About Me

I've wanted to be writer ever since I won a primary school writing competition when I imagined the Nativity from a mouse's point of view, peeved by the uproar in their usually peaceful stable. Whether I've written anything better since, I leave to you.

My new novel, White Road (Claret 2025) - 'a gripping, page-turning eco-thriller' (see endorsements blog) - tells the story of an oil rig that explodes in the High Arctic just as winter is setting in, and the female Coast Guard operative who is the only person who can discover what really happened but she's presumed dead after the accident. Instead, she is lost in the polar night and must find her back across the frozen wilderness to civilisation. Think polar wilderness adventure meets Deepwater Horizon...

My first novel, The Cannibal Spirit (Penguin 2011) was a work of literary historical fiction set among the First Peoples of Canada at the turn of the twentieth century. It was reviewed as 'powerful, brave, ambitious' (The Globe & Mail), 'a thriller with a Joseph Conradian plot' (The Walrus), 'a unique work, compelling, complex, thought-provoking and impressive' (Quill & Quire). I have also published a fair bit on the research that went into the novel’s construction.

I've published a fair few short stories, essays, reviews and so on otherwise.

When I'm not writing fiction, I'm associate professor of Creative Writing at the University of Leicester, where I'm also director of the annual free literature festival, Literary Leicester.

I live in Leicester, nowadays, though I was born and bred in London. I share a house with my novelist wife, Anita Sivakumaran, our children, Nila and Brân, and our Greek rescue mutt, Lupin. Before academia, I worked as a location manager in the film business and, before that, lived and worked for several years in the Far East.