After and Making Mistakes

Josipovici Gabriel

"After" is haunted by a traumatic memory. A woman re-enters the life of a man after fifteen years – for vengeance? for reconciliation? Or is her return only imagined? Gabriel Josipovici's taut novel draws the reader deep into a relationship, the volatile mix of guilt, memory and desire. Tension builds to a violent climax that shatters illusion.

"Making Mistakes" explores the ironies of relationships more playfully. In a reworking of Mozart's Cosi fan tutte, two couples change partners – and change again – with the connivance of a modern Don Alfonso and his Despina. The cost to the couples of discovering their true desires is high; as in Mozart, things end happily (at least for the moment). The lovers learn that one does not make mistakes, one makes choices.

Both novels reveal Josipovici's celebrated wit and precision, character and narrative revealed through dialogue. Through tense eroticism and sparkling comedy, each explores complexities of twenty-first-century life.

About the Author

Gabriel Josipovici was born in Nice in 1940 of Russo-Italian, Romano-Levantine parents. He lived in Egypt from 1945 to 1956, when he came to Britain. He read English at St Edmund Hall, Oxford, graduating with a First in 1961. From 1963 to 1998 he taught at the University of Sussex. He is the author of sixteen novels, three volumes of short stories, eight critical works, and numerous stage and radio plays, and is a regular contributor to the Times Literary Supplement. His plays have been performed throughout Britain and on radio in Britain, France and Germany, and his work has been translated into the major European languages and Arabic. In 2001 he published "A Life", a biographical memoir of his mother, the translator and poet Sacha Rabinovitch (London Magazine editions). His most recent works are "Two Novels: After and Making Mistakes" (Carcanet), "What Ever Happened to Modernism?" (Yale University Press) and "Heart's Wings" (Carcanet, 2010).

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