Amanda Prantera's Official Website
Biography
Amanda was born in Newmarket, Suffolk, U.K. in 1942 to a couple of very young, horse-racing-addicted parents whose marriage split up messily when she was still a small child. She was left in the care of her paternal grandmother who, although herself a Jewess by blood and a Protestant by religion, brought her up as a Roman Catholic. Her education was typical for girls of that class and period but now sounds antediluvian: private governesses, a spell at Lady Tryon's exclusive establishment in Wiltshire, a few years in a convent and then a series of 'finishing' schools in Oxford, France and Italy, officially studying languages and history of art (but see Protozoë and Sabine for a more accurate syllabus).Works
L & GMy latest audio story for romantics and vampire lovers.
The riveting story of a British family and its connections with China.
- Mohawk's Brood is a beautifully realised novel of a world that no longer exists. Prantera is the author of sixteen novels and I cannot wait to read more by her, especially Strange Loop and Wolfsong. Chasingbawa.com
- Prantera's slinky lightness of touch makes each character distinctive and memorable John Self, Asylum
Translation of Austrian writer Marlen Haushofer's spellbinding childhood memoir 'Himmel der nirgendwo endet'.
- Translator Amanda Prantera, a novelist herself, does a fine job. Guardian
- Accurate, flowing translation, a delightful read in English. Amazon review
Thrilling story for children, featuring a horrible schoolteacher, a magic egg and a perilous climb in the mountains.
Love story concerning two female werewolves, set in 1960's London.
- It's one of those rare books that manage to take a topic that's usually dealt with on a lighter note, and turn it into a mature, literary masterpiece. Bookinginheels.com
- Amanda Prantera stunned me with her writing. I read Wolfsong in one sitting, gobbling it up like a favourite sweet. On one hand I wish there had been more, on the other I feel that it had one of the most perfect endings I've read in a long time. Just wonderful. Beth Flynn, alittlesunshy.com
Translation of Austrian writer Marlen Haushofer's late masterpiece Die Mansarde.
- What gives this book its tremendous power? First the voice is charming, with a skittish beauty throughout. (This may be the influence of translator Amanda Prantera: a fine novelist in her own right.) But there is also disarming honesty, and a lack of vanity, which appeals as only truth can. John Self, the Guardian
Set in a school in the French Château Country of the 1950's, it is the story of a young girl's coming of age.
- A.P. writes superbly. Sabine is an enchanting novel that deserves to be a cult classic. Daily Telegraph
- A sexy Gothic tale. Vogue
- Campy, creepy, sensational fun... Daily Candy L.A.
- A tasty literary treat. Goodreads
- The story is bleak and frightening, but because the hero is so endearing in his slow-witted incompetence and whistling-in-the-dark bravery, it is also oddly charming. Sunday Times
- A disturbing but fascinating novel. Sunday Tribune
- A da Vinci Code for grown-ups. Simon Shaw, Mail on Sunday
- If you like the genre but don't want to read 605 pages of the da Vinci Code, choose Spoiler instead which has only 224 fast-paced pages and doesn't insult your intelligence. Malu at Helium
- The reader, carried along at a spanking pace, must stay alert until the very last word on the very last page... a book I could not put down. New Book Magazine.
- I took it home and devoured it. John Self, Palimpsest.
- A chilling read. Sunday Times
- Five stars. Thrilling, brill twist at end. Yoodoo.
- A delight – amusing, generous, unpredictable and deliciously gossipy. Angus Clarke, Times.
- Thoroughly charming entertainment, complete with wry finale. Image.
- Witty social comedy. Daily Telegraph.
- Another gem from this inventive and experimental but consistently reliable author. Passionatereader at Amazon.
- An uncommonly good novel... Gripping, intriguing, intelligent, witty, moving and rings very very true.
- Conveys the romantic seduction which goes hand in hand with the seduction of ideas. TLS
- An intellectual thriller for the crime-loving Italophile. Times
- Powerful and satisfying. Image
- Enchanting and beautifully written. Today
- These hard-edged stories raise the amusing dinner party anecdote to an art form. Independent
- Reaching the end of this collection one cannot help being a little disappointed that the pleasure is over so soon. TLS
- Prantera is a writer whose prose is so delicate, so light to the touch, that it belies the weight of the substantial talent which produced it... Irresistible. Times
- A wonderfully cool tale of adultery, passion and foreplay. Observer
- I don't think I have ever read anything so good about the thin line between love and infatuation. Literary Review
- A drolly original, wholly convincing portrait of life in a bourgeois Italian family, which is ultimately a celebration of family life, for its loyalties triumph over passion and politics. Independent
- This elegant novel... is about history and truth, and about the secrecy and misrepresentation that go hand in hand with totalitarian regimes and high-level court politics. TLS
- Amanda Prantera has a liking for the stylishly offbeat. Her teasing novel converts one of the most cut-and-dried episodes of ancient history into a complex and shady business. LRB
- Sparkling... written with and elegance that makes each sentence, soft or hard, a pleasure whatever it deals with... Seldom has my disbelief been so willingly suspended. Financial Times
- I emerged from this brilliant book with my brain beaming. Times Ed. Sup.
- This clever novel is brilliant fun. Daily Mail
- Hard though it is to resist a novel with a title like this, maybe you should try.
- I can think of no teller of gothic tales who betters her in the genre. TLS
- The work triumphantly renews our earlier expectations. Observer
- I enjoyed it immensely. Alannah Hopkins, Books and Bookmen
- Read on, entranced. Guardian
- Compelling and delightful. L A Times
- A delight from start to finish. Evening Standard.
- An elegant and haunting tale. Times
- A brilliant and original novel. New Fiction
- An enormously entertaining Gothic romance. Listener
- A brilliant piece of storytelling. London Magazine
- Dotty pastiche. Jane Gardham in Books and Bookmen
Favourites
Dozen favourite reads ever:Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Byron's Letters
The Balkan Trilogy by Olivia Manning
Eminent Victorians by Lytton Strachey
Shakespeare's Sonnets
The Loft by Marlen Haushofer
Sword of Honour Trilogy by Evelyn Waugh
The House of Asterion by Borges
Feathers by Raymond Carver
Kafka's Diaries (and Adrian Mole's too)
The Apartment
Amadeus
Kiss Me Kate
The Commitments
Cabaret
Mephisto
Spinal Tap
Lost in Translation
Roman Holiday
Nashville
Withnail and I
Links
Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Amanda-Prantera/e/B001HPMBKOBloomsbury: http://www.bloomsbury.com/Authors/details.aspx?tpid=700
Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amanda_Prantera
Blog: http://amanda-prantera.blogspot.com