Эдвард Ратерфорд: Писатель-летописец эпох и судеб

English writer

Edward Rutherfurd is a pen name for Francis Edward Wintle After graduating he worked in political research, bookselling and publishing. Sarum was published in 1987 and became an instant international best seller, remaining for 23 weeks on the New York Times Bestseller List. Since then he produced seven more New York Times best sellers: Russka, a novel of Russia; London; The Forest, set in England's New Forest which lies close by Sarum; two novels, Dublin: Foundation (The Princes of Ireland) and Ireland: Awakening (The Rebels of Ireland), which cover the story of Ireland from the time just before Saint Patrick to the twentieth century; New York; Paris; and China. His books have sold more than fifteen million copies and been translated into twenty languages. Rutherfurd settled near Dublin, Ireland in the early 1990s, but currently divides his time between Europe and North America.

Rutherfurd invents four to six fictional families and tells the stories of their descendants. Using this framework, he chronicles the history of a place, often from the beginning of civilisation to modern times – a kind of historical fiction inspired by the work of James Michener. Rutherfurd's novels are generally at least 500 pages in length and sometimes more than 1,000. Divided into a number of parts, each chapter represents a different era in the place where the novel is set. There is usually an extensive family tree in the introduction, with each generational line matching the corresponding chapters.