Barbara Trapido – författare

‘A brilliant book’ - Mary Wesley, Daily Mail ‘She is simply dynamite … There are no apparent bounds to Trapido’s skill, her inventiveness and her knowledge’ - Philip Hensher, GuardianSparky Christina and her saintly adopted sister Pam couldn't be more different. And when they meet similarly mismatched friends Jago and Peter, the four embark on a dazzling series of pairings and partings, outrageous coincidences and eleventh-hour entrances interrupted one disastrous Halloween when schoolboy revelry turns horribly wrong. Three years on, as Christina has made it to Oxford to study English. While she analyses the wit, cruelty and crossed genders of Shakespearean comedy, the cast of her own life reunites and the curtain falls on some gloriously unexpected partnerships.‘Juggling by Barbara Trapido is, I think, already well known but it should be even more so. It has the best piece of Shakespeare criticism in it I’ve ever read’ - Katherine Rundell, Guardian‘A joy to read … Supremely skilful’ - Observer‘She weaves a cat’s cradle of wit and erudition around her high-stepping characters, take breath-taking risks and triumphs against all the odds’ - Independent

Jem is a joyful mystery to Alice. She is something to give thanks for. And when she disappears from Alice's life, as suddenly as she entered it, a whirl of glamour, subversion and literary references, Alice is left bereft. But then she meets Giovanni, presumptuous and hectoring, passionate and beautiful, who leads her back to her childhood friend and the mystery and chaos still surrounding her. Alice finds herself being seduced all over again

Selected as a Radio 4 Good Read by Maggie O'Farrell______________________‘Sprinkled with magic’ - Sunday Times‘Audacious, energetic and dazzing … There aren’t many novelists whose stories one doesn’t want to end, but Barbara Trapido is one of them’ - Philip Hensher, Mail on Sunday______________________Sisters Ellen and Lydia live out an idyllic girlhood in Oxford, their wayward adventures of no concern to their passive, donnish father and their chilly stepmother. Even when Lydia is killed in a car accident, death isn't enough to keep her from her sister, cheerfully returning to haunt her. But Ellen, unwittingly, is herself haunting the lives of those around her: there is Jonathan Goldman, whose flat Lydia is running from when she is knocked down; his daughter Stella, the 'nuisance chip'; and Stella's genius painter-boy lover Izzy. As Trapido's myriad pairings collide, part, and then reunite in breathtaking comedy of manners, The Travelling Hornplayer climaxes in a joyful and unexpected finale.______________________‘Reading Barbara Trapido is sheer pleasure’ - Independent on Sunday Books of the Year ‘This woman is brilliant. And she actually makes you laugh … I enjoyed every page of this book, which is so shimmering with wit, hectic energy and crazy convolutions of plots that I ended up in a state of sublime, satiated exhaustion’ - Daily Mail 'She has the mind-teasing skills of a crime-writer combined with a sense of humour as dry as a Martini' - Sunday Telegraph

Barbara Trapido's captivating novel of coming-of-age novel about sisters, friendship and political awakening in 1950s South Africa______________________‘This is a gorgeous book about growing up … it also manages to convey, with admirable lightness of touch, the dawning of a political consciousness … A wonderful read' - Observer'A beautifully written slice of both personal and political history … by the end of the novel, you are immersed in her world and simply never want to leave it' - Guardian'A blissfully funny sequence of portraits, family upon family, vignette upon vignette' - Daily Telegraph______________________Dinah and her sister Lisa are growing up in 1950s South Africa, where racial laws are tightening. They are two little girls from a dissenting liberal family. Big sister Lisa is strong and sensible, while Dinah is weedy and arty. At school, the sadistic Mrs Vaughan-Jones is providing instruction in mental arithmetic and racial prejudice. And then there's the puzzle of lunch break. 'Would you rather have a native girl or a koelie to make your sandwiches?' a first-year classmate asks. But Dinah doesn't know the answer, because it's her dad who makes her sandwiches. As the apparatus of repression rolls on, Dinah finds her own way. As we follow her journey through childhood and adolescence, we enter into one of the darker passages of twentieth-century history.

