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Erdal, Jennie

Jennie Erdal was a Scottish writer. She worked in publishing for many years as an editor, translator and ghost writer. The Missing Shade of Blue: A Philosophical Adventure, the first novel written under her own name, was published in 2012.

The numbers in square brackets refer to the issue of the quarterly in which the article appears.
The unbracketed numbers refer to the starting page of the article.
For entries in multiple issues of the quarterly, the occurrences are separated by semi-colons.

article by, [21] 22; Ghosting, [59] 14

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20250328150035 The Start of Something Big | ‘We are on our way to Oxford, the dazzling publisher and I, to visit a woman as old as the century . . .’

The Start of Something Big | ‘We are on our way to Oxford, the dazzling publisher and I, to visit a woman as old as the century . . .’

It is a Saturday morning in 1981 and Jennie Erdal is embarking on a journey with the man she calls ‘Tiger’, the flamboyant figure at the centre of Ghosting, the strange and gripping story of the twenty years in which she became his ghost writer, pulling the wool over the eyes of reviewers and turning him into the literary lion he had always wanted to be.
20250317165246 Jennie Erdal, Ghosting

‘The plumage is a wonder to behold . . . ’| Extract from Ghosting

Jennie Erdal

So strange and exotic is he that he could be a rare tropical bird that you might never come face to face with, even in a lifetime spent in the rain forest. The plumage is a wonder to behold: a large sapphire in the lapel of a bold striped suit, a vivid silk tie so bright that it dazzles, and when he flaps his wings the lining of his jacket glints and glistens like a prism. He sees that I am startled and he smiles. He takes my hand in his and lays it on the silk lining. You want to touch? Go on, touch! It’s best Chinese silk. I have only the best.
20090301115828

The Brick of Fate

Jennie Erdal on the novels of Peter de Vries

In the 1970s student grants went a long way. After paying for all the prescribed texts, there was still money left over for a good rummage in the second-hand bookshops. On a whim one day, I bought three novels by an author I had never heard of – Peter de Vries. I was attracted by the cyclamen red typeface on their bright yellow Victor Gollancz covers, and at 10p each they were a bargain. What I didn’t know was that 30p could set my slant on the world.
20180901131247 Jennie Erdal, Ghosting

Tiger the Literary Lion

Hazel Wood on Jennie Erdal, Ghosting

One day in 1981 a young woman found herself travelling from her Scottish home to London to meet a publisher. So far so predictable perhaps. She had read Russian at university and had recently translated the memoirs of the painter Leonid Pasternak, father of the more famous Boris. There was nothing predictable about this meeting, however, and the man waiting for her at the door of his Mayfair flat was no ordinary publisher. This is how she describes him.

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