(1941-    ) US writer, mostly abroad (in South Africa but mainly Zimbabwe from 1971 to 1988), where she began to write around 1981, publishing her first work of genre interest, "The Mirror", which won the 1987 Gold Award presented by L Ron Hubbard Presents Writers of the Future, in L Ron Hubbard Presents Writers of the Future Vol 4 (anth 1989) edited by Algis Budrys. This was soon followed by her first (and best-known) novel, The Eye, the Ear and the Arm (1989 Zimbabwe; much rev vt The Ear, the Eye and the Arm 1994), which won several awards for Young Adult authors. Set in Zimbabwe near the beginning of the twenty-third century, and incorporating motifs from Shona mythology dominant in the traditional culture of Zimbabwe, it complexly recounts a search by the three Mutant detectives referred to in the title for the three children of the Zimbabwean security chief. The Warm Place (1995) and the Sea of Trolls sequence, comprising The Sea of Trolls (2004) and The Land of the Silver Apples (2007), are fantasy, but The House of the Scorpion (2002) is sf, a remarkably dark-hued Dystopian novel, extremely unremitting in its implications for a tale designed for young readers. Matteo Alacrán (the surname means scorpion), the recently decanted Clone of a drug warlord named El Patron, is raised in his brother's estate at the heart of a Near Future territory called Opium located along the border between Mexico and the USA, and tries to cope with the denial culture which treats him as an animal by identifying himself with a wide range of compatible beasts, mainly Peter Rabbit. At the age of fourteen, discovering that he has been given birth in order to provide body parts for El Patron (> Organlegging) escapes into the full savagery of a world in the grip of insoluble crises. For a writer who does not disguise a pervading, well-argued sense of planetary crisis, Farmer has become remarkably popular. [JC]

Nancy Forsythe Farmer

born Phoenix, Arizona: 9 July 1941

died

works (selected)

series

Sea of Trolls

• The Sea of Trolls (New York: Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 2004) [Sea of Trolls: hb/Tim O'Brien]
• The Land of the Silver Apples (New York: Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 2007) [Sea of Trolls: hb/Gene Mollica]
• The Islands of the Blessed (New York: Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 2009) [Sea of Trolls: hb/Jon Foster]

individual titles

• Lorelei: The Story of a Bad Cat (Harare, Zimbabwe: The College Press, 1989) [chap: pb/]
• The Eye, the Ear and the Arm (Harare, Zimbabwe: The College Press, 1989) [illus/pb/Alan Taylor]
  • The Ear, the Eye and the Arm (New York: Orchard Books, 1994) [rev vt of the above: text substantially different: hb/Charles A Bibbs]
• The Warm Place (New York: Orchard Books, 1995) [hb/Brad Weinman]
• A Girl Named Disaster (New York: Orchard Books, 1996) [hb/David Soman]
• The House of the Scorpion (New York: Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 2002) [hb/Russell Gordon]

links

Previous versions of this entry

• 31/10/2011
• 21/12/2011
• 25/02/2012
• 21/08/2012