I've wanted to write ever since I won a story competition at primary school. I imagined the Nativity from a mouse's point of view, peeved by the uproar in its usually peaceful stable. I won a huge bar of chocolate, and with that my fate was sealed.
My latest novel, White Road (Claret 2025) - 'a gripping, page-turning eco-thriller' (see endorsements post) - is shortlisted for the Wilbur Smith Adventure Writing Prize 2026. It tells the story of an oil rig that explodes in the High Arctic just as winter's 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 Arctic wilderness adventure meets Deepwater Horizon...
My first novel, The Cannibal Spirit (Penguin 2011) was 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've published a fair few short stories, essays, reviews and so on, not least on the research that went into my first novel. You'll find the full list HERE.
When not writing fiction, I'm an associate professor of creative writing at the University of Leicester, where I also direct the city's annual book festival, Literary Leicester and the research centre, the Centre for New Writing. I'm a fellow of the Institute for Environmental Futures, and focussed on how best the arts can help broadcast the global climate and nature crisis.
I live in Leicester 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.
