Malcolm Bradbury

"When Sir Malcolm Bradbury died in 2000, he left behind a lifetime's work; some of it published and some of it not; fiction and non-fiction; short stories and novels; completed work, work in progress, work barely begun; plans, sketches, notes, titles. Given shape and coherence by his son, Dominic, that work has now become Liar's Landscape, a book about books, about writing and writers, about being a writer and, of course, about being Malcolm Bradbury. With an introduction by Dominic Bradbury and afterword by David Lodge, Liar's Landscape takes the reader from unfinished novel to unsent letters, from prose to play, from Macclesfield to the New York's Honours List. The definitive writer's guide to writing, it is evidence of the late great author's versatility, wit - and, of course, passion for the written word."--BOOK JACKET.

"It is 1773, and philosopher Denis Diderot - art critic, theater critic, impresario of L'Encyclopedie - is summoned to St. Petersburg, where he hopes to enlighten the despotic Catherine the Great on reason and liberty. Though the crafty empress lures him to her Winter Palace, the Hermitage, she seems more interested in buying his impressive personal library than adopting the liberal reforms he suggests.". "In 1993 a group journeys to St. Petersburg to uncover Diderot's past. Each of the members of the group known only as the Diderot Project - a diva, a carpenter, a playwright, a novelist, a philosopher, a diplomat and a trade unionist - represents one of the philosopher's wide-ranging interests. Enjoying themselves on the free ride across the Baltic, the Project members arrive in St. Petersburg looking for quick ways to justify their grant-funded junket. As the country around them falls into chaos during a revolt against Yeltsin's new Russian democracy, one member - the novelist - seeks to recapture Diderot's lost age and discover something about his own."--BOOK JACKET.

"In Malcolm Bradbury's virtuoso novel of intellectual pursuit, narrator and subject are at opposite poles of the universe of letters. Urbane, polymathic, multilingual, Doctor Bazlo Criminale, man from nowhere, citizen of the world, is a mega-star in the cultural firmament - a critic, novelist, playwright, and philosopher published, quoted, and feted in every corner of the globe, around which he seems to be in endless transit. He is the embodiment of the modern European philosopher, the "Great Thinker of the Age of Glasnost."" "Naive, anonymous, provincial, Francis Jay has ambitions only to break into the modern media. When he's asked to research a TV documentary on Bazlo Criminale, he steps into a world as far outside his experience as it is beyond his comprehension. It should be a simple matter of research. Criminale's life has been conducted in print, but television's demands are more immediate: the media need to know what Criminale looks like, where he comes from, who he sleeps with, why he matters. Above all, the camera is greedy for locations, and since Criminale is a master at attending conventions, locations there are in plenty, all across Europe and on either side of where the Iron Curtain once ran. But the mystery of Bazlo Criminale only increases: the more information Jay manages to assemble, the less it seems to fit. Dates and data multiply into contradiction, gaps expand into lacunae, and Francis discovers that Criminale is every bit as easy to lose as he is difficult to locate. As he grows more to like the man, Jay increasingly comes to discover that the gaps may conceal evasions, compromises, and betrayals on the literary, intellectual, and political levels that his own postmodern existence has not yet equipped him to understand." "In a dazzling comedy that polarizes to an altogether darker shade, Malcolm Bradbury uses abrasive satire to open up the unyielding central dilemma: whether, how, and at what price the mind of modern man can keep one step ahead of history."--Jacket.

The postbag of Malcolm Bradbury - academic, author, lecturer, thinker - is crammed with requests for help and advice. 'Please help me with my thesis on the campus novel', 'Please come and talk to my faculty in remote area of the Scottish Highlands', 'Please adapt a classic novel for television', and so on. In reply, Malcolm Bradbury has prepared a book of imaginary letters to cover any request he may receive. There is a letter of thanks for his invitation to talk to three hostile students in a stuffy room and pass the night in a barn; a reply to the European student who wishes to know if he is the same person as David Lodge and which of the two stole his supervisor's umbrella; a letter describing the experience of being the academic who has cycled to L'Escargot for television production meetings; and scathingly funny letters on structuralism, the cuts in education and a great deal more. Above all, they may spare the author from having to write an autobiography.

Albert Prince has one passion in life: he loves to cut people. And he's about to leave a trail of blood from Chicago to California.

Howard Kirk is the trendiest of radical tutors at a fashionable university campus. A self-appointed revolutionary hero, Howard always comes out on top. And Malcolm Bradbury dissects him in this savagely funny novel that has been universally acclaimed as one of the masterpieces of the decade.