Song of Solomon is a 1977novel by American author Toni Morrison. It follows the life of Macon "Milkman" Dead III, an African-American male living in Michigan, from birth to adulthood.
This book won the National Books Critics Award, was chosen for Oprah Winfrey's popular book club, and was cited by the Swedish Academy in awarding Morrison the 1993 Nobel Prize in literature.[1]

Plot summary
Morrison's protagonist, Macon "Milkman" Dead III, derives his nickname from the fact that he was breastfed during childhood (Macon's age can be inferred as he was wearing pants with elastic instead of a diaper, and that he later forgets the event, suggesting he was still rather young). Milkman's father's employee, Freddie, happens to see him through the window being breastfed by his mother. He quickly gains a reputation for being a "Momma's boy" in direct contrast to his (future) best friend, Guitar, who is motherless and fatherless.
Milkman has two sisters, "First Corinthians" and "Magdelene called Lena." The daughters of the family are named by putting a pin in the Bible, while the eldest son is named after his father. The first Macon Dead's name was the result of an administrative error when Milkman's grandfather had to register subsequent to the end of slavery.
Milkman's mother (Ruth Foster Dead) is the daughter of the town's only black doctor; she makes her husband feel inadequate, and it is clear she idolized her father, Doctor Foster, to the point of obsession. After her father dies, her husband claims to have found her in bed with the dead body, sucking his fingers. Ruth later tells Milkman that she was kneeling at her father's bedside kissing the only part of him that remained unaffected by the illness from which he died. These conflicting stories expose the problems between his parents and show Milkman that "truth" is difficult or impossible to obtain. Macon (Jr.) is often violently aggressive towards Ruth because he believes that she was involved sexually with her father and loved her father more than her own husband. On one occasion, Milkman punches his father after he strikes Milkman's mother, exposing the growing rift between father and son.
In contrast, Macon Dead Jr.'s sister, Pilate, is seen as nurturing—an Earth Mother character. Born without a navel, she is a somewhat mystical character. It is strongly implied that she is Divine—a female Christ-in spite of her name. Macon (Jr.) has not spoken to his sister for years and does not think highly of her. She, like Macon, has had to fend for herself from an early age after their father's murder, but she has dealt with her past in a different way than Macon, who has embraced money as the way to show his love for his father. Pilate has a daughter, Reba, and a granddaughter named Hagar. Hagar falls desperately and obsessively in love with Milkman, and is unable to cope with his rejection, attempting to kill him at least six times.
Hagar is not the only character who attempts to kill Milkman. Guitar, Milkman's erstwhile best friend, tries to kill Milkman more than once after incorrectly suspecting that Milkman has cheated him out of hidden gold, a fortune he planned to use to help his Seven Days group fund their revenge killings in response to killings of blacks.
Searching for the gold near the old family farm in Pennsylvania, Milkman stops at the rotting Butler Mansion, former home of the people who killed his ancestor to claim the farm. Here he meets Circe, an almost supernaturally old ex-slave of the Butlers. She tells Milkman of his family history and this leads him to the town of Shalimar. There he learns his great-grandfather Solomon was said to have escaped slavery by flying back to Africa, leaving behind twenty-one children and his wife Ryna, who goes crazy with loss. Returning home, he learns that Hagar has died of a broken heart. He accompanies Pilate back to Shalimar, where she is accidentally shot and killed by Guitar, who had intended to kill Milkman.
At the end of the novel, Milkman leaps towards Guitar. This leap is ambiguous, it is not explicitly stated that either or both is killed. However it brings the novel full circle from the suicidal "flight" of Robert Smith, the insurance agent, to Milkman's "flight" in which he learns to fly like Pilate.

