Andrew O'Hagan

Andrew O'Hagan, FRSL (born 1968)[1] is a Scottish novelist and non-fiction author. He is also an Editor-at-Large of London Review of Books and Esquire Magazine. O'Hagan is currently the Visiting Professor of Writing at King's College London.[2]

Andrew O'Hagan
Andrew O'Hagan in 2009
Born1968 (age 52–53)
Glasgow, Scotland, UK
OccupationNovelist, Essayist
NationalityBritish
Alma materUniversity of Strathclyde
GenreFiction, Non-fiction, Essay, Play

Three of O'Hagan's novels have been nominated for the Booker Prize for Fiction. He was selected by the literary magazine Granta[3] for inclusion in their 2003 list of the top 20 young British novelists. His novels have been translated into 15 languages. His essays, reports and stories have appeared in London Review of Books, New York Review of Books, Granta, The Guardian and The New Yorker.[4]

Early life

O'Hagan was born in Glasgow, and grew up in Kilwinning, North Ayrshire. He is of Irish Catholic descent and attended St Michael's Academy in Kilwinning before studying at the University of Strathclyde.[5]

Writings

In 1991, O'Hagan joined the staff of the London Review of Books, where he worked for four years.[6] In 1995, he published his first book, The Missing, which crossed genres by exploring the lives of people who have gone missing in Britain and the families left behind. The Missing was shortlisted for three literary awards. In 1999, O'Hagan's debut novel, Our Fathers was nominated for several awards, including the Booker Prize, the Whitbread First Novel Award and the International Dublin Literary Award. It won the Winifred Holtby Prize for Fiction.

In 2003, his next novel Personality, which has close similarities to the life of Lena Zavaroni, won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction. That same year, O'Hagan won the E. M. Forster Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.[7]

In 2006, his third novel, Be Near Me, was published by Faber and Faber and long-listed for that year's Booker Prize. It went on to win the Los Angeles Times's 2007 Prize for Fiction.[8] In 2008, he edited a new selection of Robert Burns's poems for Canongate Books, published as A Night Out with Robert Burns. A copy was lodged in every secondary school in Scotland. Following on from this, he wrote and presented a three-part film on Burns for the BBC, The World According to Robert Burns, first on 5 January 2009. In January 2011, Scotland on Sunday gave away 80,000 copies of the book. Also in 2008, Faber & Faber published O'Hagan's first non-fiction collection, The Atlantic Ocean: Essays on Britain and America, which was shortlisted for the 2008 Saltire Book of the Year Award.[9]

His 2010 novel, The Life and Opinions of Maf the Dog, and of His Friend Marilyn Monroe,[10] is told in the voice of a Scottish Maltese poodle ("Maf"), the name of the real dog given by Frank Sinatra to Marilyn Monroe in 1960. It was published by Faber & Faber in May 2010 and won O'Hagan a Glenfiddich Spirit of Scotland Award.

In March 2012, it was announced that O'Hagan is working on a theatrical production about the crisis in British newspapers, entitled Enquirer with the National Theatre of Scotland.[11]

In 2015, O'Hagan published his fifth novel The Illuminations: A Novel, which was longlisted for the Booker Prize.[12]

In June 2016, the London Review of Books published a 35,612-word essay by O'Hagan, titled "The Satoshi Affair: Andrew O'Hagan on the many lives of Satoshi Nakamoto", which followed the events surrounding programmer Craig Wright's claim to be bitcoin founder, Satoshi Nakomoto.[13] In the article, O'Hagan, describes how he was approached by Wright and nTrust, a group that he was associated with, in order to cover the exposure of Craig Wright's identity as Satoshi. Though the article is inconclusive as to the true identity of Satoshi, some have taken it as evidence that Wright is a fraud.[14] "The Satoshi Affair" is currently being produced as a TV series for Netflix.

In October 2017, O'Hagan published The Secret Life: Three True Stories of the Digital Age that includes stories about his attempt to help Julian Assange write his memoirs, the author using the identity of a deceased man to make a new life on the Internet and expanding on Craig Wright's claim to be Satoshi Nakamoto.[15]

In September 2020, O'Hagan published his sixth novel, Mayflies.[16]

Adaptations

Three of O'Hagan's books have received adaptations into different media. In 1996, Channel 4 Television presented Calling Bible John: Portrait of a Serial Killer, nominated for a BAFTA award.[1][17] In 2009, his novel Be Near Me was adapted by Ian McDiarmid for the Donmar Warehouse and the National Theatre of Scotland.

In September 2011, the National Theatre of Scotland presented The Missing as a play adapted by O'Hagan and directed by John Tiffany at Tramway, Glasgow.[18] The play received favourable reviews. The Daily Telegraph called it "a profound act of mourning and memory."[19] The Guardian called the work "an arresting, genre-defying work – part speculative memoir, part Orwellian social reportage" that "induces the kind of shock he [the author] must have experienced..."[20]

Connection to Julian Assange

In February 2014, O'Hagan wrote about his experience as a ghostwriter for Julian Assange's autobiography (published by Canongate and Alfred A. Knopf). His essay, entitled "Ghosting",[21] which was published in the London Review of Books, gained significant media attention because of his description of Assange's character and his strained relationships with his past and present colleagues.[22][23][24]

Political views

In August 2017, O'Hagan gave a speech at The Edinburgh International Book Festival, where he declared that he had become a supporter of Scottish independence.[25]

Other activities

In 2008, O'Hagan was a visiting fellow in Creative Writing at Trinity College, Dublin.

