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John Updike was born in 1932 in Shillington, Pennsylvania. He is the author of over fifty books, including The Poorhouse Fair; the Rabbit series (Rabbit, Run; Rabbit Redux; Rabbit Is Rich; Rabbit At Rest); Marry Me; The Witches of Eastwick, which was made into a major feature film; Memories of the Ford Administration; Brazil; In the Beauty of the Lilies; Toward the End of Time; Gertrude and Claudius; and Seek My Face. He has written a number of collections of short stories, including The Afterlife and Other Stories and Licks of Love, which includes a final Rabbit story, Rabbit Remembered. His essays and criticism first appeared in publications such as the New Yorker and the New York Review of Books, and are now collected into numerous volumes. Collected Poems 1953-1993 brings together almost all of his verse, and a new edition of his Selected Poems is forthcoming from Hamish Hamilton.
His novels, stories, and non-fiction collections have won have won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, the PEN/Faulkner Award, the American Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Rosenthal Award and the Howells Medal. He lived in Massachusetts from 1957 until his death in January 2009.
‘Brilliant and poignant… By his compassion, clarity of insight, and crystal-bright prose, [John Updike] makes Rabbit’s sorrow his and our own.’ The Washington Post
‘The power of the novel comes from a sense, not absolutely unworthy of Thomas Hardy, that the universe hangs over our fates like a great sullen hopeless sky. There is real pain in the book, and a touch of awe.’ Norman Mailer, Esquire
‘A lacerating story of loss and of seeking, written in prose that is charged with emotion but is always held under impeccable control.’ Kansas City Star
‘Rabbit, Run is a novel ruminating on the costs of patriarchal society that is partly limited by the very limits it depicts, but cannot quite overcome. The incompleteness remains, while the novel endures.’ Sarah Churchwell, The Guardian
‘Updike is an unconceited writer who makes grave things accessible. The work achieves a certain grandeur: it makes a perambulation of the walls of a stricken city. It represents the superb conclusion of a historic labour of writing, a roman fleuve undertaken in the age of river-pollution. There is no living writer I would as quickly hasten to read.’ Edward Pearce, London Review of Books
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