Kneale, Matthew 1960–

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Kneale, Matthew 1960–

(Matthew Nicholas Kerr Kneale)

PERSONAL:

Born November 24, 1960, in London, England; son of Nigel (a playwright) and Judith (a writer) Kneale; married Shannon Russell, September, 2000. Education: Magdalen College, Oxford University, B.A., 1982. Hobbies and other interests: Travel, long-distance hill and mountain walking, cycling.

ADDRESSES:

Agent—Deborah Rogers, Rogers, Coleridge & White, 20 Powys Mews, London W11 1JN, England.

CAREER:

Writer, photographer. Teacher of English as a foreign language in Tokyo, 1982-83, and in Rome; tutor of English and history. Freelance photographer.

MEMBER:

Society of Authors.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Winner of Somerset Maugham Award, 1988, for Whore Banquets; winner of John Llewellyn Rhys Award, 1993, for Sweet Thames; speaker at Adelaide Festival, 1994, Singapore Festival, 1995; and Tasmania and Melbourne Festivals, 2000; shortlisted for Booker Prize, 2000, and winner of Whitbread Book of the Year Award, 2000, Prix Relay du Roman d'Evasion, 2002, all for English Passengers.

WRITINGS:

NOVELS

Whore Banquets, Gollancz (London, England), 1987, published as Mr. Foreigner, Weidenfeld & Nicolson (London, England), 2002.

Inside Rose's Kingdom, Gollancz (London, England), 1989.

Sweet Thames, Sinclair-Stevenson (London, England), 1992, Black Swan Books (Redding Ridge, CT), 1994.

English Passengers, Nan A. Talese (New York, NY), 2000.

Small Crimes in an Age of Abundance, Nan A. Talese (New York, NY), 2005.

SIDELIGHTS:

Matthew Kneale's English Passengers is a sweeping historical novel of the colonization of Tasmania by the British in the nineteenth century. One portion of the story concerns an English minister, Geoffrey Wilson, who sails to Tasmania in 1857; in an effort to defend Biblical literalism against Charles Darwin and his theory of evolution, he wants to prove that the Garden of Eden was located there. Joining him is a doctor, Thomas Potter, who is looking for the skulls of Tasmanian aborigines in an attempt to prove his theory about the differences between the races. They are both oblivious to the fact that their ship's captain, the roguish Illiam Quillian Kewley, is a smuggler. The novel flashes both back and forward in time to portray the devastating effects of British settlement on the aboriginal population. There are about twenty first-person narrators, chief among them a proud and tough aborigine named Peevay.

"English Passengers feels a bit too much like two separate novels," observed Adam Hochschild in the New York Times Book Review, "because one stream of its action is essentially foreordained and tragic, the other unpredictable and comic…. The ship-of-fools strand of the plot has a particularly satisfying finish when Dr. Potter meets the end he deserves, one deliciously appropriate to his quest for specimens. But Captain Kewley alone is worth the price of admission, as he bribes and connives his way around the world." Reviewing the work for the London Times, Ruth Scurr called the work a "dashing historical novel" that is "grand in conception." Booklist contributor Neal Wyatt lauded Kneale for "a deliciously sly and clever wit" and "elegant precision" in his storytelling, making the book "a delight to read." The multiple narrators, he added, remain distinct and allow for differing views of the same occurrences. A Publishers Weekly reviewer noted that even with the numerous narrators, the story does not become confusing. The reviewer pronounced English Passengers "a rich tale" and "an impressive epic." A Kirkus Reviews commentator deemed it "original," "knowledgeable," and "very moving."

Kneale has remarked that while he has a passion for travel, he did not go to Tasmania until he was researching English Passengers, which he was inspired to write by a desire to portray the horrors wrought by British imperialism, and to explore the shockingly racist "scientific" theories that developed in the mid-nineteenth century. Earlier, he told CA: "I contracted a severe case of the travel bug sometime early on in life and till now have visited some seventy countries and all seven continents. I have also spent a year living in both Tokyo and, later, Rome. The areas I feel I have got to know best are Italy, Latin America, Australia, and Asia. My strangest journey was probably in Indonesian New Guinea, where I walked and stayed with the Dani people, who are only recently emerged from the Stone Age. My saddest journey was in China in June, 1989, where I found myself a witness to the quiet bravery of the student demonstrators. All this journeying about, together with a study of history, has left me with a fascination with how cultures work, and their seemingly limitless ability to believe that they alone have found the right and normal way of going about things. My first novel, Whore Banquets, was based on my year in Tokyo, and is a study of cultural miscomprehensions…. Sweet Thames is set in London in 1849, and is a wry look at Victorian English thinking, from the starting point of an obsessively ambitious drainage engineer whose wife vanishes in the middle of a cholera epidemic."

