Koning, (Angela) Christina 1954-

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KONING, (Angela) Christina 1954-

PERSONAL: Born April 8, 1954, in Kuala Belait, Borneo; daughter of Geert Julius (an engineer) and Angela Vivienne (a teacher; maiden name, Thompson) Koning; married Eamonn Stephen Vincent, May 16, 1981 (divorced, 1994); children: Anna Cordelia, James Connor. Ethnicity: "White (English/Dutch)." Education: Girton College, Cambridge, M.A. (with honors), 1975; attended Newcastle College of Art, 1975-76; doctoral study at University of Edinburgh, 1976-78. Politics: "Left of center." Religion: "Agnostic." Hobbies and other interests: Art, music, travel, gardening.

ADDRESSES: Home and office—London, England. Agent—Derek Johns, A. P. Watt Ltd., 20 John St., London WC1N 2DR, England. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER: Tate Gallery, worked as publications assistant, 1978; Transworld Publishers Ltd., export sales assistant, 1978-81; freelance writer and reviewer. Interbase UK (Internet recruitment agency for journalists), part-time employee. Lecturer at educational institutions, including University of Greenwich, 1993-94, Universidad Católica Andres Bello and Universidad Simon Bolívar, both in Venezuela, 1994, Birkbeck College, London, 1999, 2002-03, Oxford University, University of Greenwich, and American Institute for Foreign Study; judge of writing competitions. Appeared on British television programs, including Espresso, Channel 5, and Woman's Hour, British Broadcasting Corp.

AWARDS, HONORS: Encore Prize, 1999, for Undiscovered Country; travel scholarship, Society of Authors, 2001.

WRITINGS:

A Mild Suicide (novel), Lime Tree, 1992.

(Assistant editor and contributor) The Oxford Guide to Twentieth Century Literature, Oxford University Press (Oxford, England), 1996.

The Good Reading Guide to Children's Books, Bloomsbury (London, England), 1997.

Undiscovered Country (novel), Penguin (London, England), 1998.

Fabulous Time (novel), Penguin (London, England), 2000.

Assistant editor of the anthology New Writing, British Council (London, England). Work represented in anthologies, including A Treasury for Mothers, Michael O'Mara, 1998. Columnist for Guardian, 1987-89. Contributor of articles, stories, and reviews to magazines and newspapers, including Time Out, New Statesman, Women's Review, New Socialist, She, Times (London, England), Observer, Roman Holiday, London for Kids, and You. Books editor, Cosmopolitan and M.

WORK IN PROGRESS: A Slight Return, a novel set in Jamaica; A China Passage, a novella; The Company You Keep, a short story collection.

SIDELIGHTS: Christina Koning told CA: "What motivates me as a writer and interests me as a reader is primarily to do with style. All the writers I admire—James Joyce, F. Scott Fitzgerald, E. M. Forster, Elizabeth Bowen—are stylists first and foremost. I enjoy the insights into the human heart afforded by Iris Murdoch's novels, the highly charged emotions and exotic landscapes of Jean Rhys, and the anarchic humor of Martin Amis. These are writers I go back to time and again; if I have a favorite writer, it's probably Jane Austen. When I was younger, I identified with Lizzie Bennet and Emma Woodhouse; now it's Anne Elliott in Persuasion whose dilemmas interest me more.

"Because my time is so taken up with teaching and journalism, I have to be quite disciplined about my writing. Like most writers, I carry a notebook around with me to jot down ideas and bits of dialogue as they occur. I find I write best in libraries, away from domestic distractions. My second novel, Undiscovered Country, contains a brief description of the famous blue-and-gold domed reading room at the British Museum, where much of the book was written. I used to love the feeling of being surrounded by all that literary history: all those novels and poems and political treatises that had come into being in that hallowed space.

"When I'm starting something new, there's usually the germ of an idea—usually no more than a single image—around which my thoughts focus. With my first novel, A Mild Suicide (set in Edinburgh in 1977), I was haunted by the image of a woman looking out of a window at a man who has just left her; in Undiscovered Country it was a memory of childhood: myself aged about four, sitting on the veranda at my parents' house in Maracaibo, and looking at the light falling through the mosquito screens on the floor. Fabulous Time, my third novel, opens with a woman painting a rose. The artist in question was based on an elderly and very eccentric relative of mine. When we were taken to see her, her house was always a terrible mess, because she was more interested in painting than cleaning. I always knew I would write about her some day.

"The novel A Slight Return came about after I attended a murder trial as an observer. The book is set in Jamaica, where I lived as a child, and combines memories of that time with more contemporary reflections on what it means to be an expatriate. I'm very interested in ideas of exile and 'strangeness.' Perhaps because of my peripatetic childhood (my parents worked for the Shell oil company, and we moved around a lot when I was small) or because I'm half Dutch and half English, I've never felt I really 'belong' to any one country. The part of London where I now live is very ethnically mixed, with people from a number of former British colonies, including Jamaica. In writing A Slight Return, I wanted to explore what it means to belong to two cultures.

"Themes of exile and estrangement are also central to Undiscovered Country. The novel, which is seen through the eyes of Tony, an eleven-year-old girl, focuses on a group of English, Dutch, and American expatriates living and working in the Venezuelan oil fields during the early 1950s. I was struck by the way that people of that era, who had experienced the trauma of World War II, tried to make a new life for themselves and their families in the aftermath of catastrophe. Of course, this didn't always work out; and one of the things that interested me most in writing the novel was the extent to which one can—or cannot—escape the past.

"Fabulous Time, a black comedy set partly in Sussex in 1967 and partly in Shanghai in 1910, also considers the interconnectedness of past and present. I suppose, at its simplest, the novel is about the fact that actions have consequences. It's also about the tricks the heart can play. Everyone in the book is in love with someone who doesn't—or can't—reciprocate these feelings. Even though there are darker things in the book (the plot centers around a plan by two of the characters, Sandy and Ray, to murder Sandy's Aunt Connie for her money) it is also about the triumph of goodness. It was only when I had finished the novel that I realized this, of course. However much I plan the structure, or try and preordain how my characters will behave, they always surprise me in the end. And after all, what would be the point of writing if you knew what you were going to say before you started?"