Arditti, Michael

PERSONAL:

Born in Cheshire, England. Education: Attended Jesus College, Cambridge.

ADDRESSES:

Home—London, England. Agent—David Higham Associates, 5-8 Lower John St., Golden Sq., London W1F 9HA, England. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Author and playwright; theater critic for British newspapers, including the Evening Standard, Times, Sunday Times, Daily Mail, and Sunday Express.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Mardi Gras Award, for Easter; Harold Hyam Wingate scholar, 2000; Royal Literary Fund fellow, 2001; Hawthornden fellow, 2005; Oppenheim-John Downes Memorial Award, 2003; Arts Council award, 2004.

WRITINGS:

NOVELS, UNLESS OTHERWISE NOTED

The Celibate, Sinclair-Stevenson (London, England), 1993, Soho Press (New York, NY), 1997.

Pagan's Father, Soho Press (New York, NY), 1996, published as Pagan and Her Parents, Sinclair-Stevenson (London, England), 1996.

Easter, Arcadia (London, England), 2000.

Good Clean Fun (stories), Maia Press (London, England), 2004.

Unity: Reflections on the Personalities and Politics behind Wolfram Meier's Legendary Lost Film, Maia Press (London, England), 2005.

A Sea Change, Maia Press (London, England), 2006.

PLAYS

The Volunteer, produced in London, England, 1980.

The Freshman, produced at the Edinburgh Festival, Scotland, 1984.

The Ceremony of Innocence, produced in Liverpool, England, 1989.

Author of a play adaptation of The Factory Lad; also author of four radio plays, Something to Scare Off the Birds, The Morning Room, The Chatelaine, and The Family Hotel, produced between 1985 and 1991. Work represented in anthologies, including The Gay Times Book of Short Stories: The Next Wave, Gay Times Books, 2001. Contributor to the Dictionary of National Biography.

SIDELIGHTS:

Michael Arditti began his career by writing plays and theater reviews before concentrating on fiction. His first novel, The Celibate, is the story of an unnamed gay novice priest who suffers a breakdown during mass and leaves the Church to enter psychoanalysis and take a job as a walking guide in two historic neighborhoods. One is the site of severe devastation during the Great Plague in 1656, and the other is the district where Jack the Ripper killed his female victims in 1888. The young man actualizes his homosexuality with a prostitute named Jack, and loses friends to AIDS, causing him to fear penetration and negotiate for safe sex.

New Statesman & Society contributor Richard Canning wrote: "We quickly learn of the narrator's Jewish ancestry: perhaps now he can understand the guilt of Holocaust survivors; it is rather like Aids. On regaining his faith, he comes to know Christ's suffering: it is like Aids. Working as a guide to Jack the Ripper's London, he realizes that the tawdry sensationalism of his commentary resembles, well, today's media on Aids."

Pagan's Father was published in England as Pagan and Her Parents, and is a story that incorporates the themes of gay parenting, child abuse, adoptive families, and gender reassignment. Leo Young is the gay host of a BBC radio talk show whose roommate, former stripper Candida Mulligan, has died, leaving her five-year-old daughter, Pagan. The novel is narrated by Leo, who is guardian of the child. The identity of her true father is revealed as the story progresses, and in his monologue Leo reveals the nature of his own mother's parenting, which parallels that of Candida's parents, who go to court to gain custody of Pagan. The three-year custody battle is harshest on Pagan, who wants to remain with the gentle and loving Leo, who, although not related by blood, represents the only caring family she has ever known.

A Publishers Weekly reviewer felt that Arditti "traces the ever-evolving relationship between Leo and Pagan with skill and genuine feeling." New Statesman & Society reviewer Victoria Radin wrote: "Somewhere in all these frolics of a delayed adolescent Family Romance straight out of Freud and Bettelheim are many authentically moving passages between Leo and young Pagan, and some original writing on asexual friendships between men and women."

Unity: Reflections on the Personalities and Politics behind Wolfram Meier's Legendary Lost Film takes a documentary approach to the film based on the life of Hitler consort Unity Mitford and a fictional approach to the life of Felicity Benthall, the actress who played her, and who dies before the completion of the film when she is blown up by a bomb during a commemoration of the Israeli athletes murdered during the Munich Olympics.

An Economist reviewer wrote that A Sea Change, Arditti's next novel, "is a fine example of how resonant fiction based on real events can be." The fictional memoir of Karl Frankel-Hirsch begins as the fifteen-year-old son of a wealthy German family travels from Hamburg to Cuba as part of a cargo of nine hundred Jews fleeing Nazi persecution. The passengers are denied entry to Cuba, and the United States declines their access, as well, forcing the ship to turn around and head back to Europe, resulting in the deaths of many. Through Karl the reader learns of adolescent love amidst chaos, but also of the fear of the passengers and barbarism of the Nazi persecutors. The Economist reviewer called A Sea Change "a powerful novel of courage in the face of betrayal."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, September 15, 1996, Whitney Scott, review of Pagan's Father, p. 218.

Economist, October 7, 2006, review of A Sea Change, p. 91.

Entertainment Weekly, September 13, 1996, Vanessa Friedman, review of Pagan's Father, p. 126.

Financial Times, July 16, 2005, Neil Norman, review of Unity: Reflections on the Personalities and Politics behind Wolfram Meier's Legendary Lost Film, p. 32.

Lambda Book Report, November, 1997, Tom Musbach, review of The Celibate, p. 28; July, 2000, review of Pagan's Father, p. 30.

Library Journal, June 15, 1997, Paul Hutchison, review of The Celibate, p. 94.

New Statesman, November 20, 2006, Amanda Craig, review of A Sea Change, p. 65.

New Statesman & Society, February 5, 1993, Richard Canning, review of The Celibate; March 22, 1996, Victoria Radin, review of Pagan and Her Parents, p. 37.

New York Times Book Review, October 19, 1997, Philip Gambone, review of The Celibate.

Publishers Weekly, July 29, 1996, review of Pagan's Father, p. 70; May 5, 1997, review of The Celibate, p. 200.

ONLINE

Guardian Online,http://books.guardian.co.uk/ (June 11, 2005), Melissa Benn, review of Unity.

Michael Arditti Home Page,http://www.michaelarditti.com (April 11, 2007).

Times Online,http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/ (June 4, 2005), Jane Shilling, review of Unity; (June 19, 2005), Adam Lively, review of Unity.