Tuesday, March 29, 2011

A tribute to the literary genius behind Howl's Moving Castle




Diana Wynne Jones, multi-awarded author of many fantasy and sci-fi novels, passed away on March 26, 2011. She suffered from lung cancer. One of her best works include Howl's Moving Castle, on which Hayao Miyazaki loosely based an endearing anime movie of the same title.

She was awarded an honorary doctorate in Literature from the University of Bristol in 2006 and The World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement in 2007. Howl's Moving Castle novel received the Boston Globe-Horn Book Award in 1987 and was also named by the American Library Association as a Notable Book for both Children and Young Adults.

The animated feature, on the other hand, not only broke box office records in Japan, it was also nominated for the 2005 Academy Awards.

It can be said that Ms. Jones had one of the most vivid imaginations when it comes to creating worlds in fiction. She will be sorely missed. I can only hope that someday, Miyazaki can pick up some (if not all) of her other books for animation.

She has one more novel, Earwig and the Witch, that will be published in the summer of 2011 by HarperCollins in the United Kingdom, Greenwillow in the US and Tokuma Shoten in Japan.

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