British writer David Lodge, known in particular for the trilogy in which he ironically depicts the academic world, has died at the age of 89, his publishing house announced on Friday.
“His contribution to literary culture has been immense, both through his criticism and through his masterful and emblematic novels which have already become classics,” wrote his editor Liz Foley in a press release.
“We are very proud of his accomplishments and the pleasure that his works of fiction, in particular, have brought to so many people,” his children added in the Penguin Random House statement.
David Lodge was born a few years before the war, on January 28, 1935, a “fairly favorable” time to be born for a future writer in England, he says, in a style typical of his deadpan humor.
He grew up in modest surroundings in the south London suburbs, where university was “unchartered territory”. The writer is a pure product of the meritocracy of England in the 1950s.
Encouraged by his university professors, this talented student entered University College London to study literature.
In 1960 he began teaching English literature at the University of Birmingham, where he spent his entire career.
The same year, he published his first novel Movie buffsfollowed in 1962 by Ginger, you're barmy.
It is with his “campus trilogy” — Change of scenery (1975), A very small world (1984) et Board game (1988) — that he demonstrated the extent of his talent.
Drawing inspiration from his own experience as a professor, and in particular from a long study trip to the United States, he describes with biting irony the university environment through two representatives of this “minority with exacerbated puritanism”, the English Phillip Swallow and the American Morris. Zapp.
The first volume earned him the prestigious Hawthorndern Prize, which recognized him as an author, courted by television, who adapted some of his works. In his bestseller Therapy (1995), he depicts the world of media elites, particularly television elites.
The last part of his autobiography, Succeed, more or lesswas published in France in 2023.
