ration of general discontent? Why were they called the lost generation ?
. Give a brief account of John Osborne s life and literary work. Comment on the main theme of most of his novels. Speak on the subject of Look Back in Anger. Name all the characters of the novel and describe their relationship.
. Say a few words about Kinsley Amis s biography. Can we call Kinsley Amis the angry young man or the central hero of his novels? Name his chief novels and themes they deal with.
. What facts from John Braine s biography do you know? Speak on the plot of Room at the Top. Why has the hero s name become a literary common noun in England?
UNIT 4. A FEW MORE GLIMPSES OF POST-WAR LITERATURE
The woman who has become one of the most popular and prolific of all English detective novelists, acknowledged throughout the world as the Queen of Crime Fiction, Agatha Christie (1890-1976), gained popularity largely, it would seem, by virtue of the skillfully engineered complexity of her plots. Among the books by Agatha Christie are Murder on the Links (1923), Elephants Can Remember (1972) and many others., After reading in a magazine that she was the world s most mysterious woman, Agatha Christie complained to her agent: What do they suggest I am! A Bank Robber or a Bank Robber s wife? I m an ordinary successful hard-working author - like any other author. Her success was not exactly ordinary. Her seventy-six detective novels and books of stories have been translated into every major language.was born in Torquay in 1890 and began writing at the end of the First World War. In her first novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1920), she created the now-famous vivacious little Belgian detective Hercule Poirot, the most popular sleuth in fiction since Sherlock Holmes. Poirot and Miss Marples have also been portrayed in the many films, radio programs and stage plays based on her books.1926 her novel The Murder of Roger Ackroyd was published. It is considered to be one of her best works due to its most original non-traditional concept for detective novels - the story is narrated by Dr.Sheppard.Christie was also the author of six romantic novels, written under the pseudonym of Mary Westmacott, and a book of poems and several plays. One of her plays, The Mousetrap, opened in London in 1952 and is still running.of Fate was the last book she wrote before her death in 1976, but in 1975 Curtain: Poirot s Last Case, which she had written in the 1940 s, was published for the first time.became Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1956 and Dame of the British Empire in 1971.group of a few women born in the second decade of the century might together illustrate the diversity of the twentieth-century novelist s interests. Elizabeth Taylor (1912-1975), the author the novels The Soul of Kindness and Blaming, is a refined stylist whose swift flashes of dialogue and reflection and deft sketches of the wider background give v itality to her portrayals of well-to-do family life in commuter land. Some of her later novels are In a Summer Season (1961), and The Wedding Group (1968). Elizabeth Taylor has humour and compassion as well as disciplined artistry, and has logically been compared with Jane Austen.has Barbara Pym (1913-1980) who tasted fame, sadly enough, only at the end of her life (her real name was Mary Crampton ). Another restrained and perceptive artist, she is a master of ingenuous and candid dialogue and reflection which are resonant with comic overtones. Critics called her modern Jane Austin. Excellent Women (1952) and A Glass of Blessings (1958) were reprinted in the late 1970s when Philip Larkin and David Cecil drew attention to the quality of her neglected work. Later novels, The Sweet Dove Died (1978) and Quartet in Autumn (1978), are no less engaging in their blend of pathos and comedy.might well put beside these two English writers the Irish writer Mary Lavin (1912-1996), whose short stories focus on the ups and downs of family life with quiet pathos and humour. Her novels, The House in Clewes Street (1945) and Mary O Grady (1950), are family histories presented with psychological sensitivity and a delicio...
