Tuesday, May 29, 2007

Still Here and Writing

By her own reckoning, she ought to be dead by now. She was always convinced that she wouldn't make it past 71st year. Her grandson says of her in the opening sequence of an intimate documentary he's made of her life:
She smokes too much, she drinks too much and she hasn't written a book in years ...
But this prolific UK author and "national treasure" (and one of my favourite people) has turned 72, is working on a new novel about the assassination of Bobby Kennedy and planning her children's book as a gift to her grandchildren.

The documentary in which she talks about a suicide attempt in 1958 and a recent brush with cancer was premiered on Friday at the Guardian Hay Festival, and I very much hope we have a chance to see it here.

All my love, Beryl.

1 comment:

Amir Muhammad said...

On an unrelated point, a bunch of us were mooching around Kino yesterday and came across the newly-launched, official Malay translation of Hesse's SIDDHARTA. The funny thing is that there were foot-notes here and there with "Amalan ini bercanggah dengan agama Islam" (This practice goes against Islam) and "Ini kepercayaan orang Hindu" (This is a Hindu belief). The first case I've seen of the translator's footnotes having such a ... vampiric? (ha ha) ... effect on the original text.