________________________‘There is no mistaking Trapido's narrative talent: racy, vibrant and witty’ - Guardian‘Reading it is rather like being bombarded with sequins’ - Observer________________________Ali Bobrow is a single parent with a fraught nine-year-old daughter, a malevolent ex with a grabby new wife, and an underused artistic talent. A pushover when it comes to needy neighbours and uninvited children, she allows her house to be the local drop-in centre, until she collides with Noah Glazer. A solid man of science, Noah walks into Ali's life bringing good sense, order and security. But ten years on, Ali is drawn back into the complexities of her past: an old lover, two ex-spouses, a colleague from clown school and a small smuggled cat all help to rock the boat.________________________‘The plot’s interplay of flashbacks and digressions, which prompt bright dialogue and dark complications, recalls Matisse’s line and palette. Some sentences can be relished in isolation, like fine brushwork’ - New Yorker‘Full of wisecracks, efficiency, carnal delights, and love of children … warm and comic’ - The Times'Funny, sexy, glowing' - TimeOut

AN ASTOUNDING NOVEL FROM THE AUTHOR OF FRANKIE AND STANKIE AND BROTHER OF THE MORE FAMOUS JACK____________________''A dazzling achievement. It''s beautifully-written, deftly-plotted and moves skilfully from domestic drama to global themes and back again'' - Daily Express''Delightful and brilliantly choreographed comedy'' - Sunday Times____________________The time is 1995, but everybody has a past. Brilliant Australian Caroline can command everyone except her own ghoulish mother, which means that things aren''t easy for Josh and Zoe, her husband with Stravinsky-glasses and twelve-year-old daughter. Zoe reads girls'' ballet books and longs for lessons; a thing denied her until a chance encounter on a school French exchange. Meanwhile, on the east coast of Africa, Hattie, Josh''s first love, now writes girls'' ballet books - that''s when she can carve out the space between her husband and her crosspatch daughter. From far and wide, they are all drawn together: a masquerade in which things are not always what they seem.____________________''This wonderful novel sparkles with Midsummer Night''s Dream magic'' - Daily Mail''Beautifully structured, with flashes of wonderful eccentricity'' - The Times

AN ASTOUNDING NOVEL FROM THE AUTHOR OF FRANKIE AND STANKIE AND BROTHER OF THE MORE FAMOUS JACK____________________'A dazzling achievement. It's beautifully-written, deftly-plotted and moves skilfully from domestic drama to global themes and back again' - Daily Express'Delightful and brilliantly choreographed comedy' - Sunday Times____________________The time is 1995, but everybody has a past. Brilliant Australian Caroline can command everyone except her own ghoulish mother, which means that things aren't easy for Josh and Zoe, her husband with Stravinsky-glasses and twelve-year-old daughter. Zoe reads girls' ballet books and longs for lessons; a thing denied her until a chance encounter on a school French exchange. Meanwhile, on the east coast of Africa, Hattie, Josh's first love, now writes girls' ballet books - that's when she can carve out the space between her husband and her crosspatch daughter. From far and wide, they are all drawn together: a masquerade in which things are not always what they seem.____________________'This wonderful novel sparkles with Midsummer Night's Dream magic' - Daily Mail‘Beautifully structured, with flashes of wonderful eccentricity' - The Times