Kneale moves forward in time and looks at different aspects of travel in his 2005 title, Small Crimes in an Age of Abundance, "twelve stories linked by the theme of wrongdoing and the suppression of conscience," as a contributor for the Bookseller described the work. In one tale, an English family on vacation in China discover their own prejudices; another story finds an American in central Asia suddenly cast in a different role than the staid and boring one he assumes at home; another story examines the attempt of a couple to find romance and peace in Tuscany, with unexpected results. Still other stories stay closer to home, but with equally ironic outcomes. Reviewing the collection in the Spectator, Olivia Glazebrook felt that "several of the stories have a sinister footnote." However, Glazebrook was unimpressed with this attempt by Kneale, concluding that it "may be an interesting exercise, but it is a lifeless read." However, Robert E. Brown, reviewing the same collection in Library Journal, had a higher assessment, noting that the stories were "well wrought and intriguing." Kneale told the Bookseller contributor his reason for choosing the short story form: "I've travelled a lot, but never found a way of getting down in fiction the multiple perspectives that travel gives you." The twelve stories of Small Crimes in an Age of Abundance represent Kneale's attempt at such a multi-faceted viewpoint. The author explained in Bookseller he arranged the stories to resemble a novel in form "so that readers should feel that they have travelled through it," receiving "a cumulative emotional charge."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, March 15, 2000, Neal Wyatt, review of English Passengers, p. 1327; February 1, 2005, Neal Wyatt, review of Small Crimes in an Age of Abundance, p. 942.

Bookseller, November 25, 2004, "Kneale's Stories of Twelve Bad Deeds," p. 26.

Canberra Times (Canberra, Australia), February 7, 1989, review of Inside Rose's Kingdom.

Cosmopolitan, January 5, 1987, review of Whore Banquets; June, 1989, review of Inside Rose's Kingdom.

Daily Telegraph, February 6, 1987, review of Whore Banquets; May 6, 1989, review of Inside Rose's Kingdom; September 12, 1992, review of Sweet Thames.

Evening Standard (London, England), July 23, 1992, review of Sweet Thames.

Financial Times, January 31, 1987, review of Whore Banquets.

Guardian (London, England), January 30, 1987, review of Whore Banquets; April 17, 1989, review of Inside Rose's Kingdom.

Independent (London, England), February 10, 1987, review of Whore Banquets.

Independent on Sunday (London, England), August 2, 1992, review of Sweet Thames.

Kirkus Reviews, February 15, 2000, review of English Passengers, p. 195; February 1, 2005, review of Small Crimes in an Age of Abundance, p. 140.

Library Journal, March 15, 2000, review of English Passengers, p. 127; February 1, 2005, Robert E. Brown, review of Small Crimes in an Age of Abundance, p. 73.

Literary Review, April, 1987, review of Whore Banquets; March, 1989, review of Inside Rose's Kingdom.

New Statesman, March 27, 1987, review of Whore Banquets.

New York Times Book Review, May 28, 2000, Adam Hochschild, review of English Passengers.

Observer (London, England), February 1, 1987, review of Whore Banquets; August 16, 1992, review of Sweet Thames.

Philadelphia Inquirer, September 5, 2000, review of English Passengers.

Publishers Weekly, February 14, 2000, review of English Passengers, p. 174; January 10, 2005, review of Small Crimes in an Age of Abundance, p. 36.

Spectator, August 8, 1992, review of Sweet Thames; March 5, 2005, Olivia Glazebrook, review of Small Crimes in an Age of Abundance, p. 49.

Sunday Telegraph, February 2, 1987, review of Whore Banquets.

Sunday Times, July 19, 1992, review of Sweet Thames.

Time Out, April 5, 1989, review of Inside Rose's Kingdom; August 5, 1992, review of Sweet Thames.

Times (London, England), March 16, 2000, Ruth Scurr, review of English Passengers.

Times Literary Supplement, January 30, 1987, review of Whore Banquets; March 30, 1989, review of Inside Rose's Kingdom; August 8, 1992, review of Sweet Thames.