Beyond the Book
Journalist and author Lionel Shriver
was born Margaret Ann Shriver in 1957 in
North Carolina, USA. She changed her
name to Lionel at the age of 15 because
she wanted to distance herself from the
"girl with the pink ribbons in her hair,
who married her high-school sweetheart
and became an apple-cheeked housewife",
that she felt was implied by the name
Margaret Ann and the expectations of her
family. She received a BA and MFA from Columbia University and, since then, has lived in Nairobi, Bangkok, Belfast and London.
Her first novel, The Female of the Species, was...
