Of Shadow-Play and Promised Lands: Between America and Israel - Interview with Clive Sinclair

In 1983, Clive Sinclair (b. 1948) was named one of Granta's twenty 'Best of Young British Novelists'. He is the author of four collections of short stories: Hearts of Gold (1979), Bedbugs (1982) and The Lady with the Laptop and Other Stories (1996), which have won – or been short-listed for – literary prizes, including the Jewish Quarterly-Wingate Prize, the Somerset Maugham Award, the Dylan Thomas Award and the PEN Silver Pen. His latest collection, Death & Texas, was published by Peter Halban in February 2014 and long-listed for the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award. As well as those books he has produced ten others, among them the novels Bibliosexuality (1973), Blood Libels (1985), Cosmetic Effects (1989), Augustus Rex (1992) and Meet the Wife (2002), as well as a biography of The Brothers Singer (1983) and a travel book, Diaspora Blues: A View of Israel (1987). Sinclair's idiosyncratic work largely defies easy categorization, yet it is suffused with Jewish concerns; it is arresting, provocative and unapologetic as well as tragically farcical. His is an important voice in British Jewish literature which has always resisted the lure of cheap conformity.