Book Info
Format
Paperback176 pages
Author's Website
.www.bloomsbury.com/Authors/...Publication date
17th November 2008ISBN
9780747592716Children's Author 'Like-for-Like' recommendations
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My Tango with Barbara Strozzi
Russell Hoban
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RRP: £7.99 Saving £2.00 (25%)Synopsis
My Tango with Barbara Strozzi by Russell HobanRecently separated, Phil Ockerman falls hard for Bertha Strunk at a tango lesson in Clerkenwell. Bertha also bears a strong resemblance to the seventeenth-century Venetian singer and composer Barbara Strozzi (with whom Phil happens to be obsessed), to the point where Phil is no longer sure which is which. Navigating several London underground lines and considerable planetary activity, Russell Hoban's intriguing romance tangos its way through a world of infidelity, artificial eyeballs, baseball bats and music - never missing a daring, seductive step.
Reviews
'I urge anyone who thinks of arming or improving themselves with this year's Booker shortlist to tuck up instead with the collected works of Russell Hoban and a bottle of Glenfiddich. He is fun, shrewd, humane; and unique'Spectator
'Hoban is that rare bird: a writer whose voice is utterly his own. For my money, his wonderfully original novels will endure long after most current high flyers have hit the dust ... This is an eccentric, sharply observed, kind book. We need writers like Hoban'
Salley Vickers, Independent
'My Tango With Barbara Strozzi is a haunting: exasperating, funny, sad and elegiac. Catch it before it disappears'
Guardian
'A deceptively complex novel of ideas, about reality, identity and ontology, that is only masquerading as a sweetly simple boy meets girl story'
Independent on Sunday
About The Author
Hoban was born in Lansdale, Pennsylvania, just outside of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the son of two Jewish Ukrainian immigrants. He was named after Russell Conwell.
After briefly attending Temple University, he enlisted in the Army at age 18 and served in the Philippines and Italy as a radio operator during World War II. During his military service, he married his first wife, Lillian Hoban (née Aberman), who later illustrated many of his books.
Hoban then worked as an illustrator (painting several covers for TIME, Sports Illustrated, and The Saturday Evening Post) and an advertising copywriter—occupations which several of his characters later shared—before writing and illustrating his first children's book, What Does It Do and How Does It Work. He wrote exclusively for children for the next decade, and was best known for his series of short books starring Frances, a temperamental badger child. The Mouse and His Child, a dark philosophical tale for older children, appeared in 1967 and was Hoban's first full-length novel.
In 1969, Hoban, his wife, and their four children travelled to London, intending to stay only a short time. The marriage dissolved, and while the rest of the family returned to the United States, Hoban remained in London and has resided there ever since. All of his adult novels except Riddley Walker, Pilgermann and Fremder are set in whole or part in contemporary London.
Hoban now lives with his second wife, Gundula Ahl; they have three children.
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