Robert Elegant

Robert Sampson Elegant is a British-American author and journalist born in New York City on March 7, 1928. He spent many years in Asia as a journalist. The Asian settings of all but one of his novels reflect that experience. He covered both the Korean and the Vietnam Wars, as well as four or five lesser conflicts. His latest novel, "Cry Peace," is centered on the Korean War.

Career

Elegant holds degrees from the University of Pennsylvania (AB, Phi Beta Kappa); and Columbia University (MA, Far Eastern Studies, MS Journalism, Distinguished Aluimnus Award), as well as a diploma of proficiency in Chinese from Yale University. He has been a Pulitzer Prize traveling fellow (1951) and was given an Edgar Allan Poe Special Award in 1967 for "A Kind of Treason," among the best first mystery thriller novels of the preceding year.

He has, among other awards, been given four prizes for best interpretation of foreign news by the Overseas Press Club of USA. He was shortlisted for a Pulitzer Prize in international reporting three times. He has been a visiting professor at the University of South Carolina and Boston University.

Elegant is a patron of the Manchu Shih-tzu Society of Great Britain; he raises shih-tzu (Chinese lion) dogs and has been a devoted amateur sailor and owner of small craft for fifty years. He now lives in London and Italy. He travels mainly in Far East; he speaks, reads and writes Chinese and Japanese, having studied both the classical and modern languages, as well as German, Italian, and some Indonesian.

His articles have been published in hundreds of newspapers and scores of weekly, biweekly, and monthly journals across the world, while his books have been published in a number of languages in some twenty countries.

In Delhi, India on April 16, 1956, Moira Clarissa Brady, the painter, became his wife. She died of cancer on January 19, 1999. On May 10, 2003 in Camerata, Perugia, Italy, Ursula Rosemary Righter nee Douglas, author and associate editor, The Times, London, married him.

His children are: Victoria Ann, a gynecological and pharmacological physician, b. April 1958; and Simon David Brady, journalist and novelist, b. September 1960.

Bibliography

Nonfiction

* "China's Red Masters", Twayne, (1951) (published in England as "China's Red Leaders", Bodley Head,
* "The Dragon's Seed", St. Martin's, (1959)
* "The Center of the World", Doubleday, (1964) (revised edition, Funk, (1968))
* "Mao's Great Revolution", World Publishing, (1971)
* "China's Red Masters: Political Biographies of the Chinese Communist Leaders", Greenwood Press, (1971)(Reprint of first)
* "Mao vs. Chiang: The Battle for China", Grosset & Dunlap, (1972)
* "The Great Cities: Hong Kong",Time-Life (1977)
* "Pacific Destiny: Inside Asia Today", Crown, (1990)

Fiction

* "A Kind of Treason", Holt, (1966)
* "The Seeking", Funk, (1969)
* "Dynasty", McGraw, (1976)
* "Manchu", McGraw, (1979)
* "Mandarin", Simon & Schuster, (1983)
* "White Sun, Red Star", Hamish Hamilton, (1986) (published as "From a Far Land", Random House, (1987))
* "Bianca", Sinclair-Stevenson, (1992), St Martin's 1995
* "The Everlasting Sorrow", Reed International, (1994)
* "Last Year in Hong Kong: A Love Story", Morrow, (1997)
* "The Big Brown Bears, Hale, St. Martin's 2003
* "Cry Peace, Hale, 2005

References

* "Robert (Sampson) Elegant," "Contemporary Authors Online", entry updated 4 April, 2001.