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The International Anthony Burgess Foundation Podcast

Jesus Christ in Fiction

In this episode, Andrew Biswell of the Burgess Foundation explores fictional representations of Jesus Christ with writer Nicholas Graham, author of The Judas Case.


We begin with Anthony Burgess’s 1979 novel, Man of Nazareth, an ambitious account of Jesus’s life from the point of view of a fictional Greek merchant. The novel was written at the same time as Burgess’s teleplay Jesus of Nazareth which was filmed by Franco Zeffirelli with Robert Powell in the lead role.


Nicholas Graham also introduces his own book, The Judas Case. Retired spymaster Solomon Eliades is called back into service to investigate the death of Yehuda of Kerioth, better known as Judas Iscariot, the most able undercover agent the Temple guard ever produced.


Nicholas Graham studied creative writing at Manchester Metropolitan University. He was a member of the Sidney Sussex College Cambridge University team that won BBC2’s University Challenge – Champions Reunited series. An early draft of The Judas Case won a 2016 Northern Writers Awards New Fiction Bursary. Nicholas lives with his partner in a remote coastal village in Cumbria.


LINKS


Nicholas Graham on Twitter


The Judas Case Blog


The Judas Case by Nicholas Graham at The Book Guild


International Anthony Burgess Foundation


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    In 1984, Anthony Burgess published Ninety-Nine Novels, a selection of his favourite novels in English since 1939. The list is typically idiosyncratic, and shows the breadth of Burgess's interest in fiction. This podcast, by the International Anthony Burgess Foundation, explores the novels on Burgess's list with the help of writers, critics and other special guests.In this episode, Graham Foster discovers Malcolm Lowry’s Under the Volcano, with poet, translator, editor and literary titan, Michael Schmidt.Under the Volcano traces Geoffrey Firmin’s last day. It's set on the Day of the Dead festival in 1938, during which Firmin is visited by his wife and his brother, who offer the possibility of salvation from his alcoholic decline. As the trio spend the day together, their uneasy alliance is threatened by Firmin’s drinking, his suspicions, and his desire to vanish into the Mexican countryside. As events unfold it quickly becomes apparent that Firmin has no interest in saving himself.Malcolm Lowry was born on the Wirral in 1909. At eighteen, he left home to work at sea, which inspired his novel Ultramarine (1933). After gaining a degree from Cambridge and after the breakdown of his first marriage, he crossed the Atlantic and explored the United States, Mexico and Canada. He died in 1957.Michael Schmidt is a poet, literary historian, translator and editor. His most recent book of poems, Talking to Stanley on the Telephone, appeared in 2021. His major critical undertakings include Lives of the Poets (1999), The First Poets: Lives of the Ancient Greek poets (2005), The Novel: a Biography (2014) and Gilgamesh: the Life of a Poem (2019). Michael is founder, editor, and managing director of Carcanet Press and general editor of PN Review. He is currently a Professor of Poetry at the University of Manchester.-----BOOKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODEBy Malcolm Lowry:Selected Poems of Malcolm Lowry (1962)By others:The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri (c. 1321)Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners by John Bunyan (1606)Gargantua and Pantagruel by François Rabelais (trans. by Thomas Urquhart, 1653)Moby-Dick by Herman Melville (1851)Three Lives by Gertrude Stein (1909)'The Dead' in Dubliners by James Joyce (1914)Ulysses by James Joyce (1922)Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf (1925)The Plumed Serpent by D.H. Lawrence (1926)Finnegans Wake by James Joyce (1939)The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene (1940)Family Sayings by Natalia Ginzburg (1963)-----LINKSTalking to Stanley on the Telephone by Michael Schmidt (affiliate link)The Novel: A Biography by Michael Schmidt (affiliate link)Carcanet PressPN ReviewInternational Anthony Burgess FoundationThe theme music is Anthony Burgess’s Concerto for Flute, Strings and Piano in D Minor, and is performed by No Dice Collective
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    50:45
    In 1984, Anthony Burgess published Ninety-Nine Novels, a selection of his favourite novels in English since 1939. The list is typically idiosyncratic, and shows the breadth of Burgess's interest in fiction. This podcast, by the International Anthony Burgess Foundation, explores the novels on Burgess's list with the help of writers, critics and other special guests.In this episode, Andrew Biswell heads back to the era of the Bright Young Things to examine Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited with writer, academic and editor Barbara Cooke.Brideshead Revisited is perhaps Evelyn Waugh’s most famous novel. It follows Ryder as he remembers his life, from his undergraduate years at the University of Oxford in the golden age before the Second World War, to his wartime enlistment in the army. His life is coloured by his obsession with the Flytes, an aristocratic Catholic family who live in the stately home of Brideshead. In Ninety-Nine Novels, Burgess writes, ‘I have read Brideshead Revisited at least a dozen times and have never failed to be charmed and moved, even to tears.’Evelyn Waugh was born in 1903. At the age of 24, he published his first book, a biography of the artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and the following year he published his first novel, Decline and Fall. Sixteen more novels followed, including A Handful of Dust, Scoop and Vile Bodies. His last novels were the Sword of Honour trilogy, which were published in 1965. He died in 1966.Barbara Cooke is a Senior Lecturer in English at Loughborough University. She is also Co-Executive Editor of the Complete Works of Evelyn Waugh, published by Oxford University Press, a series which brings together all of Waugh’s published and previously unpublished writing with comprehensive introductions, contextual writing and annotations. She is the author of Evelyn Waugh’s Oxford, published by The Bodleian Library, and has recently written the introduction to Penguin’s new edition of Decline and Fall.-----BOOKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODEBy Evelyn Waugh:Decline and Fall (1928)Vile Bodies (1930)A Handful of Dust (1934)Helena (1950)The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold (1957)A Little Learning (1957)By others:Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll (1865)Gaudy Night by Dorothy L. Sayers (1935)I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith (1948)Crooked House by Agatha Christie (1949)A Grain of Wheat by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o (1967)Ruling Passions by Tom Driberg (1977)Evelyn Waugh (Two Volumes: The Early Years 1903-1939 and The Later Years 1939-1966) by Martin Stannard (1989-94)-----LINKSEvelyn Waugh's Oxford by Barbara Cooke (affiliate link)The Complete Works of Evelyn Waugh at Oxford University PressInternational Anthony Burgess FoundationThe theme music is Anthony Burgess’s Concerto for Flute, Strings and Piano in D Minor, and is performed by No Dice Collective.-----If you’ve enjoyed this episode, why not leave us a review and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.
  • The Liana Burgess Fellows 2023: Dr Mária Palla

