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Ben Fergusson

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Ben Richard Fergusson (born 12 July 1980 in Southampton) is a British writer and translator. He studied English Literature at Warwick University and Modern Languages at Bristol University. Before publishing his first novel he worked for ten years as an editor and publisher in the art world.[1] Fergusson lives with his husband and son in Berlin, where he teaches at the University of Potsdam.[2][3]

Career

[edit]

Fergusson's debut novel was The Spring of Kasper Meier (2014), a literary thriller set in the ruins of post-war Berlin.[4] In 2015, it won the Betty Trask Award,[5] the HWA Debut Crown,[6] and was shortlisted for the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award.[7] The Spring of Kasper Meier was the first novel in a trilogy of books set in the same apartment block in Berlin at different points in the city's twentieth century history. His second novel, The Other Hoffmann Sister (2017), is partly set in German South West Africa, now Namibia, and Berlin during the German Revolution of 1918–1919. An Honest Man (2019), the final book in the trilogy, is a queer Cold War thriller set in West Berlin during the summer before the Fall of the Berlin Wall.[8] The latter was a book of the year in The Times,[9] the Financial Times,[10] and the Times Literary Supplement.[11]

After same-sex marriage in Germany was passed by the Bundestag in 2017, Fergusson and his German husband became one of the first same-sex married couples to adopt in the country. In 2022, Fergusson published his first work of non-fiction about this journey, Tales from the Fatherland, which also reflected on the broader social and historical shifts in how families are created and what parenthood means.[12]

Bibliography

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  • The Spring of Kasper Meier (2014)
  • The Other Hoffmann Sister (2017)
  • An Honest Man (2019)
  • Tales from the Fatherland (2022)

Awards

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  • Seán O'Faoláin International Short Story Award 2020[13]
  • Stephen Spender Prize 2020 for poetry in translation[14]
  • Betty Trask Prize 2015[15]
  • HWA Debut Crown 2015[16]
  • Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year 2015 (shortlist)[17]
  • Authors' Club Best First Novel Award 2015 (longlist)

References

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  1. ^ "The Spring Of Kasper Meier by Ben Fergusson". bbc.co.uk. BBC. Retrieved 22 May 2021.
  2. ^ "Ben Fergusson". hachette.co.uk. Hachette. 29 January 2019. Retrieved 22 May 2021.
  3. ^ "Ben Fergusson". www.uni-potsdam.de. University of Potsdam. Retrieved 22 May 2021.
  4. ^ "Fergusson and Morpurgo win Historical Fiction Awards". harrogate-news.co.uk. Harrogate Informer. 23 October 2015. Retrieved 22 May 2021.
  5. ^ Flood, Alison (26 June 2015). "Betty Trask award goes to Ben Fergusson's 'grittily evocative' debut". The Guardian. Retrieved 19 May 2021.
  6. ^ Onwuemezi, Natasha. "Fergusson wins Debut Crown at HWA awards". The Bookseller. Retrieved 19 May 2021.
  7. ^ Flood, Alison (11 December 2015). "Poet Sarah Howe named young writer of the year". The Guardian. Retrieved 19 May 2021.
  8. ^ Robson, Jeff (3 August 2019). "An Honest Man, by Ben Fergusson, review: Secrets and lies in a gripping tale of life in the shadow of the Berlin Wall". The i Newspaper. Retrieved 23 May 2021.
  9. ^ Rennison, Nick. "The best new historical fiction — lust, loyalty and breaking barriers in Cold War Berlin". The Times. Retrieved 19 May 2021.
  10. ^ Lebor, Adam (3 December 2019). "Best Books of 2019: Thrillers". The Financial Times. The Financial Times. Retrieved 19 May 2021.
  11. ^ "Books of the Year 2019". The Times Literary Supplement. Retrieved 19 May 2021.
  12. ^ "'A baby needed a family': how a same-sex couple became one of Germany's first to adopt". The Observer. 17 July 2022. Retrieved 18 July 2022.
  13. ^ "Winners of the Seán O'Faoláin Short Story Prize". www.munsterlit.ie. Munster Literature Centre. Retrieved 22 May 2021.
  14. ^ "Stephen Spender Prize 2020" (PDF). www.stephen-spender.org. Stephen Spender Trust. Retrieved 22 May 2021.
  15. ^ Flood, Alison (26 June 2015). "Betty Trask award goes to Ben Fergusson's 'grittily evocative' debut". The Guardian. Retrieved 19 May 2021.
  16. ^ Onwuemezi, Natasha. "Fergusson wins Debut Crown at HWA awards". The Bookseller. Retrieved 19 May 2021.
  17. ^ Flood, Alison (11 December 2015). "Poet Sarah Howe named young writer of the year". The Guardian. Retrieved 19 May 2021.


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