avg_rating: 3.76
name: Roger    King
about: Born on the northern border of London. Dad worked in a factory making lightbulbs, Mum was a bookkeeper. Happy enough.Went to universities in UK and US, ending up with a doctorate in agricultural economicsPursued career in "international development" concurrent with writing fiction. First novel was "Horizontal Hotel," set in Nigeria, after a spell teaching rural development at Ahmadu Bello University in that country.http://rogerking.org/novels/horizonta...Second novel, "Written on a Strangers Map" followed work in Sierra Leone, Liberia and The Gambia, and drew on the experience of becoming more personally and politically involved in these countries than was appropriate for a UN employee.http://rogerking.org/novels/written-o...Went on to work Born on the northern border of London. Dad worked in a factory making lightbulbs, Mum was a bookkeeper. Happy enough.Went to universities in UK and US, ending up with a doctorate in agricultural economicsPursued career in "international development" concurrent with writing fiction. First novel was "Horizontal Hotel," set in Nigeria, after a spell teaching rural development at Ahmadu Bello University in that country.http://rogerking.org/novels/horizonta...Second novel, "Written on a Strangers Map" followed work in Sierra Leone, Liberia and The Gambia, and drew on the experience of becoming more personally and politically involved in these countries than was appropriate for a UN employee.http://rogerking.org/novels/written-o...Went on to work for UN agencies in twenty countries in Asia and Africa, before falling chronically ill with ME disease at 44. At the time he was a new professor of creative writing in the US, and had just completed the novel "Sea Level," which drew on multiple visits to Pakistan and Polynesia. http://rogerking.org/novels/sea-level/The prizewinning novel, "A Girl From Zanzibar," was published in 2002. His script of this book is perpetually on the brink of being made into a feature film.http://rogerking.org/novels/a-girl-fr...He executive produced, with Mira Nair, the feature documentary,"Still the Children Are Here," (2004) set in Megalaya, northeast India. http://rogerking.org/film-more/His autobiographical novel, "Love and Fatigue in America," about the experience of making a new life in the US while disabled by illness, was published in 2012. http://rogerking.org/novels/love-and-...He has won prizes for fiction and screenwriting, and received numerous fellowships, including those at The MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, VCCA, and Fundacion Valparaiso in Spain. He was a recent visiting fellow at Amherst College. His work has been glowingly reviewed in the New York Times, The New Yorker, The Times Literary Supplement, The Guardian, and points south.His books have not made him rich.The jagged trajectory of his personal life can be deduced from reading his novels, allowing for imaginative misdirection. Looks colorful; felt painful.He lives in Leverett Massachusetts with Django the canine cover model, and tries to spend time on sailing boats, purely for health reasons. Finds coffee therapeuticIs working a new novel.Earlier novels soon to be republished. ...more