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Alexander Stuart (aka Alexander Chow-Stuart) is a Los Angeles-based, British-born novelist and screenwriter, whose books have been translated into eight languages and published in the US, Britain, Europe, Israel and throughout the world. His most controversial novel, The War Zone, about a family torn apart by incest, was turned into a multi-award-winning film by Oscar-nominated actor/director Tim Roth.
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The updated and newly revised 20th Anniversary Edition of The War Zone
is now available from Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.com,
Amazon.co.uk, as an Amazon Kindle book
and from other bookstores.
A dark, ironic, emotionally-charged novel about incest,
adolescent fury and parental morality, the novel won Britain's prestigious
Whitbread Prize for Best Novel (now the Costa Book Awards)
when it was first published, only to have the prize retracted amid much
public controversy when one of the judges
politicked behind the scenes.
Dubbed a contemporary Catcher in the Rye by Time Out magazine,
The War Zone was turned into a powerful, multi-award-winning film by
Oscar-nominated actor-director, Tim Roth, which premiered at Sundance
and went on to attract great acclaim at film festivals around the world.
(The film can be streamed from Netflix and is available
on DVD from Amazon.)
The new 20th Anniversary Edition is fully revised and updated
and includes both the original British and American opening chapters,
as well as an Afterword by Tim Roth, who directed the film
of the novel, and my diary of the making of the film.
The introduction also includes a striking pre-publication letter
from Anthony Burgess, author of A Clockwork Orange, along with his
cover quote:
"This is a pungent shocking book, superbly written (sharp,
sensuous, bitter,) which...presents the theme of incest not as a device
of sexual titillation but as a symbol of social breakdown.
I was horrified but seduced from first to last.
The writing is remarkable."
For a fresh perspective on the novel, please read Merrel Davis'
excellent review at his blog, Uncompleted Works.
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Stuart's books include The War Zone (which "won and lost" Britain's
prestigious Whitbread Prize for Best Novel, amid controversy among the
judges), Tribes, Life On Mars (which inspired the television documentary,
The End of America), Five And A Half Times Three (written with
Ann Totterdell, about the death from cancer of their
five-and-a-half-year-old son, Joe Buffalo), and the
children's books, Joe, Jo-Jo And The Monkey Masks and
Henry And The Sea (written with Joe Buffalo Stuart).
In addition to scripting Roth's film of The War Zone, Stuart also served
as executive producer of Nicolas Roeg's Insignificance, which
brought together a fictionalized Marilyn Monroe, Albert Einstein,
Joe DiMaggio and Senator Joe McCarthy, on one
hot and humid night in New York.
Before moving to the United States, Stuart lived in London and
Brighton, England. During the 1990s, he moved to Miami Beach,
where he wrote Life On Mars, and taught screenwriting
at the University of Miami.
In 1997, he was commissioned by the Miami Art Museum to
create an artwork, Filmloop/Fragments, to accompany a sculpture
installation by the Polish artist, Magdalena Abakanowicz.
Stuart now lives in Los Angeles with his wife, Charong Chow,
and their two children, a son born in 2004 and a daughter born in 2009.
On September 22 2006, Stuart was sworn in as an American citizen.
In 2007, he informally adopted the surname Chow-Stuart to celebrate
the fusion of both family names in his children's surname.
Yellow Giraffe Pictures
Yellow Giraffe Pictures, Inc is Alexander Stuart's
loan-out and production company.
I am a proud member of the Writers Guild of America, West,
which provides outstanding healthcare and other benefits to its members.
To contact Alexander Chow-Stuart through this site, please email:
tranquilbuddha@gmail.com
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GQ photograph by Robin Barton.
Extract from The Guardian Questionnaire with Alexander Stuart, compiled by Rosanna Greenstreet:
What is your greatest happiness?
Being home with my wife and children.
What is the trait you most deplore in others?
Hatred.
What do you consider the most overrated virtue?
I'm more interested in vice.
What would your motto be?
Breathe slowly and enjoy.
How would you like to die?
With a sense of bliss.
Do you believe in life after death?
I believe in continuity.
How would you like to be remembered?
With a smile.
What is the most important lesson life has taught you?
To love.
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A new edition of Life On Mars, my offbeat account oflife in Miami and Southern Florida - and the inspiration forthe television documentary, The End of America -will be published in 2010.Carl Hiaasen wrote of the book:"Sharp and canny... You will not find a bettersocial biopsy of Miami than this." |
The Catalan edition of Henry And The Sea
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The Naropa Buddha,
painting by Joan Anderson
and Robert Spellman
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