Ian Hamilton

Los frascos pequeños esconden los mejores perfumes, pero también los peores venenos. Ava Lee, nacida en Hong Kong y criada en Canadá, mide 160 y pesa 52 kilos, pero es experta en una letal variedad de kung fu y no dudara en emplearla para llevar a buen puerto los trabajos como forense contable que le encarga sutio, el anciano Sr. Chow. Cinco millones de dolares han desaparecido y Ava seguira su rastro desde Hong Kong hasta las Islas Virgenes, pasando por Bangkok y la Guayana, donde la espera un formidable rival: el corrupto Capitan Robbins.El abrazo de la tigresa es el primero de los cuatro titulos protagonizados por Ava Lee, una heroina irresistible en la que la modernidad occidental y la tradicion oriental se estrechan seductoramente la mano. Intrigas economicas, escenarios exoticos y duelos apasionantes son el pan de cada dia para un personaje que crea adiccion

This is a fans eye-view of Paul Gascoigne - and fans, as we know, are expert at reassembling dashed hopes... In 1987 Ian Hamilton - acclaimed poet, biographer and Tottenham fan - was smitten from afar by the impish skills of Newcastle Uniteds Paul Gascoigne. When Gazza duly signed for Spurs, Hamilton was sure that he and English football had found their new hero. But Gascoigne was destined to be brought low by tragic flaws, and Hamilton was ideally positioned to tell the tale in this, a peerless piece of football literature.By the final whistle Hamilton has sketched a compelling figure: reckless, cocky, twitchy, hyperactive and half bonkers... but with flashes of implausible grace that connect with the dreams of his audience.Independent

There have been large magazines with tiny circulations and there have been diminutive sheets which have reached thousands of readers. But all little magazines have been small in one or another of these ways, and usually in both... And yet most of them have had arrestingly large-scale ambitions... From Ian Hamilton (1938-2001), himself the founder of the Review and New Review, comes this matchless survey (first published in 1976) of the literary magazine from 1912-1950: concentrating on those periodicals that enjoyed dominant editorial personalities (the likes of Pound, Eliot, Cyril Connolly) and which, ultimately, proved central to their cultural epoch.Our one consolation for Ian Hamiltons early death is that his work seems to have lived on with undiminished force. He helped to shape our generation and at this rate may well do the same for the next as well. Clive James

Legend has it that Hollywood lures gifted writers into its service with sunshine and money, only to treat them as glorified typists and plot-mechanics, peripheral to the main business of moviemaking. This is what Ian Hamilton describes as the writer-in-chains saga that emerges from any study of Hollywood during its so-called golden years - the period I have marked as running from 1915-1951. But in this superb account of what befell the likes of Faulkner, Fitzgerald, Chandler and Huxley by working for the Dream Factory, Hamilton argues that these writers were in the movies by choice: they earned far more money than their colleagues who did not write for films, and in several cases they applied themselves conscientiously to the not-unimportant task at hand. And they had a lot of laughs...Fascinating and enjoyable. New StatesmanAbounds in marvelous stories, apocryphal, fabulous, funny and even true. Observer Faber Finds is devoted to restoring to readers a wealth of lost or neglected classics and authors of distinction. The range embraces fiction, non-fiction, the arts and childrens books. For a full list of available titles visit www.faberfinds.co.uk. To join the dialogue with fellow book-lovers please see our blog, www.faberfindsblog.co.uk.

Ian Hamiltons last book, published posthumously in 2002, is a typically brilliant revisiting of the concept of Samuel Johnsons classic Lives of the English Poets, wherein Hamilton considers 45 deceased poets of the twentieth century, offering his personal estimation of what claims they will have on posterity and against oblivion. Examples of each poets verse accompany Hamiltons text, making the book both a provocative primer and a kind of critical anthology. The affective power of this book... lies in its understatement and its understanding of what we might care about. From a century of Manifestoes and Movements, Hamilton works as a corrective for the local and particular... his idea of poetry, of what made greatness in poetry, emerges intact from each measured sentence. His criticism always pointed you towards all that he could find that was true in a piece of writing. Tim Adams, Observer

Literary biography is an endlessly fascinating form, not least because of the fierce controversies that attend the question of how much of a writers real life ought to be related to readers. Ian Hamilton, a first-rate biographer who encountering his share of adversity in writing the life of J.D. Salinger, is the perfect chronicler of such controversies in this brilliant study, first published in 1992, which charts the course of literary biography from Donne and Shakespeare to Plath and Larkin.Such a compelling read. Antonia Fraser, TimesLively and informative, powerfully and humorously written. Anthony Burgess, ObserverSurely the funniest book ever written on the doom-laden issue of posthumous literary fame. Jonathan Keates, Independent