**BBC Radio 4 Book at Bedtime**________________________A JOYFUL 40TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION OF A COMING-OF-AGE CLASSIC________________________''There are few modern tales of first love and its disillusions that are as thoroughly realised, as brilliantly lewd, and as hilariously satisfying to men and women of all ages as this one'' - Rachel CuskEighteen-year-old Katherine - bright, stylish, frustratedly suburban - doesn''t know how her life will change when the brilliant Jacob Goldman first offers her a place at university. When she enters the Goldmans'' rambling bohemian home, presided over by the beatific matriarch Jane, she realises that Jacob and his family are everything she has been waiting for.But when a romantic entanglement ends in tears, Katherine is forced into exile from the family she loves most. And her journey back into the fold, after more than a decade away, will yield all kinds of delightful surprises...________________________''The perfect book'' - Meg Mason''The best possible company in this difficult world'' - Ann Patchett''A daisy bomb of joy'' - Maria Semple''Funny, charming, teeming with life, and real'' - Nick Hornby''I adored it … Redolent of classics like The Constant Nymph with both its true voice and wonderfully sage and sanguine heroine'' - Sophie Dahl''One of those books that when people have read it, they just push it into your hands silently: "You have to read this book, you will love this book." There''s no other book I love more'' - Caroline O''Donoghue, Sentimental Garbage''Reading it again is as comforting as eating toast and Marmite between clean, fresh sheets'' - Rachel Cooke, Sunday Times''Think Brideshead Revisited set in the 1970s, only sexier and much funnier. It kills me that I didn''t read it at university, when I really needed it'' - Meg Rosoff, New Statesman

Dinah and her sister Lisa are growing up in 1950s South Africa, where racial laws are tightening. They are two little girls from a dissenting liberal family. Big sister Lisa is strong and sensible, while Dinah is weedy and arty. At school, the sadistic Mrs Vaughan-Jones is providing instruction in mental arithmetic and racial prejudice. And then there''s the puzzle of lunch break. ''Would you rather have a native girl or a koelie to make your sandwiches?'' a first-year classmate asks. But Dinah doesn''t know the answer, because it''s her dad who makes her sandwiches. As the apparatus of repression rolls on, Dinah finds her own way. As we follow her journey through childhood and adolescence, we enter into one of the darker passages of twentieth-century history.

''A brilliant book'' - Mary Wesley, Daily Mail ''She is simply dynamite … There are no apparent bounds to Trapido''s skill, her inventiveness and her knowledge'' - Philip Hensher, GuardianSparky Christina and her saintly adopted sister Pam couldn''t be more different. And when they meet similarly mismatched friends Jago and Peter, the four embark on a dazzling series of pairings and partings, outrageous coincidences and eleventh-hour entrances interrupted one disastrous Halloween when schoolboy revelry turns horribly wrong. Three years on, as Christina has made it to Oxford to study English. While she analyses the wit, cruelty and crossed genders of Shakespearean comedy, the cast of her own life reunites and the curtain falls on some gloriously unexpected partnerships.''Juggling by Barbara Trapido is, I think, already well known but it should be even more so. It has the best piece of Shakespeare criticism in it I''ve ever read'' - Katherine Rundell, Guardian''A joy to read … Supremely skilful'' - Observer''She weaves a cat''s cradle of wit and erudition around her high-stepping characters, take breath-taking risks and triumphs against all the odds'' - Independent

''Temples of Delight makes you laugh and it moves you'' Sunday Times ''A joyous and winking style reliant on coincidence and irony, sparkling sung ... As messy, glorious and strange as life itself'' Lauren GroffJem is a joyful mystery to Alice: a whirl of glamour, subversion and literary references. And when she disappears from Alice''s life, as suddenly as she entered it, Alice is left bereft. But then she meets Giovanni, presumptuous and hectoring, passionate and beautiful, who leads her back to her childhood friend and the mystery and chaos still surrounding her. Alice finds herself being seduced all over again...''So readable, so full of incidental pleasures and curiosities … In her readability, her richness, her plain, clear style, Trapido is quite like what Iris Murdoch is supposed to be'' Philip Hensher, Guardian ''Very funny … fizzes along at a cracking pace'' Sunday Telegraph''As lush and original as it is playful and ironic ... Quirky, wise and warm, full of charm and entirely original'' San Francisco Chronicle

