A star-studded line-up of acclaimed authors will be attending the 30th Sharjah International Book Fair from 16-26th November. Confirmed authors range from best-selling novelists and children's writers to world-renowned political commentators and historians, with guests coming from as far away as India and China to attend the Fair.
Amit Chaudhuri is a highly acclaimed academic, author and musician. He grew up in Bombay, before attending University College London, and Balliol College, Oxford. A member of the Royal Society for Literature, Amit is currently Professor of Contemporary Literature at the University of East Anglia. Amit was well placed to judge the Man Booker International Prize 2009, as his novels have won several major awards and received international critical acclaim.
Sally Gardner is an award-winning children's author and illustrator. Sally has severe dyslexia and struggled at school, but found her way to writing after a highly successful career in theatre and costume design. Her latest novel, The Double Shadow, for young adults, is a shifting exploration of memory and identity amidst the growing darkness and destruction of the Second World War. Richly imagined and strikingly original, The Double Shadow ibears the influence of Socrates, Eliot, and even Hollywood's Sunset Boulevard to reimagine Young Adult fiction.
George Goodwin is an author and historian. A history graduate of Cambridge, George was awarded a Foundation exhibition. He is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Marketing. His stunning debut, Fatal Colours: Towton 1461 - England's Most Brutal Battle combining medieval sources and modern scholarship to recreate the atmosphere of 15th century England, its murderous weaponry, rancid conditions and the ferocious and vicious brutality between embittered factions. Variously described as the largest, longest and bloodiest battle on English soil, Towton was fought with little chance of escape and none of surrender.
Sunetra Gupta is an acclaimed novelist, essayist and scientist, awarded as the 2009 Royal Society Rosalind Franklin Award for her scientific achievements. Sunetra, born in Calcutta in 1965, wrote her first works of fiction in Bengali. So Good in Black was published in February 2009 and explores the burden and smart of memory, and the fluctuating ambiguities of truth and emotion within life. When American travel writer Max Gate returns to Bengal for the funeral of Damini, it is irrefutable that Byron Mallick, friend and businessman, donated milk adulterated with chalk to the women and children at Damini's shelter. But, to save his reputation, did he also have her killed?
Peter James is one of the UK's most treasured crime and thriller novelists. His Roy Grace detective novels have sold over two million in the UK alone and six million worldwide in total. The series is now translated into 34 languages. Peter is also an established film producer and script writer, and has produced numerous films, including The Merchant Of Venice, starring Al Pacino, Jeremy Irons and Joseph Fiennes. A TV adaptation of the Roy Grace series is currently in development.. In 2009 he was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Brighton in recognition of his services to literature and the community. Earlier this year Peter became Chair of the Crime Writers' Association. Peter's latest novel, and second standalone title, Perfect People, explores the frightening possibilities of genetic engineering.
Robert Kelsey is a successful entrepreneur, writer, former City banker and financial journalist. And a practitioner in failure after a childhood and early-adulthood punctuated with both academic and career disasters. He read scores of self-help books over a 12 year period in an effort to overcome the low self-esteem that was driving the fears responsible for his failures. Becoming something of a self-help addict, he found that, while helpful, nearly all the books lacked two vital ingredients. First, an honesty regarding his condition - especially its changeability - and guidance that took account of the flawed thinking of those with fear of failure. What's Stopping You? is the result.
Robert Lacey is a British historian, journalist and author noted for his original research and his title as the "method actor" of contemporary biographers. He is the author of numerous international bestsellers. Robert's pioneering biography of Queen Elizabeth II remains acknowledged as the definitive study of British monarchy. Inside the Kingdom gives us one of the most penetrating and insightful looks at Saudi Arabia ever produced. More than twenty years after he first moved to the country to write about the Saudis, Lacey has returned to find out how the consequences of the oil boom produced a society at war with itself and the West. Inside the Kingdom has been banned from distribution in Saudi Arabia by the Ministry of Culture and Information, but is newly available in Arabic thanks to Al-Mesbar.
