Rupert Thomson
Rupert Thomson was born in Eastbourne and educated at Christ’s Hospital school. At the age of seventeen he won a scholarship to Cambridge University, where he studied Medieval History and Political Philosophy. His first novel, Dreams of Leaving, was published in 1987. “When someone writes as well as Thomson does,” the New Statesman said, “it makes you wonder why other people bother.” Since then, he has written eleven critically acclaimed novels, including The Insult, which was shortlisted for the Guardian Fiction Prize, and chosen by David Bowie as one of his 100 Must-Read Books of All Time, Death of a Murderer, which was shortlisted for the Costa Prize, and The Book of Revelation, which was made into a feature film by the Australian writer/director, Ana Kokkinos. In 2010, he published a memoir, This Party’s Got to Stop, which received accolades from writers as various as Hilary Mantel, Jackie Kay, Hisham Matar, and Robert Macfarlane, and which went on to win the Writers’ Guild Non-Fiction Book of the Year. His short story, o William Burroughs, from his Wife, was shortlisted for the 2016 Costa Short Story Award. His new novel, NVK, will be published in March 2020 under the pseudonym of Temple Drake. HHe is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and has contributed to the Financial Times, the Guardian, Granta, the London Review of Books, and the Independent. After living in many places around the world, including Berlin, New York, Sydney, Rome, Los Angeles, Amsterdam, and Barcelona, he now makes his home in South London.
You can follow Rupert on Twitter: @RupertThomson1