Spies

Začiatkom nového roku boli vyhlásené ceny v prestížnej literárnej súťaži Whitbread Fiction Prize 2002. Hlavnú ceny získala novela známeho britského autora Michaela Frayna Spies, ktorá sa vracia do obdobia po skončení druhej svetovej vojny...
In the quiet cul-de-sac where Keith and Stephen live, the only immediate signs of the Second World War are the blackout at night and a single random bombsite. But in their childhood world, things are not what they seem. As Keith, the leader in all their enterprises authoritatively informs the trusting Stephen, the whole district is riddled with secret passages - hideaways for any number of murderers and secret agents. Then one day, Keith announces an even more disconcerting discovery: the Germans have infiltrated his own family…
Michael Frayn is probably best known as a dramatist - in particular for his play Noises Off, a backstage comedy produced with great success in the West End and on Broadway, and Copenhagen. At 69, he is the author of nine other novels, including Headlong (1999), which was shortlisted for the Booker and the Whitbread,13 plays, and several film scripts. Born above the Victoria Wine store in Mill Hill, North London, the son of a sales representative for Turner`s Asbestos Cement, Frayn was expected to follow in his father`s footsteps. Instead this lean, urbane man has packed houses as a playwright, been a notable journalist - making his name as a Guardian columnist - a prize-winning novelist and also a translator and documentary film writer.
While Spies took a year to write, the idea had been with Frayn for more than twenty years, inspired by an incident from his own childhood, when a friend told him that he suspected his mother of being a spy. He says that spies offer a rich vein for writers of fiction - as a Russian speaker, he even had his own "banal" brush with the intelligence services during the 1950s, as a Cambridge undergraduate. "In the normal transactions of life, you want to understand other people and you offer other people some sort of insight into yourself. If you`re spying, you have to distort that." Frayn currently lives in Regent`s Park, London with his second wife - and fellow award-winner - Claire Tomalin. His 29-year marriage to Gillian Palmer, with whom he has three daughters, was dissolved in 1989.
What the Whitbread judges said:
"We chose Spies out of an exceptionally strong shortlist because we felt that it was a book that was so subtle, so beautifully rendered and with so many different facets - comic, nostalgic, poignant - that it will be read with enormous pleasure for many years to come."
What the critics said:
"..a lovingly conceived, handsomely detailed novel in a conservative vein with a vivid sympathy for how lonely, scared and helpless being a child often feels, and how easily and eagerly we forget it…It is never less than witty, ingenious, and a pleasure to read." The Guardian