Themes
The novel's epigraph reads, "The fathers may soar/ And the children may know their names." The importance of names and naming for Morrison's cast of characters lies in a name's ability to intimate or uncover hidden truths about personal identity. In the novel, names take on an active role: they help one acquire self-knowledge, connect with one's history, and might even have the power to change one for the better or worse. Take Hagar, for example: the Oxford English Dictionary cites one obsolete verb form of "hag," which means "to torment or terrify as a hag; to trouble as the nightmare"; are her attempts to murder Milkman then merely a means by which to fulfill the command of her name? She also gives her characters biblical names such as Hagar. In the Bible, Sarah has a handmaiden named Hagar , who bears Abraham –her husband- a son and is then banished from Abraham's family. Similarly, Hagar in “Song of Solomon” is a character who is used by Milkman, but but then also put aside by him, driving her insane.
By and large, Morrison's characters acquire their names in later life. Nicknames, misnomers, mistaken identities—these are the ways in which characters are read and judgements are made about them. These are also the ways in which the characters may judge themselves. Milkman's shame over his nickname, for example, grants the reader insight into his aggressive and unloving relationship with his mother.
A major theme in the novel is Milkman's quest for identity as a black man in the 20th-century United States, as he slowly tries to piece together the history of his ancestors, which he achieves by journeying into his father and aunt's past, searching for his origins. The sources and meanings of names also tie into his larger search for identity.
The novel is written in the third person, but the narrative weaves in and out of different character viewpoints, beliefs, and psychologies. The reader is given insight into Macon and Pilate's early lives together, as well as an understanding of their personal history and of the effects of slavery on the Dead family, including Milkman. The search for identity, the effects of geographical displacement on African Americans, and the effects of distorted love all play out as important themes in the novel. Another major theme is the idea that the individual must find freedom from not only saving himself.
Furthermore, throughout the novel, flight is presented as one of the only ways to achieve freedom in an otherwise stifling world. Although the exact meaning of flight, in both the literal and the figurative sense, changes as the novel progresses, Milkman's fascination with flight remains constant. When Milkman finally decides to "fly" in the end, he proves to the readers that it is one's actions, and not one's name, that make her/his story worth remembering.
Conveyed by his metaphorical relation to a peacock, Milkman is initially a "flightless bird" weighed down by his pride, search for gold and coloured ancestry. However, only when he "surrenders to the air" and frees himself from societal burdens can he truly "fly" in life and soar above prejudices similar to his ancestor, Solomon.
Another major theme presented in the novel is singing as the songs were sung from the beginning to the end of the novel. While Mr. Smith was about to commit suicide, Pilate sang the song "O sugarman done fly...", and the same song was repeated again after Mr. Smith committed the suicide. The song sung by the people of Shalimar guides Milkman in his journey of uncovering his family history. When Hagar dies, Pilate and Reba both sing to relieve their grief.
In the novel, gender inequality was greatly expressed. Men were more powerful and always tend to have control over women in some way: Macon Dead's violence towards Ruth, Milkman's ignorance for Haggar; the only exception was Pilate, whom Milkman described to be a woman that could fly without ever leaving the ground. This can be read both literally or metaphorically. Literally, a bird swooped down and picked up her box with her name inside it and flew away, letting her fly in a sense. Metaphorically, the use of flying, as seen throughout the novel, is an indication that she did something important with her life and made a story for herself.
The role of outsider is also a theme of the novel. When Milkman is a juvenile, he is very much self-absorbed and sees the world only through his father's and Guitar's eyes with appreciation of awe and affection. He hears fascinating stories from his father, but has never experienced any himself. Moreover, he learns from his father and Guitar that to be a man is to either own something or to conduct violence. However, he does not totally understand the whole purpose of their views and is thus not very self-promoted. Nevertheless, Milkman has gone through a character development when he travels north to his old family farm searching for gold. When he hears of the people telling stories of his father and grandfather, he begins to recognize the emptiness of his lust and starts to step out of his own and to see the world through other people's eyes.

(بالإنكليزية: Toni Morrison) روائيةأمريكية-إفريقية مولودة في أوهايو في 18 فبراير1931، فازت بجائزة نوبل في الأدب عام 1993 عن مُجمل أعمالها، وجائزة بوليتزر عن روايتها محبوبة. من رواياتها الأخرى: أكثر العيون زرقة، نشيد سليمان، صولا، وطفل القطران. تُرجمت أعمالها إلى مختلف لغات العالم، ومن بينها العربية.

حياتها المبكرة ومهنتها ولدت توني موريسون في لورين – اوهايو وكانت الطفلة الثانية من بين اربع اطفال في العائلة. كانت موريسون تقرأ باستمرار ومن كتابها المفضلين جين اوستن وليو تولستوي، وكان والدها يروي لها العديد من الحكايات الشعبية عن مجمتمع السود بطرية السرد القصصي والتي ستؤثر لاحقا على أسلوبها في الكتابة. في عام 1949 التحقت موريسون بجامعة هاوارد وفي عام 1953 حصلت على بكلوريوس في الادب الإنكليزي، وفي عام 1955 نالت شهادة الماجستير من جامعة كورنيل.بعد أن نالت الماجستير عملت في جامعة Texas Southern University in Houston, Texas للمدة (1955-1957) ثم عادت لللعمل في جامعة هاوارد ، تزوجت من المهندس المعماري الجامايكي هارولد موريسون في عام 1958 وتطلقت منه عام 1964 بعد أن انجبت منه طفلين بعد الطلاق انتقلت إلى Syracuse ثم إلى New York لتعمل محررة كتب منهجية ثم محررة في المقر الرئيسي لدار النشر راندوم هاوس Random House وهنا لعبت دوري حيوي في دفع ادب السود إلى الواجهة.

مهنة الكتابة
بدأت موريسون كتابة الروايات الخيالية عندما كانت مشتركة مع مجموعة من الكتاب والشعراء في جامعة هاوارد الذين كانوا يلتقون ويناقشون اعمالهم في أحد المرات ذهبت مورسون إلى الاجتماع وهي تحمل قصة قصيرة عن فتاة سوداء تتوق للحصول على عيون زرقاء وقد طورت هذه القصة فيما بعد لتصبح روايتها الأولى التي تحمل عنوان العين الاكثر زرقة نشرتها عام 1970 كتبت موريسون هذه الرواية في الوقت الذي كانت تربي طفليها وتعمل في جامعة هاوارد، في عام 2000 اختيرت هذه الرواية كواحدة من مختارات نادي اوبرا للكتاب. في عام 1975 رشحت روايتها sula التي كتبتها عام 1973 إلى جائزة الكتاب الوطنية، اما روايتها الثالثة نشيد سليمان فقد اختيرت كتاب الشهر وهي أول رواية لكاتب اسود يتم اختيارها بعد رواية الكاتب ريتشارد التي اختيرت عام 1940 وقد حصلت أيضا على جازة النقاد الوطنية. في عام 1987 أصبحت روايتها beloved نقطة حرجة في تاريخ نجاحها عندما فشلت في الفوز بجائزة الكتاب الوطنية وجائزة النقاد الوطنية مما حدا بعدد من الكتاب إلى الاحتجاج ضد اغفال مورسون، ولكن بعد مدة قصيرة فازت هذه الرواية بجائزة Pulitzer Prize for fiction وجائزة الكتاب الأمريكي وفي نفس السنة عملت موريسون كاستاذ زائر في Bard College.في عام 1998 تحولت هذه الرواية إلى فلم يحمل نفس الاسم من بطولة اوبرا وينفري ودان كلوفر، ثم استخدمت موريسون قصة حياة ماركريت كارنر في نص ابرالي الف الموسيقى له الفنان ريتشارد دانيبلور. كما رشحت، The New York Times Book Review هذه الرواية في عام 2006 كأفضل رواية أمريكية نشرت خلال الخمس وعشرون سنة الماضية. في عام 1993 حصلت موريسون على جائزة نوبل للاداب وجاء في كلمة المؤسسة المانحة للجائزة " تميزت روايات موريسون بقوة البصيرة والمضمون الشاعري الذي يمنح الواقع الأمريكي ملامحه الاساسية ". حاليا هي اخر أمريكية حصلت على هذه الجائزة. ساهمت موريسون باثراء واغناء التراث الادبي الأمريكي ولهذا منحتها مؤسسة الكتاب الوطنية في عام 1996 ميدالية المساهمة المتميزة في الاداب الأمريكية. على الرغم من أن رواياتها ركزت على النساء السود الا انها ترفض ان يوصف نتاجها الادبي بانه ادب يختص بالحركة النسوية. بالإضافة إلى رواياتها، ساهمت موريسون مع ابنها Slade الذي يعمل رسام وموسيقي في تاليف كتب للاطفال، وقد توفي Salade في 22 ديسمبر عام 2010.

