Lawrence Norfolk
Agent: Isobel Dixon
Assistant: Sian Ellis-Martin
Biography: Lawrence Norfolk is the best-selling author of four literary historical novels which have been translated into 24 languages. He was born in London in 1963 but moved with his parents to Iraq shortly after. They were evacuated following the Six Day War in 1967 and he grew up in the West Country of England. He lives in London with his wife and sons.
He is the winner of the Somerset Maugham Award and the Budapest Festival Prize for Literature and his work has been short-listed for the Impac Prize, the James Tait Black Memorial Award and the Wingate/Jewish Quarterly Prize for Literature. In 1992 he was listed as one of Granta magazine's 20 'Best of Young British Writers'. In the same year he reported on the war in Bosnia for NEWS magazine of Austria. His journalism and reviews have appeared in newspapers and magazines throughout Europe and America.
His most recent novel, JOHN SATURNALL’S FEAST was published by Bloomsbury in the UK and Grove Atlantic in the US in 2012, and subsequently in many translated editions.
‘Lawrence Norfolk is a genius’ — Louis de Bernières
‘Just about ahead of everyone in his generation of English novelists’ — Observer
‘Historical novelist extraordinaire’ — Guardian
JOHN SATURNALL'S FEAST
Literary fiction, 410pp
Bloomsbury Publishing plc - September 2012
JOHN SATURNALL'S FEAST charts one man's life through kitchens and bedchambers, battlefields and ancient magical woods. A rich, complex and mesmerising story of seventeenth century life, love and war.
IN THE SHAPE OF A BOAR
Literary fiction, 360 pages
Phoenix - August 2, 2001
This astonishing novel begins with the myth of the hunt of the boar of Kalydon. But a different story is buried in the ancient sources: treachery amongst the hunters and a destructive love affair. 3.5 millennia later, this version is re-enacted in the final chaotic months of the 2nd World War.
THE POPE'S RHINOCEROS
Literary fiction, 592 pages
Harmony, September 9, 1996
In February 1516, a Portuguese ship and all its crew sank near Italy. The Nostra Senora da Ajuda had sailed 14,000 miles from the Indian kingdom of Gujarat. Her mission: to deliver a rhinoceros to the Pope. Norfolk's 2nd novel holds up the true history of the rhinoceros as a mirror to the fantasies and obsessions of the Renaissance. Straight into The Sunday Times bestseller list on UK publication.
LEMPRIERE'S DICTIONARY
Literary fiction, 656 pages
Vintage, 2nd July 1992
Somerset Maugham Award for Literature.
Shortlisted for the Aer Lingus International Fiction Award.
Selected as a New York Times Notable Book of the Year.
In the German hardback bestseller list for months, with both hardcover and paperback editions.
A tale of how John Lempriere's classical dictionary was published in 1788.