Guest of the ilb 2005
Francine Prose was born in Brooklyn, New York in
1947. She is the author of thirteen books of fiction, four
children�s books, a novel for young adults, and several nonfiction
books including �Gluttony� (2003), �Sicilian Odyssey� (2003),
and �The Lives of the Muses� (2002). A film of her novel,
�Household Saints� (1981), was released in 1993. A graduate
of Radcliffe and Harvard Universities she has been active as an author,
reporter, translator, and critic. Her stories, influential
reviews and essays have appeared in publications such as �The New
York Times�, �The New Yorker�, �The Wall Street Journal�,
�Die Zeit�, and �Harper�s�, where she is a contributing
editor. In addition, she has taught at numerous colleges and
universities and edited the anthology �Best American Voices 2005�,
a collection of short stories from American writing schools.
Prose has proven herself to be a witty critic of smugness and of
American society. �Hunters and Gatherers� (1996) depicts
the problems of a group of women who adopt the ersatz religion of a
New-Age-Feminism. The nine biographical essays in �The Lives of
the Muses: Nine Women and the Artists they Inspired� (2002) look at
the active and very individual lives of women and contradict the
clich� image of the muse as an exploited well of
inspiration. �Blue Angel� (2000), a novel which refers
to Josef von Sternberg�s film, is a story about obsessive love and
political correctness. In this novel, which was a finalist for
the National Book Award, the downfall of a college professor, who
succumbs in his writing class to his fatal attraction to an attractive
student, is described with a keen sense of detail and a penetrative
insight into university life. Prose�s novel, �A Changed
Man� (2005), tells the story of a dropout from the Neo-Nazi scene,
who looks for help in a Holocaust survivor's foundation. Through
nuanced personality portraits, often making use of interior monologues,
Prose reveals the complex motives of the characters. Her novel
for young adults, �After�, (2003) describes a high school that is
gradually turned into a police state in the interest of greater
�security�.
Among Prose�s awards are Guggenheim Fellowship, two NEA grants, a
Director's Fellowship at the New York Public Library, and a Fulbright
grant to the former Yugoslavia. For her translation of a volume
of short stories by Ida Fink, a survivor of the Holocaust, Prose
received the PEN Translation Prize. In 1998 she received the
National Jewish Book Award for her children�s book �You Never Know:
A Legend of the Lamed-Vavniks� (1998). Prose lives with her
husband and two sons in New York.
� international literature festival berlin
Francine Prose online: www.francineprose.com | 
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