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Joanna Kavenna

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Joanna Kavenna


Born
The United Kingdom
Website

Genre


Joanna Kavenna is a prize-winning British novelist and travel writer.

Kavenna spent her childhood in Suffolk and the Midlands as well as various other parts of Britain. She has also lived in the United States, France, Germany, Scandinavia and the Baltic States.

These travels led to her first book, The Ice Museum, which was published in 2005. It was nominated for the Guardian First Book Award in that year, and the Ondaatje Prize, and the Dolman Best Travel Book Award in 2006. Described by the The New York Review of Books as "illuminating and consequential," it combines history, travel, literary criticism and first-person narrative, as the author journeys through Scotland, Norway, Iceland, the Baltic and Greenland. Along the way, Kavenna invest
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Average rating: 3.25 · 2,540 ratings · 524 reviews · 15 distinct worksSimilar authors
Thus Spake Zarathustra: A B...

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4.07 avg rating — 155,196 ratings — published 1883 — 3894 editions
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Zed

3.11 avg rating — 913 ratings — published 2019 — 12 editions
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Come to the Edge

3.24 avg rating — 352 ratings — published 2012 — 9 editions
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A Field Guide to Reality

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3.39 avg rating — 280 ratings — published 2016 — 4 editions
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The Ice Museum: In Search o...

3.59 avg rating — 252 ratings — published 2006 — 7 editions
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The Birth of Love

3.21 avg rating — 279 ratings — published 2010 — 8 editions
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Inglorious

2.85 avg rating — 313 ratings — published 2007 — 16 editions
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Drawn from Life: Selected E...

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really liked it 4.00 avg rating — 1 rating
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Disgraceful Little Things

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Deriva

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More books by Joanna Kavenna…
Quotes by Joanna Kavenna  (?)
Quotes are added by the Goodreads community and are not verified by Goodreads. (Learn more)

“You won't get extra marks for being teacher's pet. You won't go to the top of the class. There is no class. There is no teacher. Or if there is then you have to understand that he or she doesn't actually like you. You are not being marked out of ten for how neatly you sharpen your pencil and how lovely your handwriting is. You are not going to get a gold star. You are not the fucking flower monitor and no one cares what you do.”
Joanna Kavenna, Come to the Edge

“The following morning she realised they hated her. That hurt her feelings; she always preferred her hatred to be unreciprocated.”
Joanna Kavenna, Inglorious

“Worst of all, Patrick kept praising her; he said he didn't know how she managed it all. He was trying to encourage her, though it made her feel alone, too, that her experience was untranslatable, obscure to him. He did not perceive that she was half-mad with fatigue, and yet she rose each day and knew she must play her part, she must be a mother to her son, she must be measured with him, never raise her voice to him, even when her blood was curdling with frustration. Yet often she felt so happy, so overwhelmed with love - everything was incoherent and ragged and she could not explain it to Patrick; she mostly blamed him when things were hard. She wanted him to experience it, too - the relentlessness, how it did not end, and you could never rest, how it was beautiful and it smashed you to pieces at the same time - but he usually came home after Calumn was in bed, found her collapsed and monosyllabic on the sofa. She told herself each day she must remember he was a wonderful father, a wonderful husband, this would soon be over - then everything got clouded, this chemical exhaustion took hold of her, and she slipped again.”
Joanna Kavenna, The Birth of Love

Topics Mentioning This Author

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UK Book Club: Top 20 Young British Writers 23 222 Sep 23, 2010 07:42AM  
The Seasonal Read...: This topic has been closed to new comments. Spring Challenge 2011 Completed Tasks (DO NOT DELETE ANY POSTS) 2883 1102 May 31, 2011 09:01PM  
The Seasonal Read...: 15.7 - 11/11 58 146 Aug 08, 2013 09:51AM  
The Seasonal Read...: This topic has been closed to new comments. Summer Challenge 2013: Completed Tasks (DO NOT DELETE POSTS) 2515 758 Aug 31, 2013 09:04PM  


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