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    In this episode, Graham Foster talks to one of the 2023 Liana Burgess Fellows, Dr Mária Palla, who has spent three weeks researching in the archives at the Burgess Foundation.In its capacity as an educational charity, the Burgess Foundation offers grants to researchers and scholars with an interest in the life and work of Anthony Burgess and other connected subjects such as twentieth century literature and musical composition. The Liana Burgess Fellowship helps international researchers to visit the archives at the Burgess Foundation. It is named after Burgess’s wife, who set up the Foundation in 2003 and was instrumental in preserving his personal papers and possessions, all of which is available to researchers at our facilities in Manchester.Dr Mária Palla is an assistant professor in the Institute of English and America Studies at Pázmány Péter Catholic University in Budapest, Hungary. Her research focuses on contemporary literatures in English, which she examines using the tools of post-colonial criticism. She has published widely on Canadian literature, focussing on representations of the diasporic experiences of immigrants to the country. She is currently working on Anthony Burgess’s Malayan novels.-------LINKS:Mária Palla at Pázmány Péter Catholic UniversityInternational Anthony Burgess Foundation-------If you have enjoyed this episode, leave us a review and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.
  • The Liana Burgess Fellows 2023: Dr Ákos Farkas

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  • Anthony Burgess's Chatsky: From Translation to Stage

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  • Manchester Unspun with Andy Spinoza

    41:35
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  • Manchester UNESCO City of Literature Virtual Residency: Peter Bakowski

    35:41
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  • The Irwell Edition: Mozart and the Wolf Gang

    33:07
    In this episode, Will Carr celebrates the release of the Irwell Edition of Anthony Burgess's Mozart and the Wolf Gang with Christine Lee Gengaro, Professor of Music at Los Angeles City College.The Irwell Edition of the Works of Anthony Burgess is one of the central projects of the Burgess Foundation, and aims to publish each of Burgess’s novels and major works of non-fiction in critical editions edited by experts and scholars. Each edition has a new introduction, a text which has been restored to that of the first edition, appendices drawn from the Burgess Archives around the world, and expansive notes on the text. Mozart and the Wolf Gang is a strange novella. It was written to commemorate the bicentenary of Mozart, and combines fiction, opera libretto, and fragments of film script among other things which work together to be a deliberation on the nature of music.The Irwell Edition of Mozart and the Wolf Gang was edited by Alan Shockley, and was one of his final projects before he died in 2020. Alan was Professor of Music at California State University, Long Beach, and as a composer, he thoughtful and challenging work was admired by audiences all over the world.Mozart and the Wolf Gang is out now!Find out more about the Irwell Edition of the Works of Anthony Burgess at Manchester University Press.-------LINKS:A Memorial for Alan Shockley at California State University, Long BeachMusic in the Words: Musical Form and Counterpoint in the Twentieth Century Novel by Alan ShockleyGender, Power and Identity in the Films of Stanley Kubrick [containing 'Music and Misogyny in A Clockwork Orange' by Christine Lee Gengaro]Anthony Burgess, Stanley Kubrick and A Clockwork Orange [containing 'Transforming Variations: Music in the Novel, Film, and Play, A Clockwork Orange' by Christine Lee Gengaro]International Anthony Burgess Foundation-------If you have enjoyed this episode, why not write a review and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.