Selected as a Radio 4 Good Read by Maggie O''Farrell______________________''Sprinkled with magic'' - Sunday Times ''Audacious, energetic and dazzing … There aren''t many novelists whose stories one doesn''t want to end, but Barbara Trapido is one of them'' - Philip Hensher, Mail on Sunday______________________Sisters Ellen and Lydia live out an idyllic girlhood in Oxford, their wayward adventures of no concern to their passive, donnish father and their chilly stepmother. Even when Lydia is killed in a car accident, death isn''t enough to keep her from her sister, cheerfully returning to haunt her. But Ellen, unwittingly, is herself haunting the lives of those around her: there is Jonathan Goldman, whose flat Lydia is running from when she is knocked down; his daughter Stella, the ''nuisance chip''; and Stella''s genius painter-boy lover Izzy. As Trapido''s myriad pairings collide, part, and then reunite in breathtaking comedy of manners, The Travelling Hornplayer climaxes in a joyful and unexpected finale.______________________''Reading Barbara Trapido is sheer pleasure'' - Independent on Sunday Books of the Year ''This woman is brilliant. And she actually makes you laugh … I enjoyed every page of this book, which is so shimmering with wit, hectic energy and crazy convolutions of plots that I ended up in a state of sublime, satiated exhaustion'' - Daily Mail ''She has the mind-teasing skills of a crime-writer combined with a sense of humour as dry as a Martini'' - Sunday Telegraph

________________________''There is no mistaking Trapido''s narrative talent: racy, vibrant and witty'' - Guardian''Reading it is rather like being bombarded with sequins'' - Observer________________________Ali Bobrow is a single parent with a fraught nine-year-old daughter, a malevolent ex with a grabby new wife, and an underused artistic talent. A pushover when it comes to needy neighbours and uninvited children, she allows her house to be the local drop-in centre, until she collides with Noah Glazer. A solid man of science, Noah walks into Ali''s life bringing good sense, order and security. But ten years on, Ali is drawn back into the complexities of her past: an old lover, two ex-spouses, a colleague from clown school and a small smuggled cat all help to rock the boat.________________________''The plot''s interplay of flashbacks and digressions, which prompt bright dialogue and dark complications, recalls Matisse''s line and palette. Some sentences can be relished in isolation, like fine brushwork'' - New Yorker''Full of wisecracks, efficiency, carnal delights, and love of children … warm and comic'' - The Times''Funny, sexy, glowing'' - TimeOut

A JOYFUL 40TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION OF A COMING-OF-AGE CLASSIC________________________‘There are few modern tales of first love and its disillusions that are as thoroughly realised, as brilliantly lewd, and as hilariously satisfying to men and women of all ages as this one’ - Rachel CuskEighteen-year-old Katherine - bright, stylish, frustratedly suburban - doesn't know how her life will change when the brilliant Jacob Goldman first offers her a place at university. When she enters the Goldmans' rambling bohemian home, presided over by the beatific matriarch Jane, she realises that Jacob and his family are everything she has been waiting for.But when a romantic entanglement ends in tears, Katherine is forced into exile from the family she loves most. And her journey back into the fold, after more than a decade away, will yield all kinds of delightful surprises...________________________‘The perfect book’ - Meg Mason‘The best possible company in this difficult world’ - Ann Patchett‘A daisy bomb of joy’ - Maria Semple‘Funny, charming, teeming with life, and real’ - Nick Hornby‘I adored it … Redolent of classics like The Constant Nymph with both its true voice and wonderfully sage and sanguine heroine’ - Sophie Dahl‘One of those books that when people have read it, they just push it into your hands silently: "You have to read this book, you will love this book." There’s no other book I love more’ - Caroline O'Donoghue, Sentimental Garbage‘Reading it again is as comforting as eating toast and Marmite between clean, fresh sheets’ - Rachel Cooke, Sunday Times‘Think Brideshead Revisited set in the 1970s, only sexier and much funnier. It kills me that I didn’t read it at university, when I really needed it’ - Meg Rosoff, New Statesman

Als Lydia von einem Auto angefahren wird und noch am Unfallort stirbt, versucht ihre trauernde Schwester herauszufinden, was sie dort wollte. Denn auch, wenn Lydia nicht mehr unter ihnen weilt, so berührt sie doch noch immer das Leben derer, die um sie trauern: Da ist Jonathan Goldmann, aus dessen Wohnung sie vor seinem Tod floh. Da ist seine Tochter Stella, die gerade erst herausgefunden hat, dass ihr Vater eine Affäre hat. Und damit nicht genug: Stiefmütter, schrullige Professoren und verrückte Mönche - sie alle sind durch Lydias Tod miteinander verbunden...

