The Perfect Stranger (Lives & letters)

The Perfect Stranger (Lives & letters)

by P. J. Kavanagh (Author)

Synopsis

J.Kavanagh's early years were full of incident and adventure: the comedy, passion and the abrupt tragedy of that life are recounted in what Richard Ingrams described as 'one of the best memoirs I have read -- a brilliant self-portrait by a born writer with a humorous, poetic and genuinely religious outlook on life.' For Michael Frayn The Perfect Stranger is 'a fine memorial to youth and love -- perhaps to the youth and love of all our generation'. From a Butlin holiday camp to Switzerland and then Paris, to a battlefield in Korea, to Oxford and Barcelona, and finally to Java, his life made little sense to him until 'something extraordinary happened': he met 'the perfect stranger' of the title, with its oblique tribute to Louis MacNeice. This tender, funny and unsentimental record of the uniqueness of human love, with its shocking conclusion, is a poet's tribute of thanks.

$26.88

Quantity

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More Information

Format: Paperback
Pages: 182
Edition: New edition
Publisher: Carcanet Press Ltd
Published: 20 Jul 1995

ISBN 10: 1857541782
ISBN 13: 9781857541786

Media Reviews
'To hear the truth so devastatingly and yet so joyfully encountered is rare in an age where autobiography has been flattened by the massed weight of political and public reminiscence. This autobiography, from its beginning to its bitter end, is a celebration of joy: joy in youth, in woman, in male camaraderie, in the struggle of art, in married love.' Times Literary Supplement
Author Bio
P.J. KAVANAGH was born in England in 1931. Wounded in the Korean war, he later went to Oxford. He has worked as a lecturer, actor, broadcaster and columnist and has written novels, two volumes of autobiography and essays, and edited anthologies. His name is closely associated with the poetry of Ivor Gurney, a seminal edition of whose work he prepared in 1982. Carcanet publish two books of his poems and The Perfect Stranger.