grew up on Australia's east coast and in the south London suburbs in the 1960s. In 1990 he left his job in London to island-hop across the Pacific Ocean by ship, small plane and boat, a journey that ended five months later at a US nuclear-missile test range at Kwajalein atoll. The book that resulted, Transit of Venus, was described by Norman Lewis as “far and away the best book about the Pacific of our times”. His latest book is Semi-Invisible Man: the Life of Norman Lewis (Jonathan Cape, Picador). He has also written and presented radio and television documentaries and writes for English and French newspapers and magazines including the Guardian, Prospect, Times Literary Supplement and L'Atelier du Roman. He is a trustee of English PEN, chair of English PEN’s Writers in Translation committee, and founding member of the Comité pour la Francophonie Littéraire, a group of writers dedicated to maintaining links between francophone writers and readers. He is a recipient of the Prix du Rayonnement de la Langue Française from the Académie Française, and a Royal Literary Fund Fellow at Bristol University. He lives in south-west England with the artist Natasha Dikaya and their two children. To find out more, click on the menu to read selected essays and interviews and hear the radio documentaries, and to find reviews, photographs and notes on when, where and why things were written. _____________________________________ praise for Semi-Invisible Man: the Life of Norman Lewis "not merely a well-behaved run-through of the life and the reviews, but an improvisation on the very idea of being Norman Lewis" Andrew O'Hagan, London Review of Books "a magnificent book... a triumph" Jason Webster, New Statesman "It is a wonderful book – almost as intelligent, stimulating and gripping as its subject" Sara Wheeler, Guardian "I doubt if anyone else could have rolled such a boulder to the top of this truly Sisyphean hill" Jan Morris, Financial Times "Norman Lewis is one of the great unsung literary heroes of the 20th century... a hugely enjoyable and engaging portrait" Philip Marsden, Sunday Times "a matchless biography... overwhelmingly, an exemplary life-story” Ian Thomson, Sunday Telegraph "Evans matched Lewis's curiosity and evocative writing with his own accomplished observation and penetration in this portrait of a writer who was not only a fascinating man but a good one" Rhoda Koenig, New Statesman Books of the Year "Semi-Invisible Man celebrates the achievement of one of the greatest English writers of the last century.... a vivid and just portrait of a very funny and difficult man whose books were recognised as classics by discerning readers" Patrick Marnham, Spectator Christmas Books "Julian Evans's vast and vastly enjoyable portrait of the great travel writer and novelist Norman Lewis" Kate Gunning, Guardian Readers' Books of the Year "An ideal introduction to Lewis as a charter of arcane, forbidding places with a growing conviction that the noblest of human societies are the simplest" Susan Elderkin, Financial Times Books of the Year read extracts more reviews the biographer's view |
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© Julian Evans 2006-08. Site designed and built by Laurie Harrison
August 2010
José Saramago: a Life of Resistance,
BBC Four film
Making the World Legible,
a new translation anthology free online
see Events and download
"Hooking Reality: Creative non-fiction",
a new course for writers at Glencot House, Somerset, 10–14 January 2011. See Miller's Writers' Retreat for the new season of courses and to book
recent articles
The master of small things, Prospect
Pole positions, Times Literary Supplement
Letter from Odessa, Prospect
Illuminating the human heart, Prospect
Small wonder, Traveller
An eye on the world's absurdity, Guardian
Almost a British Balzac, Prospect
Mysteries afloat, Times Literary Supplement
Damned by his brain, Times Literary Supplement
also download radio features on
Robert Louis Stevenson
F Scott Fitzgerald
Anton Chekhov
Alexander Pushkin
François Rabelais
and listen to the 20-part BBC Radio 3 series on the rise of the European novel The Romantic Road, with interviews with
Henning Mankell
José Saramago
Javier Marías
Michel Houellebecq
Ismail Kadare
Camilo José Cela
Michel Tournier
Dubravka Ugresic
Marcel Möring
Cees Nooteboom
Marie Darrieusecq
Antonio Muńoz Molina
Manuel Vázquez Montalbán
Claudio Magris
Michel Déon
Harry Mulisch
Ivan Klíma
Dacia Maraini
Antonio Tabucchi
Friederike Mayröcker
Peter Pist'anek
Ludvík Vaculík
Pawel Huelle
Tadeusz Konwicki
Magda Szabó
Péter Esterházy
Andrei Bitov
Julia Latynina
Yuri Andrukhovych
Fatos Kongoli
Ólafur Gunnarsson
Einar Mar Gudmundsson
Per Olov Enquist
Sara Lidman
Slavenka Drakulic
Torgny Lindgren
Jaan Kross
© Julian Evans 1993-2010