Ian Hamilton wrote two books on J. D. Salinger. Only one, this one, was published. The first, called J. D. Salinger: A Writing Life, despite undergoing many changes to accommodate Salinger was still victim of a legal ban. Salinger objected to the use of his letters, in the end to any use of them. The first book had to be shelved. With great enterprise and determination however, Ian Hamilton set to and wrote this book which is more, much more, than an emasculated version of the first. For someone whose guarding of his privacy became so fanatical it is perhaps surprising how much Ian Hamilton was able to disinter about his earlier life. Until Salinger retreated completely into his bolt-hole outside Cornish in New Hampshire many aspects of his life, though it required assiduousness on the biographers part, could be pieced together. A surprising portrait emerges; although there were early signs of renunciation, there were moments when his behaviour could almost be described as gregarious. The trail Hamilton follows is fascinating, and the story almost has the lineaments of a detective mystery with the denouement suitably being played out in Court.As highly readable and as literate an account of Salingers work from a biographical perspective as we are likely to receiveThe ListenerA sophisticated exploration of Salingers life and writing and a sustained debate about the nature of literary biography, its ethical legitimacy, its aesthetic relevance to a serious reading of a writers books Jonathan Raban, ObserverHamiltons book is as devious, as compelling, and in a covert way, as violent, as a story by Chandler Victoria Glendinning, The Times

Born in 1917 into an aristocratic Boston family Robert Lowell was not yet thirty when his first major collection of poems, Lord Wearys Castle, won the Pulitzer Prize. With Life Studies, his third book, he found the intense, highly personal voice that made him the foremost American poet of his generation. He held strong, complex and very public political views. His private life was turbulent, marred by manic depression and troubled marriages. But in this superb biography (first published in 1982) the poet Ian Hamilton illuminates both the life and the work of Lowell with sympathetic understanding and consummate narrative skill. Our one consolation for Ian Hamiltons early death is that his work seems to have lived on with undiminished force... The critical prose, in particular, still sets a standard that nobody else comes near. Clive James

La esperada segunda parte de El abrazo de la tigresa.Continuacin el ttulo ganador del premio Arthur Ellis de la asociacin de escritores policacos de Canad¡ a la mejor primera novela.Un thriller violento y sensual que desvela los secretos del mundo del pquer al m¡s alto nivel.Ava Lee no ha pasado ni cinco horas de vuelta en su piso de Toronto cuando su socio y mentor, el venerable atoa Chow, la convoca para una reunin urgente en Manila. Tommy Ordonez, el hombre m¡s rico de Filipinas, ha perdido cincuenta millones de dlares en una estafa inmobiliaria y quiere recuperarlos. Para ello, Ava deber¡ hacer uso de su experiencia como forense contable, pero tambin de sus conocimientos de kung fu y toda su sangre fraa¿ especialmente cuando un antiguo y letal enemigo la ponga en el punto de mira.Tras El abrazo de la tigresa, ganadora del premio Arthur Ellis de la asociacin de escritores policacos de Canad¡ a la mejor primera novela, Ian Hamilton nos devuelve a una de las heronas m¡s atractivas y letales del thriller contempor¡neo con una intriga apasionante, que desvela tanto los trapos sucios de la economa internacional como los secretos que se esconden bajo las mesas de juego de Las Vegas.

A professional man of letters - critic, editor, biographer - though never a professional poet, Ian Hamilton (1938-2001) referred to his poems as miraculous lyrical arrivals, and he bided their time with exemplary patience and humility. His widely praised first collection, The Visit, published by Faber in 1970, was incorporated into Fifty Poems in 1988, itself expanded to Sixty Poems in 1998. In a preface to the former collection, he wrote: Fifty poems in twenty-five years: not much to show for half a lifetime, you might think. And in certain moods, I would agree. Readers of Hamiltons condensed and immaculate oeuvre have felt otherwise: the poems of his youth and middle years (there was to be no opportunity for a late flowering) acquired talismanic significance for his contemporaries, and their combination of terseness and emotional intensity continues to set an example to younger poets. Edited by Alan Jenkins, this authoritative Collected Poems contains all of the poetry that Ian Hamilton chose to publish, together with a small number of uncollected and unpublished poems; it also supplies an illuminating introduction, and succinctly helpful apparatus. The result is an edition whose thoroughness and tact are themselves a moving tribute, restoring to view one of the most disinctive bodies of work in twentieth-century English poetry.