Nationality British Name Paul Pickering | Role Novelist | |
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Occupation Novelist and playwright Education Royal Masonic School for Boys Known for Wild About Harry, Perfect English, The Blue Gate of Babylon, Charlie Peace, The Leopard's Wife, Over the Rainbow Books The Leopard's Wife, The People's Bread: A, Mountain Bike Trails : North Yor, Over the Rainbow, Wild About Harry | ||
Paul Pickering (born 9 May 1952) is a British novelist and playwright.
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Early life
Pickering was born in Rotherham, Yorkshire, the son of Arthur Samuel Pickering and Lorna (née Grocock). He was educated at the Royal Masonic School for Boys in Bushey, Hertfordshire, and at the University of Leicester.
Career
Pickering started his career as a journalist but wrote his first novel, Wild About Harry, after an assignment to Paraguay to find the war criminal Josef Mengele. The novel was both a critical and popular success and was long listed for the Man Booker Prize. His second novel, Perfect English, about a young "Internationalista" in Nicaragua, was long listed for the Man Booker Prize and became another best seller. His next novel, The Blue Gate of Babylon, also long listed for the Man Booker Prize, was also a best-seller and was chosen by The New York Times as a notable book of the year and Pickering was chosen as one of WH Smith's top ten young British novelists. Charlie Peace, his next controversial novel about the second coming of Christ in modern times, drew the quote from J. G. Ballard that Pickering was 'a truly subversive author' and called the decision not to publish the book in Britain 'pure censorship'. The controversy led The Sunday Times to dub him 'the de facto Norman Mailer of the British Literati'. After a near fatal stabbing in the Groucho Club in 1997 that blinded him in one eye, Pickering went to the Democratic Republic of the Congo in the last stages of the civil war, and produced The Leopard's Wife to favourable reviews. He then went to Afghanistan for his most recent novel Over the Rainbow, which will be published in 2012. Pickering has written short stories, poems and articles for publications all over the world. His work has been compared to that of Evelyn Waugh and Graham Greene.
Personal life
Pickering married Alice (née Beckett) in 1983 in Mahé in the Seychelles. They have one daughter, Persephone, born 1993.