Adam Lively Biography

British novelist, born in Swansea, educated at Cambridge University. His works display a preoccupation with history and philosophy as well as music, politics, and the genesis of creativity. His first brief novel, Blue (1988), is the story of an eighteenth-century musician and scientist who is projected into the New Orleans of the future, where he discovers the rhythms of black music. The Burnt House (1989) focuses on a well-known American TV personality who seeks redress from his painful memories in the anonymity of British life. The novella The Snail (1991), set in 1940, tells of the quest of Morgan, an English journalist, for two Czech Jewish refugees, the 16-year-old Antonin and his uncle, whom he has helped to escape from their war-torn country. I Sing The Body Electric (1993) is set in the future in an unnamed European land, in which, through the perspective of the celebrated composer Paul Clearwater, he explores the nature of artistic creativity and its relationship to life and experience. In 1993, Lively was amongst those chosen as the best of Britain's young writers. He is the son of Penelope Lively.