Items related to Old Filth: Old Filth Trilogy Book 1
Book One in Jane Gardam's Old Filth Trilogy Sir Edward Feathers has had a brilliant career, from his early days as a lawyer in Southeast Asia, where he earned the nickname Old Filth (FILTH being an acronym for Failed In London Try Hong Kong) to his final working days as a respected judge at the English bar. Yet through it all he has carried with him the wounds of a difficult and emotionally hollow childhood. Now an eighty-year-old widower living in comfortable seclusion in Dorset, Feathers is finally free from the regimen of work and the sentimental scaffolding that has sustained him throughout his life. He slips back into the past with ever mounting frequency and intensity, and on the tide of these vivid, lyrical musings, Feathers approaches a reckoning with his own history. Not all the old filth, it seems, can be cleaned away. Borrowing from biography and history, Jane Gardam has written a literary masterpiece reminiscent of Rudyard Kipling's Baa Baa, Black Sheep that retraces much of the twentieth century's torrid and momentous history. Feathers' childhood in Malaya during the British Empire's heyday, his schooling in pre-war England, his professional success in Southeast Asia and his return to England toward the end of the millennium, are vantage points from which the reader can observe the march forward of an eventful era and the steady progress of that man, Sir Edward Feathers, Old Filth himself, who embodies the century's fate.
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Review:
SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2005 ORANGE PRIZE Praise for Old Filth "Excellent and compulsively readable...Old Filth belongs in the Dickensian pantheon of memorable characters."
--The New York Times Book Review "[Old Filth] will bring immense pleasure to readers who treasure fiction that is intelligent, witty, sophisticated and--a quality encountered all too rarely in contemporary culture--adult."
--The Washington Post "Gardam is an exquisite storyteller, picking up threads, laying them down, returning to them and giving them new meaning...Old Filth is sad, funny, beautiful and haunting."
--The Seattle Times "A masterpiece of storytelling."
--The Dallas Morning News "Jane Gardam's beautiful, vivid, defiantly funny novel is a must."
--The Times Praise for Jane Gardam "[Gardam] is a brilliant writer. Her prose sparkles with wit, compassion and humor."
--The Washington Post "[Gardam] is the best kind of literary escape: serious, mesmerizing, and deeply satisfying."
--Los Angeles Review of Books "It's hard...not to be charmed by a writer with Gardam's substantial gifts."
--The New York Times Book Review "Gardam's prose is so economical that no moment she describes is either gratuitous or wasted."
--The New Yorker "Gardam is a unique and wonderful writer."
--The Huffington Post
From the Publisher:
--The New York Times Book Review "[Old Filth] will bring immense pleasure to readers who treasure fiction that is intelligent, witty, sophisticated and--a quality encountered all too rarely in contemporary culture--adult."
--The Washington Post "Gardam is an exquisite storyteller, picking up threads, laying them down, returning to them and giving them new meaning...Old Filth is sad, funny, beautiful and haunting."
--The Seattle Times "A masterpiece of storytelling."
--The Dallas Morning News "Jane Gardam's beautiful, vivid, defiantly funny novel is a must."
--The Times Praise for Jane Gardam "[Gardam] is a brilliant writer. Her prose sparkles with wit, compassion and humor."
--The Washington Post "[Gardam] is the best kind of literary escape: serious, mesmerizing, and deeply satisfying."
--Los Angeles Review of Books "It's hard...not to be charmed by a writer with Gardam's substantial gifts."
--The New York Times Book Review "Gardam's prose is so economical that no moment she describes is either gratuitous or wasted."
--The New Yorker "Gardam is a unique and wonderful writer."
--The Huffington Post
FILTH is an international lawyer with a practice in the Far East. Only the oldest Silks and QCs can remember that his nickname stands for Failed In London Try Hong Kong. But Old Filth is not as much of a Blimp as one might imagine, and his past contains many secrets and many dark hiding places...
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- PublisherEuropa Editions
- Publication date2006
- ISBN 10 1933372133
- ISBN 13 9781933372136
- BindingPaperback
- Number of pages304
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Book Description Softcover. Condition: New. From Publishers WeeklyBritish novelist Gardam has twice won the Whitbread and was shortlisted for the Man Booker. This, her 15th novel, was shortlisted in Britain for the Orange Prize; it outlines 20th-century British history through the life of Sir Edward Feathers, a barrister whose acronymic nickname provides the title: "Failed in London, Try Hong Kong." At nearly 80, Feathers, retired in Dorset after many years as a respected Hong Kong judge, is a hollow man with few real friends and a cold, sexless marriage that has just ended with the death of his wife, Betty. For the first time, "Filth" (as even Betty called him) delves into the past that produced him: a "Raj orphan" raised by a series of surrogates while his father worked in Singapore, Filth served briefly in WWII (guarding the Queen) and had a lackluster stint as a London barrister before emigrating. The flashbacks contrast British privilege and the chaos that ensues when the empire (especially Filth's childhood Malaya), starts to crumble. As Filth undertakes chaotic visits to his Welsh foster home and other sites, Gardam's sharp, acerbic style counterpoints Feathers's dryness. Well-rounded secondary figures further highlight his emptiness and that of empire. (June)Copyright Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.Product DescriptionFirst in the Old Filth trilogy. A New York Times Notable Book. Old Filth belongs in the Dickensian pantheon of memorable characters (The New York Times Book Review).Sir Edward Feathers has had a brilliant career, from his early days as a lawyer in Southeast Asia, where he earned the nickname Old Filth (FILTH being an acronym for Failed In London Try Hong Kong) to his final working days as a respected judge at the English bar. Yet through it all he has carried with him the wounds of a difficult childhood. Now an eighty-year-old widower living in comfortable seclusion in Dorset, Feathers is finally free from the regimen of work and the sentimental scaffolding that has sustained him throughout his life. He slips back into the past with ever mounting frequency and intensity, and on the tide of these vivid, lyrical musings, Feathers approaches a reckoning with his own history. Not all the old filth, it seems, can be cleaned away.Borrowing from biography and history, Jane Gardam has written an unforgettable novel reminiscent of Evan S. Connells books Mr. Bridge and Mrs. Bridge, and Rudyard Kiplings Baa Baa, Black Sheep. Retracing much of the twentieth centurys torrid and momentous history, Old Filth is the first installment of an immersive and atmospheric trilogy that, taken together, tells the moving story of a long, complicated marriage.Old Filth is an extraordinary novel-the structure, the characters, the sweep of time.-Ann Patchett, author of The Dutch HouseI don't know why Gardam isn't universally celebrated and beloved. Her prose is dazzling, and she writes with a kind of subdued but wicked humor that takes a moment to clamp down on you.-Lauren Groff, author of Fates and FuriesI think Jane Gardam is a genius and should be far more widely read. She has actually made me gasp, slap a book shut and say, She cant do that!, open it up and realize that she can, she has, and it works.-Denise Mina, author of ConvictionSHORTLISTED FOR THE ORANGE PRIZEA BEST BOOK OF THE YEARThe New York Times Book ReviewThe Washington PostThe San Francisco ChronicleNew York MagazineThe Globe & MailSlateWill bring immense pleasure to readers who treasure fiction that is intelligent, witty, sophisticated and-a quality encountered all too rarely in contemporary culture-adult.-The Washington PostGardam is an exquisite storyteller, picking up threads, laying them down, returning to them and giving them new meaning . . . Old Filth is sad, funny, beautiful and haunting.-The Seattle TimesA masterpiece of storytelling.-The Dallas Morning News[Jane Gardam is] the best contemporary. Seller Inventory # DADAX1933372133
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