Rupert Thomson
He has lived in many cities around the world, including Athens, Berlin, New York, Sydney, Los Angeles, Amsterdam and Rome.
Rupert Thomson was born in Eastbourne, East Sussex, on November 5, 1955, to Rodney Farquhar-Thomson, a War Disability Pensioner, and Wendy Gausden, a nurse.
[3] He was also influenced by a series called Penguin Modern European Poets – in particular, Montale, Rilke, Yevtushenko, Pavese, and Zbigniew Herbert.
[4] In 1972 he was awarded an Exhibition to Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge to study Medieval History and Political Philosophy.
He has stated that there were cultural reasons behind choosing America as a destination, since it was linked with artists as diverse as David Bowie and Alexander Trocchi[6] Thomson spent six weeks living in Hell's Kitchen with a 63-year-old alcoholic and his family.
Once in Athens, Thomson rented a flat on Iliados Street and made a living by teaching English.
[8] He met WH Auden's secretary, Alan Ansen, who read his poetry and gave him encouragement.
[10] After four years in advertising, he gave up his job, moved a friend into his South London council flat, and set off for Italy in his Vauxhall Viva.
In November 1982, Thomson took a job as winter caretaker of a converted Tuscan farmhouse that belonged to Miriam Margolyes.
[12] In the Italian countryside that winter, he wrote the first draft of a book that would become Dreams of Leaving: There was no heating in the house, and I worked in the kitchen, huddled against a free-standing gas stove.
[13]The following year, he moved to West Berlin, where he rented an apartment on Sanderstrasse in Kreuzberg and continued to work on the novel he had started in Italy.
The seven months Thomson spent with his brothers in the house where he grew up would provide the inspiration for his award-winning 2010 memoir, This Party's Got to Stop.
It prompted the New Statesman to say: "When someone writes as well as Thomson does, it's a wonder other people bother",[17] while Nicholas Lezard of the Guardian called it "one of the most haunting, resonant and clever parables about England you'll ever read".
[22] Following a review in the New York Times,[23] Thomson received more than a dozen faxes from film-makers and film producers all over the world, including William Friedkin, wanting to option The Book of Revelation .
Boyd Tonkin, in the Independent, wrote: "Thomson has merged the pulse and pace of a thumping narrative heartbeat with an eerie and visionary gift for mystery, puzzle, and surprise…Scene after scene trembles with breath-stopping tension on the edge of bliss or dread",[29] while Stephanie Merritt called Thomson "a writer of exceptional skill, though his work has perhaps not been as widely celebrated as it deserves" and added "his finest novel to date: exquisitely crafted, and with the power to possess and unsettle the reader in equal measure".
[30] Thomson's next novel, Katherine Carlyle (2015), was feted by writers and artists as diverse as Jonathan Lethem, Lionel Shriver, Samantha Morton, Richard Flanagan, Deborah Moggach, Anne Enright, James Salter, and KT Tunstall.
"Katherine Carlyle is the strongest and most original novel I have read in a long time," Philip Pullman wrote.
It was described by Sarah Waters as “a novel of tremendous beauty…an astonishing accomplishment”, and by Monica Ali as “nail-bitingly tense and unbearably moving”.
Barcelona Dreaming received starred reviews in both Kirkus and Publishers Weekly, and was shortlisted for the Edward Stanford Fiction with a Sense of Place Award.
[34] Among the book's many admirers are Irenosen Okojie, Colm Toibin, Andrea Wulf, Philip Pullman, Victoria Hislop, Maya C. Popa, DBC Pierre, Kitty Aldridge, and Gwendoline Riley.
Thomson has this to say about the creative process:It's a headlong plunge into the unknown each time, with no framework, no plan, no end in sight…I'm trying to pin down some kind of psychological truth.
