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Richard Beard

Biography

Richard Beard

Richard Beard's six novels include LAZARUS IS DEAD, DRY BONES and DAMASCUS, which was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. In the UK he has been shortlisted for the BBC National Short Story Award and longlisted for the Sunday Times EFG Private Bank Short Story Award. His latest novel, ACTS OF THE ASSASSINS, was shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize in 2015. He is also the author of four books of narrative nonfiction. Formerly Director of The National Academy of Writing in London, he is a Visiting Professor at the University of Tokyo and has a Creative Writing Fellowship at the University of East Anglia.

Richard Beard

Books by Richard Beard

The Day That Went Missing: A Family's Story
by Richard Beard - Memoir, Nonfiction

On a family summer holiday in Cornwall in 1978, Richard and his younger brother, Nicholas, are jumping in the waves. Suddenly, Nicholas is out of his depth. One moment he's there, the next he's gone. Richard and his other brothers don't attend the funeral, and incredibly the family returns immediately to the same cottage --- to complete the holiday, to carry on, in the best British tradition. Their epic act of collective denial writes Nicky out of the family memory. Nearly 40 years later, Richard, an acclaimed novelist, is haunted by the missing piece of his childhood. So he sets out on a painstaking investigation to rebuild Nicky's life, and ultimately to recreate the precise events on the day of the accident.

Lazarus Is Dead
by Richard Beard - Fiction

In the gospels Jesus is described as having only one friend, and when this friend dies, Jesus does something that he does nowhere else in the Bible. He weeps. Novelist Richard Beard begins here. Mixing Biblical sources, historical detail, fascinating references to music, art, and writers as diverse as Kahlil Gibran and Norman Mailor, and abundant reserves of creative invention, Beard gives us his astonishing and amusing take on the greatest story ever told about second chances.