The Uncommon Reader
The sovereign reader ( original English Title: The Uncommon Reader ) is a novella by the English author, playwright, director and actor Alan Bennett. It tells the fictional conversion of the British Queen of the woman of action for the lover of belletristic literature.
The amendment was published on 8 March 2007, first in the English literary magazine London Review of Books. In 2008, she was released in the UK as a book published by Faber & Faber and in German translation by Ingo Herzke the publisher Klaus Wagenbach. She stood in September 2008 at number 3 on the fiction bestseller list of the news magazine Spiegel. In Germany, the novel came out in 2008 in Patmos also as an audio book out, read by Jürgen Thormann. It was in November 2008 on the audiobook leaderboard.
Action
The Queen follows her Corgies, who stormed to the back of Buckingham Palace a bookmobile of the City of Westminster. There she meets the kitchen boy Norman and borrows from a novel by Ivy Courtesy Compton Burnett. When returning the book you meet again in Norman bookmobile and they hired him to displeasure of the court as amanuensis ( secretary ). His task is to recommend her literature and to get books.
The Queen is an intense reader of literary works and uses every opportunity to read, even the carriage ride to the opening of parliament. The simultaneous reading and Wave dominated them become quite good, it just came out of the book to keep below the window edge [ ... ]. It recognizes that a book an explosive device [ is ] to liberate the imagination.
More and more often she brings her subjects, but also guests of state, with the question of their reading in embarrassment. Norman is lured by her private secretary Sir Kevin with a scholarship to study literature at the University of East Anglia and thus removed from the vicinity of the Queen. The Queen takes his disappearance, first of all, and increasingly talks to himself about their reading.
Finally, she begins in her notebook to hold meetings with people, events and own considerations, all knew at that sensible, down to earth tone she recognized more and more as their own style and appreciate. Your behavior and the declining interest of their obligations solve in their environment the worry out of your Majesty was suffering from mental weakness, possibly Alzheimer's. Now thinking about the writing after, asked about Norman's fate and dismisses Sir Kevin after she has seen through its rancor.
On the occasion of her 80th birthday, she invites current and former members of the Privy Council to tea. She talks with her guests about books written monarch. The Prime Minister points out that never had a reigning British monarch had published a book. The Queen contradicts and refers to the leaves from the diary of Queen Victoria and her great-grandmother Victoria on One Duke story of her uncle Edward. The have, however, previously abdicated, notes the Prime Minister. The Queen replied: But ... what do you think, why are you all here?
Reception
The amendment came into German feuilleton with unanimous enthusiasm. The literary critic Sigrid Löffler wrote "The Uncommon Reader" is an amusing double tribute - a tribute to the Queen and a tribute to the reading of books. Sigrid Löffler spoke of a book of subversive wit, and full of brilliant dialogue, a sparkling, witty, secure point Capriccio on the art of reading and an unusual reader [ ... ].
The mirror designated 2008 the history of late called and all the more enthusiastic reader as the most elegant and most ingenious piece of literature - literature that exists in this fall.
As a tabloid piece is rated Jörg Plath for ARTE, albeit an upscale, ennobled by a fine, carefully dosed and not a moment irreverent wit. As a book for lovers of literature as well as for reading muffle. Full of typical British, always slightly self-deprecating humor and full of wonderful quotes - plain and simple and easy it truly recommended 3sat.
Germany Kultur called it a book about the effects of literature and a love letter to reading. It is also a reflection on the sense of duty, on the manipulations make the subordinates of the powerful.
From a cracked [n ] parable about reading wrote the daily newspaper, and Der Tagesspiegel, who described the book as a love letter to the Queen, advised the " uncommon Queen": This booklet they should be able to look at each case from the shelf.
The Swiss daily paper was received on a television documentary about Queen Elizabeth II and wrote: There was an old woman observed, squeezed into countless duties and appointments [ ... ]. In Alan Bennett as light-footed as tiefsinnigem book " The sovereign reader " you meet this queen again. Your environment has not changed, their myriad duties are the same.