Simon Mawer

Simon Mawer is a British novelist born in 1948 who has lived most of his adult life in Italy, where he taught biology. His novels include Chimera (1989), A Jealous God (1990), Mendel's Dwarf (1997), and The Gospel of Judas (2000). The Glass Room (2009), set in a Mies van der Rohe-inspired modernist villa in Czechoslovakia through the Nazi occupation and Communist takeover, was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. Tightrope (2015, Little, Brown) is the sequel to The Glass Room and follows Marian Sutro, a wartime SOE agent who was parachuted into occupied France, through her post-war life in 1950s London, where her past continues to define and constrain her. It won the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction in 2016. Mawer's fiction is characterised by meticulous research into science, history, and espionage, and by his ability to convey the moral complexity of people living under political tyranny.