طوني موريسون
toni morrison حاملة جائزة نوبل للآداب عام 1993 في حوار ٍ معه
ملحق ثقافي
الثلاثاء 24/1/2006
ترجمة واعداد: كمال فوزي الشرابي
تعتبر طوني موريسون رائدة ومناضلةومثقفة لا تفتر عن التفكير والانتاج ولدت الروائية الأمريكية ذات الأصل الافريقيطوني موريسون في مدينة لورين بولاية أوهايو من الولايات المتحدة الأمريكية عام 1931.

Toni Morrison (born Chloe Anthony Wofford on February 18, 1931) is a Nobel Prize and Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist, editor, and professor.
روائية امريكية ولدت عام 1931 وحازت على جائزة نوبل
Her novels are known for their epic themes, vivid dialogue, and richly detailed characters.

Among her best known novels are The Bluest Eye, Song of Solomon and Beloved. She also was commissioned to write the libretto for a new opera, Margaret Garner, first performed in 2005.

Toni Morrison was born in Lorain, Ohio to Ramah (née Willis) and George Wofford. She is the second of four children in a working-class family.
كانت الثانية في الترتيب من عائلة من الطبقة العاملة
As a child, Morrison read constantly; among her favorite authors were Jane Austen and Leo Tolstoy. Morrison's father told her numerous folktales of the black community (a method of storytelling that would later work its way into Morrison's writings).
In 1949 Morrison entered Howard University, where she received a B.A. in English in 1953. She earned a Master of Arts degree in English from Cornell University in 1955, for which she wrote a thesis on suicide in the works of William Faulkner and Virginia Woolf.
كانت رسالة الدكتوراه عن موضوع الانتحار في ادب وليم فولكنير وفرجينيا ولف
After graduation, Morrison became an English instructor at Texas Southern University in Houston, Texas (1955–57), then returned to Howard to teach English. She became a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority.
In 1958 she married Harold Morrison, a Jamaican architect and fellow faculty member at Howard University. They had two children, Harold and Slade, and divorced in 1964.
تزوجت عام 1958 وانجبت طفلين ثم انفصلت عن زوجها عام 1964
After the divorce she moved to Syracuse, New York, where she worked as a textbook editor. A year and a half later, she went to work as an editor at the New York City headquarters of Random House. As an editor, Morrison played a vital role in bringing black literature into the mainstream, editing books by authors such as Toni Cade Bambara, Angela Davis, and Gayl Jones.

