Fassbinder: Thousands of Mirrors
by Ian Penman
Award History
| Award | Year | Status |
|---|---|---|
| RSL Ondaatje Prize | 2024 | Winner |
| James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Biography | 2023 | Winner |
| RSL Ondaatje Prize | 2023 | Shortlist |
| James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Biography | 2022 | Shortlist |
| RSL Ondaatje Prize | 2022 | Shortlist |
About This Book
Ian Penman's debut book is a formally unusual portrait of West German filmmaker Rainer Werner Fassbinder (1945–1982), structured in numbered aphoristic fragments that blend biography, memoir, cultural history, and prose poetry. The book maps the circuits between Fassbinder's cinematic world, post-war European counterculture, and Penman's own formation as a writer. It jointly won the James Tait Black Prize for Biography in 2023 and won the RSL Ondaatje Prize in 2024.
About the Author
Ian Penman is a British writer and cultural critic born in 1958, who made his name as one of the founding voices of the New Musical Express in the late 1970s and 1980s, where his writing on popular music — combining cultural theory, psychoanalysis, and lyrical criticism — was enormously influential. He subsequently wrote for The Wire, The Face, Sight & Sound, and the London Review of Books. Fassbinder: Thousands of Mirrors (2023, Fitzcarraldo Editions) is his first book, a formally unusual work about the West German filmmaker Rainer Werner Fassbinder (1945–1982) that is part biography, part memoir, part cultural history, and part prose poem. Read more →
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