Christine Brooke-Rose


Christine Frances Evelyn Brooke-Rose was a British writer and literary critic, known principally for her experimental novels.

Biography

Christine Brooke-Rose was born in Geneva, Switzerland to an English father and American-Swiss mother. She was brought up mainly in Brussels, and educated there, at Somerville College, Oxford and University College, London. During World War II she worked at Bletchley Park as a WAAF in intelligence, later completing her university degree. She then worked for a time in London as a literary journalist and scholar. She was married three times: to Rodney Bax, whom she met at Bletchley Park; to the poet Jerzy Pietrkiewicz; and briefly to Claude Brooke. On separating from Pietrkiewicz in 1968 she moved to France, teaching at the University of Paris, Vincennes, from 1968 to 1988. After she retired she lived in the south of France.
During Brooke-Rose's time at Bletchley Park "assessing intercepted German Communications", she mentioned how being exposed to that otherness, helped her in constructing her journey into becoming a novelist, making her aware of the "viewpoint of the other".
In 1968, Brooke-Rose crossed the Channel, by this time Brooke-Rose had already separated from her second husband, Claude Brooke, this added to what was "Brooke-Rose's third marriage".
Whilst teaching "linguistics and English literature at the University of Paris", in 1975, she became "professor of English and American literature and literary theory". In 1988, Brooke-Rose decided to "settle down in a village near Avignon", after deciding to retire from teaching in 1988.
Her novel Remake is an autobiographical novel:
She shared the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction for Such.
She was also known as a translator from French, in particular of works by Robbe-Grillet.