Morrison began writing fiction as part of an informal group of poets and writers at Howard who met to discuss their work. She went to one meeting with a short story about a black girl who longed to have blue eyes. She later developed the story as her first novel, The Bluest Eye (1970).
كانت روايتها الاولى عن طفلة امريكية تتمنى لو كان لديها عيون زرقاء
She wrote it while raising two children and teaching at Howard. In 2000 it was chosen as a selection for Oprah's Book Club.
In 1975 her novel Sula (1973) was nominated for the National Book Award. Her third novel, Song of Solomon (1977), brought her national attention. The book was a main selection of the Book-of-the-Month Club, the first novel by a black writer to be so chosen since Richard Wright's Native Son in 1940. It won the National Book Critics Circle Award.
In 1987 Morrison's novel Beloved became a critical success. When the novel failed to win the National Book Award as well as the National Book Critics Circle Award, a number of writers protested over the omission. Shortly afterward, it won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction and the American Book Award. That same year, Morrison took a visiting professorship at Bard College.
Beloved was adapted into the 1998 film of the same name starring Oprah Winfrey and Danny Glover. Morrison later used Margaret Garner's life story again in the libretto for a new opera, Margaret Garner, with music by Richard Danielpour. In May 2006, The New York Times Book Review named Beloved the best American novel published in the previous twenty-five years.
In 1993 Morrison was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. Her citation reads: Toni Morrison, "who in novels characterized by visionary force and poetic import, gives life to an essential aspect of American reality." She is currently the last American to have been awarded the honor. Shortly afterward, a fire destroyed her Rockland County, New York home.
In 1996 the National Endowment for the Humanities selected Morrison for the Jefferson Lecture, the U.S. federal government's highest honor for achievement in the humanities. Morrison's lecture, entitled "The Future of Time: Literature and Diminished Expectations," began with the aphorism, "Time, it seems, has no future." She cautioned against the misuse of history to diminish expectations of the future.
Morrison was honored with the 1996 National Book Foundation's Medal of Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, which is awarded to a writer "who has enriched our literary heritage over a life of service, or a corpus of work."[12]
Although her novels typically concentrate on black women, Morrison does not identify her works as feminist.
تركز في رواياتها على المرأة السوداء ( من اصل افريقي).
She has stated that she thinks "it's off-putting to some readers, who may feel that I'm involved in writing some kind of feminist tract. I don't subscribe to patriarchy, and I don't think it should be substituted with matriarchy. I think it's a question of equitable access, and opening doors to all sorts of things."[
In addition to her novels, Morrison has also co-written books for children with her younger son, Slade Morrison, who worked as a painter and musician. Slade died on December 22, 2010, aged 45.
مات ابنها سليد عام 2010 عن عمر 45 سنه
In writing about the impeachment in 1998, Morrison wrote that, since Whitewater, Bill Clinton had been mistreated because of his "Blackness":
Years ago, in the middle of the Whitewater investigation, one heard the first murmurs: white skin notwithstanding, this is our first black President. Blacker than any actual black person who could ever be elected in our children’s lifetime. After all, Clinton displays almost every trope of blackness: single-parent household, born poor, working-class, saxophone-playing, McDonald’s-and-junk-food-loving boy from Arkansas.
كتبت في العام 1998 بان كلينتون كان رئيس اسود بل اكثر سودا من اي رئيس اسود يمكن ان ينتخب وذلك لانه مثل السود عاش من دون اب وولد فقيرا ومن طبقة عامله ، يعزف الساسكفون وكان يحب الاكل من مطعم مكدولنالد والطعام السريع من ولاية اركنساس

توني موريسون
-روائية أمريكية-إفريقية مولودة في أوهايو في 18 فبراير 1931، فازت بجائزة نوبل في الأدب عام 1993 عن مُجمل أعمالها، وجائزة بوليتزر عن روايتها محبوبة. من رواياتها الأخرى: أكثر العيون زرقة، نشيد سليمان، صولا، وطفل القطران. تُرجمت أعمالها إلى مختلف لغات العالم، ومن بينها العربية.
-ولدت توني موريسون في لورين – اوهايو وكانت الطفلة الثانية من بين اربع اطفال في العائلة.
-تزوجت من المهندس المعماري الجامايكي هارولد موريسون في عام 1958 وتطلقت منه عام 1964 بعد أن انجبت منه طفلين بعد الطلاق انتقلت إلى Syracuse ثم إلى New York لتعمل محررة كتب منهجية ثم محررة في المقر الرئيسي لدار النشر راندوم هاوس Random House وهنا لعبت دوري حيوي في دفع ادب السود إلى الواجهة.
-بدأت موريسون كتابة الروايات الخيالية عندما كانت مشتركة مع مجموعة من الكتاب والشعراء في جامعة هاوارد الذين كانوا يلتقون ويناقشون اعمالهم في أحد المرات ذهبت مورسون إلى الاجتماع وهي تحمل قصة قصيرة عن فتاة سوداء تتوق للحصول على عيون زرقاء وقد طورت هذه القصة فيما بعد لتصبح روايتها الأولى التي تحمل عنوان العين الاكثر زرقة نشرتها عام 1970 كتبت موريسون هذه الرواية في الوقت الذي كانت تربي طفليها وتعمل في جامعة هاوارد.

-كانت رسالة الدكتوراه عن موضوع الانتحار في ادب وليم فولكنير وفرجينيا ولف
-تزوجت عام 1958 وانجبت طفلين ثم انفصلت عن زوجها عام 1964
-كانت روايتها الاولى عن طفلة امريكية تتمنى لو كان لديها عيون زرقاء
-تركز في رواياتها على المرأة السوداء ( من اصل افريقي).
- مات ابنها سليد عام 2010 عن عمر 45 سنه
-كتبت في العام 1998 بان كلينتون كان رئيس اسود بل اكثر سودا من اي رئيس اسود يمكن ان ينتخب وذلك لانه مثل السود عاش من دون اب وولد فقيرا ومن طبقة عامله ، يعزف الساسكفون وكان يحب الاكل من مطعم مكدولنالد والطعام السريع من ولاية اركنساس >

والان مع سر الروعة في رواية:

80 - انفجار قارورة المصنع، للمؤلف بيريل بينبريدج.

The Bottle Factory Outing is a 1974 novel written by Beryl Bainbridge, it was shortlisted for the Booker Prize that year and won the Guardian Fiction Prize. It is also listed as one of the 100 greatest novels of all time by Robert McCrum of The Observer.

The book was inspired by Beryl Bainbridge's own experiences working in a bottling factory after her divorce in 1959.

الحياة / لندن - مودي بيطار
هل تنصف صحوات التكريم بعد الوفاة موضوعها، أم إنها تعزّز انكشاف عالم الجوائز بعدله وغبنه، مساوماته ونزواته؟ بين 1973 و1998 رشّحت الكاتبة البريطانية بيريل بينبريدج خمس مرات لجائزة بوكر التي عصتها كل مرة. الصيف الماضي رحلت «إشبينة بوكر»، التي لم تحظَ يوماً بعرسها، عن خمس وسبعين سنةً، وها هي تكرّم بعد ثمانية أشهر بجائزة خاصة دعيت مان بوكر لأفضل إنتاج لبيريل. لم يفطن أسياد الجوائز الى احتمال رحيلها بمرض قاسٍ كالسرطان، وضرورة تكريمها شخصياً، لكن إيون تريوين، المدير الأدبي لمان بوكر، أحبّ أن يؤمن بحضورها على نحو ما. «آمل في أن تكون بيريل، أين ما كانت، تمجّ من سيجارتها وترشف من كأسها وتقول: فعلتها».