Die stylische Vorstadtschönheit Katherine ist achtzehn, als sie Professor Jacob Goldmann kennenlernt. Zusammen mit seiner Frau Jane führt er ein exzentrisches, kinderreiches Lotterleben. Als Katherine diese überschwängliche und unordentliche Welt betritt, verliebt sie sich erst in seinen Sohn Roger und dann in dessen Bruder Jonathan. Mit gebrochenem Herzen flieht Katherine nach Rom. 10 Jahre später trifft sie erneut auf die Goldmans – und es zeigt sich: Ihr Leben ist unwiderruflich mit dem der Familie verbunden. Ein englischer Unterhaltungsroman allerster Güte: kultiviert, humorvoll, mit brillanten Dialogen

"Was ist dir lieber? Wenn dir eine Einheimische oder ein Kuli dein Pausenbrot schmiert?", wird Dinah von einer Klassenkameradin gefragt. Dinah weiß darauf keine Antwort, denn bei ihr zu Hause macht ihr Papa die Brote. Dinah und ihre Schwester Lisa wachsen in einer liberalen Familie in den fünfziger Jahren in Südafrika auf, als die Rassengesetze verschärft werden. Die ältere Lisa ist stark und vernünftig, Dinah zierlich und verträumt. In der Schule treffen sie auf sadistische Lehrer, die rassistische Vorurteile gegen Schwarze pflegen und die Mädchen seelisch quälen.Trapidos semiautobiographischer Roman erzählt vom Erwachsenwerden, von den Versuchen, in der Apartheidgesellschaft zurechtzukommen.

Als Jem wie aus dem Nichts in der kleinen Welt der behüteten Alice auftaucht, hat sie etwas von einem Geschenk des Himmels. Jem und Alice tauchen ein in einen Kosmos, in dem die Grenzen zwischen Realität und Fantasie aufgehoben scheinen. Die beiden ungleichen Mädchen genießen Literatur, Musik, Schuleschwänzen und extravagante Absurditäten – und schaffen sich etwas eigenes, weit weg vom grauen Schulalltag. Doch dann, genauso schnell, wie sie gekommen ist, verschwindet Jem und lässt eine völlig verstörte Alice zurück. Jahre später, Schulen später, Liebhaber später, erhält Alice einen Brief von ihrer verschollenen, todkranken Freundin, die ihr ein Baby und ein Romanmanuskript hinterlassen will. Und wie bei ihrer ersten Begegnung beginnt für Alice eine Reise mit unbekanntem Ausgang …

Eine Familiengeschichte von Shakespearescher Leichtig­keit: Christina ist kein liebes Mädchen, auch wenn sie es gerne wäre. Ständig muss sie ihre Stachel ausfahren. Vor allem der Vater mit seinen ­extravaganten Ideen geht ihr gegen den Strich. Ihre Mutter hingegen hat zu wenig Biss, und die Großmutter, anfangs ihre liebste Verbündete, ­erweist sich als gnadenlos engstirnig. Nur Pam, ihre Adoptivschwester, liebt sie von Herzen. Kein Wunder, dass ihr Weg zu den Menschen, mit denen sie durchs Leben gehen möchte, nicht geradlinig verläuft. Im Internat lernen Christina und Pam die beiden Freunde Jago und ­Peter kennen. Allen vieren hat das Leben Schweres mitgegeben. Durch einen tragischen Vorfall werden sie in alle Winde ­zerstreut. Jahre später finden sie sich in Oxford wieder, zu einem Happy End mit glücklichen Paaren. Wer mit wem - das bleibt bis zum Schluss spannend. 1994 zuerst erschienen, war "Jonglieren" in England ein Bestseller, die erste Veröffentlichung in Deutschland folgte 1995. Als Klassikerin weib­licher Erzählkunst findet Barbara Trapido nun ihren Platz bei der edition fünf.