern Bearers was longlisted for The Man Booker Prize and won the Saltire Award for Scottish Book of the Year. Frame's latest novel is Havisham.

He named his top ten reimagined classics for the Guardian. One title on the list:
Death Comes to Pemberley by PD James

Intriguing attempt to fuse bookshop genres: 'crime' (a blood-soaked body in the woods) with 'classic' (Pride and Prejudice). The author and Jane Austen have enough in common – story-telling finesse, beady-eyed observation of surfaces, unsentimental appraisal of human behaviour and motivation – for this experiment to work very well. (And not a zombie in sight.)
Read about the other titles on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue