Bücher von Francine Prose

Francine Prose's life of Michelangelo Merisi (da Caravaggio) evokes the genius of this incomparable artist through a brilliant reading of his paintings. Caravaggio's use of ordinary people, realistically portrayed—street boys, prostitutes, the poor, the aged—was a profound and revolutionary innovation that left its mark on generations of artists. Revered and successful, Caravaggio was protected by powerful patrons, yet he was also a man of the street who couldn't free himself from its brawls and vendettas. In Caravaggio, bestselling author Francine Prose presents the brief but tumultuous life of one of the greatest of all painters with passion and acute sensitivity.

A distinguished novelist and critic inspires readers and writers with this inside look at how the professionals read--and write Long before there were creative writing workshops and degrees, how did aspiring writers learn to write? By reading the work of their predecessors and contemporaries, says Francine Prose. As she takes us on a guided tour of the tools and the tricks of the masters--Dostoyevsky, Flaubert, Kafka, Austen, Dickens, Woolf, Chekhov--Prose discovers why these writers endure. She takes pleasure in the signature elements of such outsatanding writers as Philip Roth, Isaac Babel, John Le Carré, James Joyce, and Katherine Mansfield. Throughout, she cautions readers to slow down and pay attention to words, the raw material out of which literature is crafted. Written with passion, humor, and wisdom, Reading Like a Writer will inspire readers to return to literature with a fresh eye and an eager heart.

The National Book Award Finalist from acclaimed New York Times bestselling author Francine Prose--now the major motion picture Submission "Screamingly funny ... Blue Angel culminates in a sexual harassment hearing that rivals the Salem witch trials." --USA TodayIt has been years since Swenson, a professor in a New England creative writing program, has published a novel. It's been even longer since any of his students have shown promise. Enter Angela Argo, a pierced, tattooed student with a rare talent for writing. Angela is just the thing Swenson needs. And, better yet, she wants his help. But, as we all know, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.Deliciously risqué, Blue Angel is a withering take on today's academic mores and a scathing tale that vividly shows what can happen when academic politics collides with political correctness.

"Francine Prose has a knack for getting to the heart of human nature. . . . We are allowed to enter the moral dilemmas of fascinating characters whose emotional lives are strung out by the same human frailties, secrets and insecurities we all share." --USA TodayOne spring afternoon, Vincent Nolan, a young neo-Nazi walks into the office of a human rights foundation headed by Meyer Maslow, a charismatic Holocaust survivor. Vincent announces that he wants to make a radical change. But what is Maslow to make of this rough-looking stranger with Waffen SS tattoos who says that his mission is to save guys like him from becoming guys like him? As Vincent gradually turns into the sort of person who might actually be able to do that, he also begins to transform everyone around him, including Maslow himself. Masterfully plotted, darkly comic, A Changed Man poses essential questions about human nature, morality, and the capacity for change, illuminating the everyday transactions, both political and personal, in our lives.

All loved, and were loved by, their artists, and inspired them with an intensity of emotion akin to Eros.In a brilliant, wry, and provocative book, National Book Award finalist Francine Prose explores the complex relationship between the artist and his muse. In so doing, she illuminates with great sensitivity and intelligence the elusive emotional wellsprings of the creative process.

The less-than-innocents abroad in these short novels are Americans in Europe, involved in what turn out to be pleasure tours of hell: shocking, bewildering trips that change forever their ideas about history, reality, politics, sex -- their entire lives.In the title novella, a third-rate American playwright named Landau attends a literary conference in Prague, where an organized group excursion to a former concentration camp degenerates into a battle of wills and an exercise in egomania and public humiliation. Nina, the heroine of the second novella, "Three Pigs in Five Days," is sent to Paris to write an article for her lover's travel journal -- a dizzying, erotic pilgrimage that forces her to see how sex has distorted her view of the world.

A deeply felt reappraisal of the work and its global impact.... [Prose] makes a persuasive argument for Anne Franks literary genius. New York Times Book ReviewIn June, 1942, Anne Frank received a diary for her thirteenth birthday, just weeks before she and her family went into hiding from the Nazis in an Amsterdam attic. For two years, she described life in hiding in vivid, unforgettable detail and grappled with the unfolding events of World War II. Before the attic was raided in August, 1944, Anne Frank furiously revised and edited her work, crafting a piece of literature that she hoped would be read by the public after the war. And read it has been.In Anne Frank, bestselling author Francine Prose deftly parses the artistry, ambition, and enduring influence of Anne Franks beloved classic, The Diary of a Young Girl. She investigates the diarys unique afterlife: the obstacles and criticism Otto Frank faced in publishing his daughters words; the controversy surrounding the diarys Broadway and film adaptations, and the social mores of the 1950s that reduced it to a tale of adolescent angst and love; the conspiracy theories that have cried fraud, and the scientific analysis that proved them wrong. Finally, having assigned the book to her own students, Prose considers the rewards and challenges of teaching one of the worlds most read, and banned, books. How has the life and death of one girl become emblematic of the lives and deaths of so many, and why do her words continue to inspire?Approved by both the Anne Frank House Foundation in Amsterdam and the Anne Frank-Fonds in Basel, run by the Frank family, Anne Frank unravels the fascinating story of a memoir that has become one of the most compelling, intimate, and important documents of modern history.

At the center of Francine Prose's profoundly moving new novel is a young girl facing the consequences of sudden loss after the death of her sister. As her parents drift toward their own risky consolations, thirteen-year-old Nico is left alone to grope toward understanding and clarity, falling into a seductive, dangerous relationship with her sister's enigmatic boyfriend.Over one haunted summer, Nico must face that life-changing moment when children realize their parents can no longer help them. She learns about the power of art, of time and place, the mystery of loss and recovery. But for all the darkness at the novel's heart, the narrative itself is radiant with the lightness of summer and charged by the restless sexual tension of teenage life.Goldengrove takes its place among the great novels of adolescence, beside Henry James's The Awkward Age and L. P. Hartley's The Go-Between.

and later, in the middle of a performance, has a shocking encounter with Adam, the twelve-year-old who plays the title role.Francine Prose's effervescent comedy is told from the viewpoints of wildly unreliable, seemingly disparate characters whose lives become deeply connected as the madcap narrative unfolds.

A richly imagined and stunningly inventive literary masterpiece of love, art, and betrayal, exploring the genesis of evil, the unforeseen consequences of love, and the ultimate unreliability of storytelling itself.Paris in the 1920s shimmers with excitement, dissipation, and freedom. It is a place of intoxicating ambition, passion, art, and discontent, where louche jazz venues like the Chameleon Club draw expats, artists, libertines, and parvenus looking to indulge their true selves. It is at the Chameleon where the striking Lou Villars, an extraordinary athlete and scandalous cross-dressing lesbian, finds refuge among the clubs loyal denizens, including the rising Hungarian photographer Gabor Tsenyi, the socialite and art patron Baroness Lily de Rossignol; and the caustic American writer Lionel Maine.As the years pass, their fortunesand the world itselfevolve. Lou falls desperately in love and finds success as a race car driver. Gabor builds his reputation with startlingly vivid and imaginative photographs, including a haunting portrait of Lou and her lover, which will resonate through all their lives. As the exuberant twenties give way to darker times, Lou experiences another metamorphosissparked by tumultuous eventsthat will warp her earnest desire for love and approval into something far more.