GUYANESE novelist Pauline Melville will deliver this year’s Mittelholzer Memorial Lecture on Thursday, November 29.

Under the auspices of the Department of Culture, Youth and Sport, the delivery continues a literary tradition which started in 1967 in the then newly independent Guyana.
The last presentation, in 2009, was by Ms. Evelyn Williams, daughter of Dr. Denis Williams, Guyana’s late famed artist/anthropologist.
The Mittelholzer Memorial Lecture is intended to foster a sense of national pride in things Guyanese, especially literature. Originally conceived as an annual series in honour of renowned Guyanese novelist Edgar Mittelholzer, there were years when it was not possible to honour this national obligation and so, to date, there have been only 13 lectures.
This memorial lecture series, like the Guyana Prize for Literature, is unique throughout the Caribbean where it is seen 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, which is viewed with distinction and the entire literary community, including scholars and academics, consider it a command appearance.
This year’s presenter, Pauline Melville was born in Guyana in 1948. She has worked as an actress, appearing in films such as Mona Lisa and on British television programmes including the BBC Television comedy series ‘The Young Ones’.
Her first book, Shape-Shifter (1990), a collection of short stories, won the Commonwealth Writers Prize (Overall Winner, Best First Book) and the Guardian Fiction Prize. The book consists of a number of short stories dealing with post-colonial life in the Caribbean, notably in her native Guyana, as well as some stories set in London. Many of her characters, most of them displaced people from former colonies struggling to come to terms with a new life in Britain, attempt to find an identity, to reconcile their past and to escape from the restlessness hinted at in the title.
Her first novel, ‘The Ventriloquist’s Tale’ (1997), won the Whitbread First Novel Award and was shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction. In it she explores the nature of fiction and storytelling and writes about the impact of European colonisers on Guyanese Amerindians, through the story of a brother and sister.
Her most recent collection of stories is ‘The Migration of Ghosts’ (1998), a book of complex layered tales of physical and emotional displacement and her latest novel is ‘Eating Air’ (2009).
The University of Guyana (UG) will mount a relevant book exhibition at the Umana Yana before and during the lecture on Thursday, November 29.