تنافست روايات بينبريدج الخمس التي رشّحت لبوكر، وفازت «ماستر جورجي» بالتصويت الشعبي متغلبة على «كل لنفسه» بحفنة أصوات. قال تريوين إنها كانت أكبر كتّاب جيلها ممن لم يحصلوا على الجائزة، ورأى الحجم الصغير لكتبها من أسباب الإقبال عليها، ممتدحاً مرحها القاتم، وقدرتها الحكائية ورسمها الشخصيات ببراعة. الكاتبة نفسها ذكرت في 2008 أنها اهتمّت بالفوز بقوة في المرة الرابعة في 1996 عن «كل لنفسه»، وظنّت أنها ستفعل لكنها صدمت حين كوفئ غراهام سويفت عن «الطلبات الأخيرة». في 1998 رشّحت عن «ماستر جورجي» وخسرت مجدّداً أمام «أمستردام» لإيان ماكيوان، على أن روايتي سويفت وماكيوان عجزتا عن جذب القرّاء حتى بعد فوزهما. تساءل البعض ما إذا كان الحجم الصغير لكتبها منع فوزها بأكبر الجوائز الأدبية البريطانية، لكنها خسرت مع «الخياطة» و «نزهة مصنع القناني» في 1973 و1974 أمام روايتين قصيرتين هما «عطلة» لستانلي ميدلتن و «الصياني» لنادين غورديمر. اللورد هيرد، وزير الخارجية السابق، الذي رأس اللجنة الحكم في 1998 رأى الجائزة الخاصة ببينبريدج فكرة جيدة وإن لم تكن منطقية، وقال إن كلاً من «ماستر جورجي» و «أمستردام» لم تكونا أفضل أعمال مؤلفيهما.

استوحت بينبريدج فكرة «ماستر جورجي» من صورة فوتوغرافية لميناء سيباستوبول الأوكراني الذي رسا فيه أسطول البحر الأسود، وارتفعت قربه مبانٍ شاهقة فكّرت حين رأتها أنها مبنية على عظام. أعدّت للرواية بقراءة الكتب عن حرب القرم بين روسيا وتحالف بريطانيا وفرنسا وسردينيا وتركيا في أواسط القرن التاسع عشر. كانت الحرب الأولى التي غطّتها الصور الفوتوغرافية، وتوفي أكثر من ثلاثة أرباع ضحاياها بالكوليرا والديزنتاريا (الزحار) والسفلس والتصقع. درست بينبريدج الصور، واستندت اليها في نسج القصة وبناء الشخصيات. ترصد الرواية أسرة هاردي عبر ثلاثة أصوات: ميرتل اليتيمة التي تؤويها الأسرة وتغمرها بالحب الى أن تقتني كلباً. بومبي جونز، ابن الشارع الذي ينفث النار ويتحوّل متمرناً على فن التصوير الجديد لدى جورج هاردي. والدكتور بوتر، عالم طبقات الأرض وعاشق الأبهة الذي يفصّل تشكّل حجر الكلس في السهول. يمثل بومبي الشخصية الديكنزية التي تحقّق النجاح تاركة الفقر والشارع خلفها، وهو يتهم جورجي بالتحرش به تحت تأثير الكحول، لكن الطبيب يرد الاتهام للفتى بمثله.

يبدأ كل فصل بصورة وصوت مختلف يلقي ضوءاً على جورج، الجراح المدمن على الكحول الذي يفضّل الرجال على النساء ويخفي مثليته. يهوى التصوير، ويحس بالصقيع تحت قميصه القطني الأبيض حين يلتقط صورة ميرتل قرب جثة والده. تتلبّد صوره بسرعة ويطغى عليها السواد بعد التقاطها بقليل. تعشقه أخته الأمية، وتخدم الأسرة لكنه لا يهتم بها وإن نام معها لينجب بعد زواج لم يثمر. تبدو حزينة باستمرار، لكنها تقول إن ظاهرها يخالف حقيقة سعادتها الداخلية. تساعد جورجي على إخفاء السبب الحقيقي لوفاة والده، وترافقه مع بومبي والدكتور بوتر الى القرم. تلقّبه «ماستر جورجي» لكن صورته المحترمة النزيهة قناع لأب وعاشق بارد، مدمن، يتحول طبيباً شجاعاً في شبه الجزيرة الروسية.

يترك الأربعة شوارع ليفربول الباردة، غرب البلاد، الى القسطنطينية اللاهبة حيث يقصدون الأوبرا، ويتورطون في شجار بعد التحرش بميرتل. تبدو رحلتهم الى القسطنطينية بحقائبهم الكثيرة أشبه بعطلة عائلية، لكن أهوال الحرب تفرض نفسها بسرعة على وعيهم. تسجّل الكاتبة لقطات موجعة بينها قتيلان راكعان تشابكت أيديهما، وانسحاب الدكتور بوتر من فظائع الحرب الى الكتب والجنون. في الرواية مقطع عن ولادة عنزة كانت الكاتبة شهدتها حقاً في مصر. أمضت فيها عطلة مع أصدقاء، وليلة رأس السنة شاهدوا امرأة تخبز في قرية وقربها عنزة تلد.