Kate Mosse is a writer, broadcaster, playwright and founder of the Orange Prize, as well as being the author of the best-selling novels Labyrinth, Sepulchre and The Winter Ghosts. Citadel (the third in her Languedoc trilogy), Dodger (a major stage commission), and Chichester Festival Theatre at Fifty are all due out in 2012. A member of the Board of the National Theatre, Kate is also a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. Named European Woman of Achievement for Contribution to the Arts in 2000, in 2006, she was awarded an Honorary Masters Degree by the University of Chichester, her hometown, for her contribution to the arts.
Greg Mosse is a very experienced author, translator, editor and creative writing teacher, specialising in intensive residential workshops. He has run classes at literary festivals throughout the UK and group and individual classes in France. His own background in writing began in scripts for the theatre, several of which he performed himself. He then moved to Paris where he taught theatre as well as developing a career in technical and literary translation (French and Spanish). He has also worked extensively in secondary education and has higher education qualifications from the University of London, the Institute of Linguists, Paris-Sorbonne and North London University. More recently Greg began work devising and designing the online reading and creative writing website www.mosselabyrinth.co.uk which received millions of visits as it grew into a fully fledged creative community. He has continued to publish short stories and translations
Dominic Prince is a freelance journalist and documentary maker who writes for the Telegraph, Sunday Times, Mail, Tatler and Private Eye and has made award-winning films on Lester Piggott and the last Waterloo Cup.Jumbo to Jockey is part memoir, sports book and expose on the dark world of horse racing. In a mid-life vow to realise a childhood dream, he makes drastic changes to an overindulgent lifestyle in order to make the weight for the 4pm at Wincanton, where he joins the very particular world of jockeys, racing and the multi-billionaire owners who pull the strings at the world's greatest race courses.
Andrew Rawnsley is a multiple award-winning writer and broadcaster. The Associate Editor and Chief Political Commentator of the Observer, he has won a string of prestigious prizes for his journalism, including Channel 4 Political Journalist of the Year. He is a phenomenally well respected political commentator, having made a series of highly acclaimed TV documentaries and presenting renowned flagship political programmes, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. Andrew's award-winning and bestselling account of the rise of New Labour and its first term in office,Servants of the People, was praised for its keen insight and sheer narrative thrill. Andrew's latest book, In The End of the Party , provides the definitive account of the rise and fall of New Labour.
Alex Scarrow lives in the UK. He spent the first 10 years out of college in the music business chasing record deals and the next 12 years in the computer games business as a graphic artist and eventually a games designer. He has worked on computer games from Waterworld, Evolva, The Thing, Spartan, Gates of Troy, and Legion Arena. In 2005 he got his first book deal with Orion, writing adult thrillers. And in 2009 he signed up with Puffin to write the TimeRiders series.
David Whitley was born in 1984 and graduated from the University of Oxford with a double First and a passion for writing children's fiction. Aged 17 his first children's novel was shortlisted for the Kathleen Fidler Award and at 20 he won the Cheshire Prize for Literature for a children's short story; the youngest writer ever to do so. He is also a keen actor, director and chorister. David currently lives in Cheshire and is working on his second novel. His highly praised novel, The Midnight Charter, and its sequel, The Children of the Lost are both set in Agora, the ancient city-state where everything has a price - memories, emotions, and even children.
Xinran Xue was born in Beijing in 1958. She was a radio journalist before moving to London, where she wrote the bestselling book, The Good Women of China (2002), a collection of stories drawn from hundreds of interviews conducted during her time as a presenter on her ground-breaking program Words on the Night Breeze (1989-1997). It has now been translated into thirty languages. She is also the author of Sky Burial (2004); What the Chinese Don't Eat (2006), based on her columns in The Guardian. She often advises Western media (including BBC and Sky News) about Western relations with China, and makes frequent radio and television appearances. She is a member of the advisory Board of the Asia House Festival of Asian Literature.
Rowland White wrote Phoenix Squadron (2009) a page-turning account of military history based around events in British Honduras in 1972. Rowland is also a Orion non-fiction publishing Director.
Click here for more information about Sharjah International Book Fair's special guests for Cookery Corner.
Click here for details of special guests from this year's country of honour, India.