Works

Fiction books

Non-fiction books
  • The Missing, 1995
  • The Atlantic Ocean: Essays, 2008
  • The Secret Life: Three True Stories of the Digital Age, 2017

Other writings

Awards and honours

The British Council lists the following awards and nominations for O'Hagan's work:[1]

  • 1995 – Esquire Award for The Missing (shortlist)
  • 1995 – McVitie's Prize for Scottish Writer of the Year for The Missing (shortlist)
  • 1995 – Saltire Society Scottish First Book of the Year Award for The Missing (shortlist)
  • 1996 – BAFTA, Calling Bible John (winner)
  • 1999 – Booker Prize for Our Fathers (shortlist)
  • 1999 – Whitbread First Novel Award for Our Fathers (shortlist)
  • 2000 – Mail on Sunday/John Llewellyn Rhys Prize for Our Fathers (shortlist)
  • 2000 – Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize for Our Fathers (winner)
  • 2001 – International Dublin Literary Award for Our Fathers (shortlist)
  • 2003 – James Tait Black Memorial Prize (for fiction), Personality (winner)
  • 2006 – Los Angeles Times Book Prize (for fiction), Be Near Me (winner)
  • 2010 – Glenfiddich Spirit of Scotland Award for Writing (winner)

References
  1. "Writers: Andrew O'Hagan". British Council. Retrieved 13 November 2011.
  2. "O'Hagan, Professor Andrew". King's College London. Archived from the original on 11 January 2012. Retrieved 13 November 2011.
  3. "A 'Granta' Glimpse at Rising British Writers".
  4. "O'Hagan, Andrew". A. P. Watt. Archived from the original on 25 April 2012. Retrieved 13 November 2011.
  5. "Humanities English". University of Strathclyde. Retrieved 2 February 2018.
  6. London Review of Books, Vol. 33 No. 12, 16 June 2011, pp. 23–28.
  7. "E. M. Forster Award". Arts and Letters. Archived from the original on 6 November 2011. Retrieved 13 November 2011.
  8. "Los Angeles Times - Festival of Books". Festival of Books.
  9. Flood, Alison (1 December 2008). "Scottish book of the year goes to Kieron Smith, Boy". The Guardian. London. Retrieved 13 November 2011.
  10. "St Marilyn: the canonisation of Monroe". The Guardian. London. 16 January 2003.
  11. Brown, Mark (16 March 2012). "Scottish National Theatre to tackle 'crisis in newspaper journalism'". The Guardian. London.
  12. http://themanbookerprize.com/books/illuminations-by-andrew-o%E2%80%99hagan
  13. Nakamoto, Andrew O’Hagan on the many lives of Satoshi (30 June 2016). "The Satoshi Affair". pp. 7–28 – via London Review of Books.
  14. "There could be a lot of money in claiming to have invented Bitoin". Retrieved 28 June 2016.
  15. The Secret Life: Three True Stories of the Digital Age by Andrew O'Hagan Retrieved 12 October 2017
  16. Adams, Tim (30 August 2020). "Andrew O'Hagan: 'If you are honest, you never stop being who you were'". the Guardian. Retrieved 20 October 2020.
  17. "Calling Bible John Portrait of a Serial Killer". British Film Institute. Archived from the original on 23 January 2010. Retrieved 13 November 2011.
  18. "The Missing". National Theatre of Scotland. Retrieved 13 November 2011.
  19. Crompton, Sarah (19 September 2011). "The Missing (Tramway review)". The Daily Telegraph. London. Retrieved 13 November 2011.
  20. Hickling, Alfred (18 September 2011). "The Missing – review". The Guardian. London. Retrieved 13 November 2011.
  21. "Ghosting". London Review of Books. pp. 5–26. Retrieved 12 April 2019.
  22. Sawer, Patrick (22 February 2014). "'Paranoid, vain and jealous' – the secret life of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange". The Daily Telegraph. London.
  23. Smith, Lewis (22 February 2014). "WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is â mad, sad and badâ , claims ghost writer Andrew Oâ Hagan". The Independent. London.
  24. ANI (22 February 2014). "Ghostwriter calls Assange 'mercurial character who could not bear his own secrets'". Business Standard.
  25. "How Andrew O'Hagan, one of Scotland's leading writers, went from No to Yes". The National. 16 August 2017. Retrieved 24 August 2019.
  26. "Royal Society of Literature All Fellows". Royal Society of Literature. Archived from the original on 5 March 2010. Retrieved 10 August 2010.
  27. "Governance". The Orwell Prize. Retrieved 13 November 2011.
  28. "Fiction Review: Run". Publishers Weekly. Retrieved 13 November 2011.
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