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Adam Mars-Jones (born 26 October 1954) is a British novelist and literary and film critic.

Adam Mars-Jones
Mars-Jones at a 2012 book reading
Born	(1954-10-26) 26 October 1954 (age 67) London, UK
Nationality	British
Occupation	Novelist and literary critic
Notable work	Lantern Lecture (1981)
Awards	Somerset Maugham Award

Early life and education

Mars-Jones was born in London, to Sir William Mars-Jones (1915–1999),[1][2] a Welsh High Court judge and a President of the London Welsh Trust, and Sheila Mary Felicity (1923–1999),[3] an attorney, daughter of Charles Cobon, a marine engineer.[4][2][5] Mars-Jones studied at Westminster School, and read Classics at Trinity Hall, Cambridge.

Career

Mars-Jones is a regular contributor to The Guardian, The Observer, The Times Literary Supplement, and the London Review of Books. He also participated in BBC Television's Newsnight Review.

His first collection of stories, Lantern Lecture (1981), won a Somerset Maugham Award. Other works include Monopolies of Loss (1992) and The Darker Proof: Stories from a Crisis (1987), which was co-written with Edmund White. His first novel, The Waters of Thirst, was published in 1993. His essay "Venus Envy", a polemic against Martin Amis, was originally published in the CounterBlasts series in 1990. Pilcrow (2008) was his second novel, followed by Cedilla in 2011. These two works form the first two parts of a projected trilogy.

He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2007.[6]

Noriko Smiling, a book concerning the Yasujirō Ozu-directed film Late Spring, was published in 2011.[7][8]

In 2012, he was awarded the inaugural Hatchet Job of the Year Award for his review of Michael Cunningham's By Nightfall.[9]

On 2 January 2015, Mars-Jones was captain of the winning team on Christmas University Challenge, representing Trinity Hall, Cambridge, who defeated Balliol College, Oxford, the University of Edinburgh and the University of Hull. His teammates were international rower Tom James, world champion cyclist Emma Pooley and actor Dan Starkey.[10]

Personal life

His 1997 "Blind Bitter Happiness" re-tells the difficult life of his mother and his relationship to her.[11] Mars-Jones' 2015 memoir of his father "Kid Gloves" deals with his father's struggle to come to terms with his son's homosexuality and his father's later slide into dementia in old age.[12]

Bibliography

Date	Title
1981	Lantern Lecture
1987	The Darker Proof: Stories from a Crisis (with Edmund White)
1990	"Venus Envy"
1992	The Monopolies of Loss
1994	The Waters of Thirst
1997	"Blind Bitter Happiness"
2008	Pilcrow
2011	Cedilla
2011	Noriko Smiling[7]
2015	"Kid Gloves: A Voyage Round My Father"
2020	Box Hill[13]
2021	Batlava Lake

References

External links

• Featured in the opening literary event of the Pride London Festival Fortnight on 22 June 2009 at Foyles bookshop.^{[permanent dead link]}
• Adam Mars-Jones at British Council: Literature

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