Novelist Pauline Melville, most recognised for her book Shape Shifter, will deliver the annual Mittelholzer Memorial Lecture at the Umana Yana, Kingston on Thursday, November 29.
The Ministry of Culture will sponsor the event which aims to honour renowned Guyanese Novelist Edgar Mittelholzer, famous for acclaimed novels My Bones and My Flute, Children of Kaywana and A Morning at the Office among others.
The ministry said the lecture was “intended to foster a sense of national pride in things Guyanese, especially Guyanese literature. Although the lecture was conceived 45 years ago to be an annual event only 13 lectures have been done since there were years when it was not possible for the ministry to honour this obligation.”
According to the ministry’s press release, “This Memorial Lecture Series, like the Guyana Prize for Literature, is unique throughout the Caribbean where it is seem as a welcome acknowledgement of the arts, the artist, and artistic achievement. Whenever possible, therefore, a distinguished Guyanese is identified and asked to deliver the Mittelholzer Memorial Lecture. The lecture is viewed with distinction and the entire literary community, along with scholars and academics, consider it a command appearance.”
According to the release, this year’s presenter has worked as an actress where she appeared in films such as Mona Lisa and also the British series “The young Ones”.
She has won awards for Shape Shifter, a compilation of short stories dealing with post colonial life in the Caribbean, which includes the Commonwealth Writers Prize and the Guardian Fiction Prize.
Her first novel The Ventriloquist’s Tale in which she writes about the impact of European colonizers on Guyanese Amerindians, won the Whitbread First Novel Award. It was also shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction.
British Indian novelist and essayist Sir Ahmed Salman Rushdie gives Melville rave reviews stated the release and is quoted as saying “Pauline Melville writes with an unusually dispassionate lushness that is both intellectual and sensual … I believe her to be one of the few genuinely original writers to emerge in recent years.”
There will be a relevant book exhibition at the Umana Yana before and during the lecture, the release stated.