بدأت بينبريدج ممثلة، ثم غيّرت اتجاهها وكتبت عشرين رواية، وسيناريوات أفلام ومسلسلات تلفزيونية. كتبت دائماً عن حياتها، وقالت إنها أضافت جريمة أو ميتة في النهاية ليبدو العمل أدبياً». إذا قفزت وابتكرت شخصية ليست أنا فلا بأس بذلك، لكنني لا أفعل ذلك. أشعر أنني بعيدة ومنفصلة عنها، وهذا ما يقلقني». لم تؤمن بالمخيلة، ورأتها مجرد تراكم: «تستطيع القول إنها لقطات عقلية لأشياء نستوعبها منذ الولادة. أصوات خافتة تسمعها، كلمات لا تفهمها، أغانٍ، أشياء قرأتها، مقاطع سينمائية، مناظر من القطار، هذا هو الخيال».

ظنّت طويلاً أن الكتابة تنبع من الطاقة الجنسية، وأنها لن تتمكّن من الكتابة إذا لم ترتبط بعلاقات جسدية. في 2002 أشارت في مقابلة مع ملحق «ذا صانداي تايمز» الى كثرة «آباء الأحد» في الشارع الذي سكنته. كثيرات من نسائه كن مطلّقات، ومرّ رجال على دراجاتهم تعتقد أنهم كانوا من الطبقة الوسطى، أبدوا إعجابهم بأناقة السيدات فدعونهم الى شرب فنجان قهوة أدى الى علاقات عابرة وجعلهم «آباء الأحد». كانت طفولتها مرّة، وتظاهرت بأنها مصابة بالسل لكي تبقى في البيت وتحمي والدتها من غضب والدها السريع، العنيف. ستيلا تفعل الشيء نفسه في روايتها «مغامرة كبيرة للغاية» التي تناولت فرقة مسرحية، وحوّلت فيلماً من بطولة آلان ريكمان وهيو غرانت. في «وليم العذب» استرجعت علاقتها الأليمة مع والد ابنتها الثالثة «الجذاب العقيم» الذي خرج ليحضر كتاباً من سيارته ولم يعد. كانت أمها إحدى شخصيات الرواية، وهي لقّبت بالدوقة لولعها بالمجوهرات والقبعات ومعاطف الفرو. ارتدت بذلات رجالية وعمامات في الحرب، وأحرجت ابنتها التي رغبت في الهروب من كل ذلك. لا عجب أن حياتها كانت ركيزة أدبها.
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Dame Beryl Margaret Bainbridge, DBE (21 November 1932 – 2 July 2010 was an English author from Liverpool.
روائية انجليزية ولدت عام 1932
She was primarily known for her psychological novels, often set amongst the English working classes.
عرفت برواياتها التي تعالج مواضيع نفسية
Bainbridge won the Whitbread Awards prize for best novel in 1977 and 1996; she was nominated five times for the Booker Prize. She was described in 2007 as "a national treasure". In 2008, The Times newspaper named Bainbridge among their list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945".
Biography
Beryl Bainbridge was born in Liverpool and raised in nearby Formby. Her parents were Richard Bainbridge and Winifred Baines. Although she gave her date of birth in Who's Who and elsewhere as 21 November 1934, she was born in 1932 and her birth was registered in the first quarter of 1933. When German former prisoner of war Harry Arno Franz wrote to her in November 1947, he mentioned her 15th birthday.
قالت ان عيد ميلادها في 21/11/1934 لكن من المعروف انها ولدت عام 1932 وتاريخ ميلادها سجل في الربع الاول من العام 1933
She enjoyed writing, and by the age of 10 she was keeping a diary. She had elocution lessons and, when she was 11, appeared on the Northern Children's Hour radio show, alongside Billie Whitelaw and Judith Chalmers. Bainbridge was expelled from Merchant Taylors' Girls' School (Crosby) because she was caught with a "dirty rhyme" (as she later described it), written by someone else, in her gymslip pocket
طردت من المدرسة
She then went on to study at Cone-Ripman School, Tring, Hertfordshire (now:Tring Park School for the Performing Arts, where she found she was good at history, English and art. The summer she left school, she fell in love with a former German POW who was waiting to be repatriated. For the next six years, the couple corresponded and tried to get permission for the German man to return to Britain so that they could be married. But permission was denied and the relationship ended in 1953.
وقع في غرام محارب الماني وظلت تكتب له لمدة ستة سنوات وهي تحاول ادخاله الى بريطانيا للزواج لكن كل محاولاتها فشلت وانتهت العلاقة عام 1943
In the following year (1954), Beryl married artist Austin Davies. The two divorced soon after, leaving Bainbridge a single mother of two children.
تزوجت في العام 1954 من فنان اسمه اوسن ديفس وتركها مع طفلين
She later had a third child by Alan Sharp, the actress Rudi Davies.
انجبت لاحقا طفل ثالث من الن شارب
In 1958, she attempted suicide by putting her head in a gas oven.
عام 1958 حاولت الانتحار بوبضع رأسها في فرن غاز
Bainbridge spent her early years working as an actress, and she appeared in one 1961 episode of the soap opera Coronation Street playing an anti-nuclear protester.
To help fill her time, Bainbridge began to write, primarily based on incidents from her childhood.
لاشغال نفسها في اوقات الفراغ بدات تكتب خاصة عن مواضيع مرت بها في طفولتها
Her first novel, Harriet Said..., was rejected by several publishers, one of whom found the central characters "repulsive almost beyond belief".
رفض الناشرون طباعة روايتها الاولى لانهم وجدوا البطلة بغيضه بشكل لا يطاق
It was eventually published in 1972, four years after her third novel (Another Part of the Wood). Her second and third novels were published (1967/68) and were received well by critics although they failed to earn much money. Seven more novels were written and published during the 1970s, of which the fifth, Injury Time, was awarded the Whitbread prize for best novel in 1977.
In the late 1970s, she wrote a screenplay based on her novel Sweet William. The movie Sweet William, starring Sam Waterston, was released in 1979.
From 1980 onwards, eight more novels appeared. The 1989 novel, An Awfully Big Adventure was adapted into a film in 1995 starring Alan Rickman and Hugh Grant.
In the 1990s, Bainbridge turned to historical fiction. These novels continued to be popular with critics, but this time, were also commercially successful. Among her historical fiction novels are Every Man for Himself, about the 1912 Titanic disaster, for which Bainbridge won the 1996 Whitbread Awards prize for best novel, and Master Georgie, set during the Crimean War, for which she won the 1998 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction. Her final novel, According to Queeney, is a fictionalized account of the last years of the life of Samuel Johnson as seen through the eyes of Queeney Thrale, eldest daughter of Henry and Hester Thrale; it received wide acclaim.[
From the 1990s, Bainbridge also served as a theatre critic for the monthly magazine The Oldie. Her reviews rarely contained negative content, and were usually published after the play had closed.[8]

