List Of Writers

AZZOPARDI, TREZZA

Contact via Picador: 020 7014 6000

Trezza was born in Cardiff, and now lives in Norwich after completing the MA in Creative Writing at UEA. She is an external examiner for Creative and Cultural Studies at Norwich School of Art and Design. Her first novel The Hiding Place (Picador, 2000) was on the shortlist for the Booker Prize. The book is loosely based on real–life experiences growing up in the Maltese community in Cardiff. The book was also a contender for The Guardian First Book Award, won the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize and was shortlisted for both the Booker Prize for Fiction and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize (for fiction). It was also adapted for BBC Radio 4’s ’Book at Bedtime’ and has been translated into 14 languages. Her second novel, Remember Me (Picador, 2004), centres on 72–year-old Lilian (also known as Winnie), a homeless woman, in search of her stolen possessions and her troubled past. It was shortlisted for the 2005 Wales Book of the Year Award.

Her third novel Winterton Blue (Picador, 2007) is on the Wales Book of the Year 2008 Long List. Click here for more information. Trezza has a fourth title due for publication in 2008.

Selected Publications:
The Hiding Place (Picador, 2000)
Remember Me (Picador, 2004)
Winterton Blue (Picador, 2007)

The Hiding Place (Picador, 2000)

Longlisted for the Guardian First Book Award this highly acclaimed first novel is set in the Maltese community of Tiger Bay in Cardiff where the author grew up. Dolores, the narrator tells the story of her childhood - her father, Frankie, a compulsive gambler who, due to a misunderstanding at the moment of her birth (he is convinced that his wife will finally give birth to a boy after a multitude of daughters) loses everything to his rival Joe Medora, head of the Maltese Mafia. Frankie’s gambling leads to the fire which disfigures Dolores. There is a terrifyingly vivid scene as Dolores remembers watching her hand being burnt in the fire that destroys their home and the moment when Joe claims one of Frankie’s daughters as his own. The author evokes the world of Dolores and her family with brilliant power and sensitivity. The novel flits between past and present as Dolores reflects on her childhood and the lives that her father created for himself and his children.

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Remember Me (Picador, 2004)

Lillian would say she’s no trouble, content to let the days go by, minding her own business and bothering no one. She’d rather not recall the past and, at 72, doesn’t see much point in thinking too much about the future. But when her closed existence is suddenly shattered by a random act of violence committed by a young girl, Lillian is catapulted abruptly out of her exile. Robbed of everything she owns, she embarks on a journey to find the thief, but soon finds that what began as a search for stolen belongings has in fact become about the rediscovery of a stolen life.

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Winterton Blue (Picador, 2007)

Lewis and his twin brother were racing in a stolen car driven by the sociopathic Carl, and teenage stupidity turned to tragedy. Lewis had to learn to face the world alone - which he has done with a limited amount of success. Anna’s immediate problem is her mother, Rita, who runs a boarding house in Yarmouth. She has suffered a fall, and really ought to be cared for by someone other than her only paying guest (if that is indeed his status), the retired music-hall star Vernon Savoy (aka ’Cabbage’, ho ho). So Anna leaves her London life behind and grimly sets off to do her duty. As Lewis and Anna, both solitary drifters, search for solutions, their lives become entangled in the most unexpected ways, and they find themselves having to face troubling truths about who they are, how they got there and what they might become - with electrifying consequences. Told against the backdrop of the Norfolk coast, with its huge skies and the silver-grey North Sea pounding at its shores, Winterton Blue is an enthralling novel. It tells a haunting, funny and sad story, one that never lets the reader go.


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