Tuesday, March 3, 2009

Virago Classic Author of the Month



Virago Press
, Janet Frame's new publisher for the UK and Canada, is featuring her on their web site as their March 'Classic author of the month'.

Last January Virago released their beautiful new edition of Janet Frame's bestselling autobiography An Angel at My Table, "one of the greatest autobiographies of the twentieth century" (Sunday Times).

And then in July came the exquisite posthumously published novel Towards Another Summer which led Alice Sebold to say "Janet Frame is, and will remain, divine." This novel has won hearts around the world and has received glowing reviews. The first of the foreign translations has already been published (the Spanish Hacia Otro Ventro) and the US edition from Counterpoint Press is soon to be released). The Virago paperback will be released in the middle of this year.

Meanwhile this month Virago reissue one of Frame's most famous novels, one that changed the way the world perceived the treatment of "insane" people. Frame's unique perspective of having been trapped in a false diagnosis, and incarcerated in hospital wards, allowed her a privileged perspective. She came back out into the world and used her wrting gifts to speak for the people who had no voice. "One of the most impressive accounts of madness to be found in literature ... A masterpiece" (Anita Brookner). The 2009 Virago edition of Faces in the Water has a perceptive and enlightening introduction by novelist Hilary Mantel.

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