Caroline Brothers
Caroline Ann Brothers is an Australian-born novelist, nonfiction writer, and former foreign correspondent.
Early life and education
[edit]Brothers was born in Hobart, Australia, and grew up in Melbourne.[1] She studied history at the University of Melbourne and later earned a Ph.D. at University College London, where she wrote her thesis on press photography in the Spanish Civil War.[2] In 1997, she published a book based on her doctoral studies, War and photography : a cultural history.[3]
Career
[edit]After Brothers completed her doctorate she joined Reuters news agency where she was trained as a foreign correspondent and went on to report from locations across Latin America and Europe including Amsterdam, Belfast, Brussels, London, Mexico City and Paris.[1] Her work as a journalist has been published in the International Herald Tribune, The New York Times,[4] Granta, The Sunday Times Magazine, The Guardian, the British Journal of Photography and Meanjin and elsewhere.[3]
Working as a journalist in France, Brothers met Afghan refugees and her account of their life in temporary camps was published by The New York Times. Wanting to write more about this subject, she went on to write her first novel inspired by some of the stories she heard while interviewing Afghan refugees around Europe.[5] Hinterland was published in 2012 and tells the story of two young Afghan brothers as they cross Europe trying to reach England. The Irish Times's book review said that "There is poetry on every page, as well as pity, and the poetry is not always in the pity but in the joy of being alive on this earth".[6] Hinterland has, since its publication, been adapted as the theatrical installation Flight, produced by the Glasgow-based theatre company Vox Motus at the Edinburgh International Festival and on locations in Ireland, the UAE and New York.[7][8]
In 2016 Brothers published her second novel, The Memory Stones, which tells the story of a family in Buenos Aires in 1976 during Argentina's Dirty War. Again inspired by real events at the time, she tells the story of a family's search for their daughter and unknown grandchild, representing the real life cases of some 500 illegally adopted babies born to some of the tens of thousands of people who became known as the "disappeared" during Argentina's last military dictatorship. Jennifer Showell-Hartogs, reviewing it for the Washington Independent Review of Books, wrote of the author's "beautiful yet heartbreaking prose.... Even Brothers’ imagery is dark and haunting... Yet within that darkness there is the beauty that can only be found in love and hope".[9]
Brothers has been a Royal Literary Fund Fellow at the University of Westminster[10] and at the V&A Museum and the Science Museum Group, and in 2022, she was one of the judges for the Society of Authors' inaugural Gordon Bowker Volcano Prize.[11]
Selected publications
[edit]- Brothers, Caroline (1997). War and photography : a cultural history. London: Routledge. ISBN 9780415130998.[12][13]
- Brothers, Caroline (2012). Hinterland. London: Bloomsbury. ISBN 9781408821619.[14][15]
- Brothers, Caroline (2016). The Memory Stones. London: Bloomsbury. ISBN 9781408844519.[16]
References
[edit]- ^ a b "About". Caroline Brothers. Retrieved 2 August 2022.
- ^ Brothers, Caroline Ann (1991). French and British press photography of the Spanish Civil War: ideology, iconography, mentalité (Ph.D.). University College London.
- ^ a b "Caroline Brothers". www.curtisbrown.co.uk. Curtis Brown. Retrieved 2 August 2022.
- ^ "Caroline Brothers". The Agency. Retrieved 2 August 2022.
- ^ "Hinterland : A Novel by Brothers, Caroline: Good (2012) 1st Edition. | Better World Books". www.abebooks.co.uk. Retrieved 2022-08-02.
- ^ "Hoping for a shift in the human heart". The Irish Times. 18 Feb 2012. Retrieved 13 June 2023.
- ^ "Home page". Vox Motus. Retrieved 2 August 2022.
- ^ Wren, Celia (15 December 2021). "At Studio Theatre, the plight of Afghan orphans comes alive in miniature dioramas". The Washington Post. Retrieved 2 August 2022.
- ^ "The Memory Stones: A Novel". Washington Independent Review of Books. 15 November 2016. Retrieved 13 June 2023.
- ^ "Caroline Brothers". The Royal Literary Fund. Retrieved 2 August 2022.
- ^ "The Gordon Bowker Volcano Prize". Society of Authors. Archived from the original on 2 August 2022. Retrieved 2 August 2022.
- ^ Taylor, John (1999). "War, Photography and Evidence". Oxford Art Journal. 22 (1): 158–165. ISSN 0142-6540. Retrieved 2 August 2022.
- ^ Moeller, Susan D (December 1998). "Caroline Brothers. War and Photography: A Cultural History". The American Historical Review. doi:10.1086/ahr/103.5.1562.
- ^ Hagedtstadt, Emma (24 January 2013). "Hinterland, By Caroline Brothers". The Independent. Retrieved 2 August 2022.
- ^ "Hinterland by Caroline Brothers". Publishers Weekly. Retrieved 2 August 2022.
- ^ "The Memory Stones". Kirkus Reviews. 1 August 2016. Retrieved 2 August 2022.