In 2003, Bainbridge's grandson Charlie Russell began filming a documentary, Beryl's Last Year, about her life. The documentary detailed her upbringing and her attempts to write a novel, Dear Brutus (which later became The Girl in the Polka Dot Dress); it was broadcast in the United Kingdom on 2 June 2007 on BBC Four.
In 2009, Beryl Bainbridge donated the short story Goodnight Children, Everywhere to Oxfam's Ox-Tales project, four collections of UK stories written by 38 authors. Her story was published in the 'Air' collection. Bainbridge was the patron of the People's Book Prize.
Bainbridge was still working on The Girl in the Polka Dot Dress at the time of her death. The novel, which was based on a real-life journey Bainbridge made across America in 1968, is about the mystery girl reputed to have been involved in the assassination of Robert Kennedy. The novel was edited for publication by Brendan King and published in May 2011 by Little, Brown.

Bainbridge died on 2 July 2010, aged 77 (born 21 November 1932), in a London hospital after her cancer recurred.Some reports say 75 years old due to confusion over her birth year.
توفيت عام في مستشفى في لندن2010

· A Weekend with Claude (1967)
· Another Part of the Wood (1968)
· Harriet Said... (1972)
· The Dressmaker (US title The Secret Glass) (1973) – Shortlisted for Booker Prize
· The Bottle Factory Outing (1974) – Shortlisted for Booker Prize, won the Guardian Fiction Prize
· Sweet William (1975)
· A Quiet Life (1976)
· Injury Time (1977)
· Young Adolf (1978)
· Another Part of the Wood (revised edn) (1979)
· Winter Garden (1980)
· A Weekend with Claude (revised edn) (1981)
· Watson's Apology (1984)
· Filthy Lucre (written as a teenager in 1946 but published 1986)
· An Awfully Big Adventure (1989) – Shortlisted for Booker Prize
· The Birthday Boys (1991)
· Every Man for Himself (1996) – Shortlisted for Booker Prize
· Master Georgie (1998) – Shortlisted for Booker Prize
· According to Queeney (2001)
· The Girl in the Polka-dot Dress (2011)

· Mum and Mr Armitage (1985)
· Collected Stories (1994)
· Northern Stories Vol. 5 with David Pownall ISBN-13: 9780946407972 (1994)

· English Journey, or The Road to Milton Keynes (1984)
· Forever England: North and South (1987)
· Something Happened Yesterday (1993)
· Front Row: Evenings at the Theatre (2005)

