Clive Sinclair (author)

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Clive Sinclair
Born
Clive John Sinclair

(1948-02-19)19 February 1948
Hendon, London, UK
Died5 March 2018(2018-03-05) (aged 70)
London
EducationUniversity of East Anglia; University of California, Santa Cruz; University of Exeter
OccupationWriter
Notable workHearts of Gold (1979);
Bedbugs (1982);
The Lady with the Laptop and Other Stories (1996)
AwardsSomerset Maugham Award; Jewish Quarterly-Wingate Prize; Macmillan Silver Pen Award

Clive John Sinclair

FRSL (19 February 1948 – 5 March 2018)[1]
was a British author who published several award-winning novels and collections of short stories, including Hearts of Gold (1979), Bedbugs (1982) and The Lady with the Laptop (1996).

Biography

Sinclair, who was born into a

Jewish family originally named Smolensky,[2] grew up in Hendon,[1] North London, and was educated at the University of East Anglia (BA, PhD), the University of California, Santa Cruz, and at the University of Exeter.[3]

Although his writing career began with short stories that appeared in magazines and journals, his first book was a novel – Bibliosexuality – which was published in 1973 by

Allison and Busby.[4] As he said in a 2012 interview: "The truth is I've always been a short story writer rather than a novelist. Bibliosexuality was originally a collection of short stories about a certain David Drollkind. Margaret Busby said she would publish it, if I could find a way of linking them. That's how it became a novel."[4]

Sinclair went on to become better known as a writer of short stories, with his next book, the 1981 collection Hearts of Gold, winning him the

Transatlantic Review, Lilith, Monat, The Guardian, The Independent,[6] Contrappasso Magazine.[7] and The Times Literary Supplement (TLS).[1]

Between 1983 and 1987, Sinclair was literary editor of

Holocaust literature
.

His other books include A Soap Opera From Hell: Essays on the Facts of Life and the Facts of Death (1998), Clive Sinclair's True Tales of the Wild West (2008), and Death & Texas (2014).[8]

Sinclair was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1983.[9]

Sinclair died in March 2018, aged 70. A posthumous collection of his work, entitled Shylock Must Die – based on the character Shylock in Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice – was published in July 2018.[10][11][12]

Personal life

In 1979 Sinclair married Fran (née Redhouse), a special needs teacher, with whom he had a son, Seth; she died at the age of 46. For the last 20 years of Sinclair's life his partner was artist Haidee Becker.[13]

Selected bibliography

  • Bibliosexuality: A novel. London:
    Allison and Busby
    , 1973.
  • Hearts of Gold (short stories). London: Allison and Busby, 1979.
  • Bedbugs (short stories). London: Allison and Busby, 1982.
  • The Brothers Singer (a biography of
    I. J. Singer, and Esther Kreitman
    ). London; Allison & Busby (distributed in the US by Schocken Books), 1983.
  • Blood Libels (novel). London: Allison and Busby, 1985. New York:
    Farrar, Straus, Giroux
    , 1986.
  • Cosmetic Effects (novel). London, 1991.
  • Augustus Rex: A Novel. London:
    Andre Deutsch
    , 1992.
  • The Lady with the Laptop and Other Stories. London: Picador, 1996.
  • For Good or Evil: Collected Stories. London: Picador, 1998.
  • A Soap Opera From Hell: Essays on the Facts of Life and the Facts of Death. London: Picador, 1998.
  • Meet the Wife (novel). London: Picador, 2002.
  • Clive Sinclair's True Tales of the Wild West (travel). London: Picador, 2008.
  • Death & Texas (short stories). London: Halban Publishers, 2014.
  • Shylock Must Die (short stories). London: Halban Publishers, 2018.
    ISBN 978-1905559947

Awards

References

  1. ^ a b c Bryan Cheyette, "Clive Sinclair, 1948–2018", TLS, 6 March 2018.
  2. William D. Rubinstein, Michael Jolles, Hilary L. Rubinstein
    , The Palgrave Dictionary of Anglo-Jewish History, Palgrave Macmillan (2011), p. 922
  3. ISBN 978-1-870520-51-5
    .
  4. ^ a b Matthew Asprey, "El Hombre Valeroso: An Interview with Clive Sinclair", Los Angeles Review of Books, 18 December 2012.
  5. ^ Granta 7: Best of Young British Novelists.
  6. ^ a b Clive Sinclair biography Archived 1 March 2014 at the Wayback Machine, British Council.
  7. ^ "from issue #2: ‘STR82ANL’ by Clive Sinclair (excerpt I)", Contrappasso Magazine: International Writing, 1 January 2013.
  8. ^ Death & Texas on Vimeo.
  9. ^ "Royal Society of Literature All Fellows". Royal Society of Literature. Archived from the original on 5 March 2010. Retrieved 10 August 2010.
  10. ^ Ben Welch, "Author Clive Sinclair dies aged 70", Jewish Chronicle, 5 March 2018
  11. ^ David Herman, "Book review: Shylock Must Die", Jewish Chronicle, 19 July 2018.
  12. ^ Elizabeth Lowry, "It was his humour – Final stories of a comic master", TLS, 22 August 2018.
  13. ^ Sinclair, Seth (10 May 2018). "Clive Sinclair obituary". The Guardian.

External links

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