Having published ten novels in thirteen years, primarily to "tell her story," Beryl Bainbridge has good reason to view her literary career with satisfaction. An unassuming and deferential person, Bainbridge is a spartan writer whose wit, humor, and originality have won her a loyal, ever-growing audience in England and abroad.
Bainbridge initially achieved recognition as a writer of macabre thrillers. More recently, however, her "little" novels have received more serious critical attention for their economical, elegant craft and for their oddly angled, shockingly funny portraits of harried, lower-middle-class people caught in a world that, according to one of them, is "menacing and full of alarms.
تدور رواياتها حول اشخاص من الطبقة الوسطى الدنيا وتعالج مواضيع المخاطر والتهديدات التي تواجه الناس
On 21 November 1933, in Liverpool, England, Beryl Margaret Bainbridge was born to Winifred Baines and Richard Bainbridge. When she was six months old, she moved with her parents and six-year-old brother to a small, semidetached house in Thornby, on the seacoast about twelve miles from Liverpool.
عندما كانت في سن ستة اشهر انتقلت العائلة الى بيت اصغر
In her Who's Who entry Dame Beryl Bainbridge described herself as "actress, writer," a curious order of listing for someone who won so much acclaim as a novelist.
She had been in rep in the late 1950s and early '60s, and appeared as the leftish, ban-the-bomb girlfriend of Ken Barlow in Coronation Street, having started her acting career in the BBC's "Children's Hour" in Manchester, where her co-stars included Billie Whitelaw and Tony Warren, the creator of Coronation Street. She also wrote a good deal of journalism, and was a valued theatre critic for The Oldie. Her good friend Michael Holroyd says, "A really original voice, Beryl was a genuinely serious comic writer, all of whose books end in tragedy."
كاتبه كوميدية تنتهي كتبها جميعها بمآسي
Her novels fall into two distinct categories. Before the 1990s she drew chiefly on what Holroyd calls "her autobiographical capital," novels she herself said were written in order "to make sense of my upbringing... to discover what was going on in my family."
تقول اتنها كتبت روايتها الاولى بناء على تجارب حياتها الشخصية وذلك لفهم الطريقة التي نشأت عليها وللتعرف على الذي كان يعتري العائلة
The subjects were her Liverpool childhood, her time on the stage and her life in the scruffierparts of Camden Town. The emblematic title from this period was her 1974 The Bottle Factory Outing, where a murder happens during the staff outing. It was autobiographical: Dame Beryl had indeed worked on a bottle-labelling line and her mother-in-law, she told Nicholas Wroe in 2002, really "did fire a shotgun at her, blasting holes in the wall."
كانت المواضيع تعالج ما واجهته في طفولتها في لفربول ومشاركاتها على المسرح وحياتها الصعبة في ميدة كامدن واكثر هذه الروايات معالجة لاحداث حياتها هي رائعتها هنا وتقول انها قد تعرضت لاطلاق نار من قبل ام زوجها احدثت الطلاقات
She began to win prizes, culminating in 2003 in the seriously rich biennial David Cohen prize for literature, but never the Booker, for which she was short-listed five times.
Once she'd used up this "capital," she turned to history, writing about Scott of the Antarctic, the Titanic, the Crimean War and Dr Johnson. She wrote eighteen novels; the later ones sold better than the earlier ones, and she began to be financially comfortable. Her acting skills were now used solely on the literary festival circuit, where her readings from her own books were cherished by festival director. She didn't cut herself odd from drama, though, as in the '70s and '80s she wrote half a dozen TV and stage plays.
Beryl Bainbridge was born in 1934 in Liverpool into a family in tense circumstances, owing to the discrepancy between her mother, Winifred Baines, who had been sent to a finishing school in Belgium, and her mercurial, often bad-tempered father, Richard Bainbridge, a self-made man who had left school at the age of 10 and was bankrupt by the time his daughter was born.
ولدت الكاتبة هنا عام 1934 في لفربول لعائلة في وضع صعب بسب التناقض بين الام التي كانت قد ارسلت لتنهي دراستها في بلجيكيا والاب الذي انقطع عن المدرسة في سن العاشرة وكان في الغالب عصبي المزاج وقد تعرض للافلاس في تزامن مع ولادة ابنته
There was, somehow, still a bit of money about, and the family lived in genteel Formby with its collection of golf clubs. Her father, "who did sums on the back of a brown envelope and whose office was the Kardomah Café," had put some of the money in Beryl's name, and she remembered as a child signing cheques. She and her brother Ian were sent to fee-paying schools (hers the Merchant Taylors' School, Liverpool) and when she was expelled, aged 14, from her day-school, for an incident that involved a copied-out rude limerick, she was sent to board at the Cone-Ripman stage school in the Rothschild mansion at Tring.
بعد طردها من المدرسة بسبب حادث اتهمت فيه برسم صورة مخلة للادب ارسلت لمدرسة داخليه وهي في سن الرابعة عشرة
At school she was good at history, English and art (she continued to paint all her life and made a painting to mark each of her books); but she was known as "Basher" Bainbridge, as she got into a lot of fights.
دخلت في عراكات كثيرة
"I wasn't undisciplined," she told Wroe, "but I think I was pretty outspoken and my mother very sensibly realised that I was a show-off. But I had to be, with the circumstances at home – that's how I kept the peace. So because of this she got me into "Children's Hour."
She got involved with a Communist family and joined the Young Communist League, which her left-wing father tolerated until, at a Paul Robeson concert, "I got hit on my shoulder by mistake with a police truncheon." She was a founder member of Charter 88, supported Ken Livingstone for Mayor of London and was a life-long Labour voter, though in 2002 she said, "I do find most politics a bit ridiculous now."
انضمت للحزب الشيوعي وتعرضت لاصابة في كتفها في احد الاحتفالات ثم تحولت لحزب العمل
After a year at Tring she acted in rep in Liverpool (the subject of An Awfully Big Adventure, 1989) and Dundee and was seldom out of work for the next six years. In Dundee she showed that she was a natural actress, didn't need much rehearsal, and began to cultivate her bohemian side, wearing an old Burberry coat. She also became a Catholic. "I tried to be Jewish first" she told Wroe, "but they wouldn't have me."
حاولت ان اتحول الى اليهودية ولكنهم رفضوني
Though influenced by Greene and Waugh, she became disaffected when "the whole church went bananas and you could do what you liked... I wanted hell fire and all that. I occasionally still go to mass and I like the ritual, but I have read so many medical and scientific books that the idea of God in the bright blue sky is now difficult."
Her childhood was decidedly unhappy; her class-conscious mother was discontented with her working-class husband, who was moody, dictatorial, and bad-tempered, and the couple often clashed.
كانت طفولتها غير سعيدة وكانت امها تتعارك مع والدها الذي كان دكتاتوري وشيء الطباع والمزاج
However, she ran away to London the next year.
هربت من المدرسة الداخلية وهي في سن الخامسة عشرة الى لندن
After her divorce from Davies in 1959, Bainbridge held various jobs, including a stint in a wine bottling company, which inspired The Bottle Factory Outing.
بعد طلاقها عام 1959 عملت في مصنع لتعبة الخمر