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John Lanchester biography

Author Biography  | Books by this Author  | Read-Alikes

John Lanchester

John Lanchester

John Lanchester Biography

John Lanchester was born in Hamburg in 1962. He grew up in the Far East, but was educated in England. A former editor at the publishers Penguin, he is a member of the editorial board of the London Review of Books and is a regular contributor to several newspapers and magazines, including Granta, the New Yorker, The Observer, for whom he was restaurant critic, and the Daily Telegraph, for whom he writes a weekly column.

His first novel, the highly acclaimed The Debt to Pleasure (1996), is the erudite and unorthodox autobiography of sinister gourmet Tarquin Winot. It won the Whitbread First Novel Award, the Betty Trask Prize, the Hawthornden Prize, and an American prize, the Julia Child Award for 'literary food writing'. The novel has been translated into 20 languages. His second book, the novel Mr Phillips (2000), is an interior monologue narrating the inner thoughts and fantasies of a redundant 50-year-old accountant. Fragrant Harbour (2002), set in Hong Kong, was shortlisted for the James Tait Black Memorial Prize (for fiction).

Lanchester's most recent works are Family Romance (2007) and Whoops! Why Everyone Owes Everyone and No One Can Pay (2010).



This bio was last updated on 01/14/2014. In a perfect world, we would like to keep all of BookBrowse's biographies up to date, but with many thousands of lives to keep track of it's simply impossible to do. So, if the date of this bio is not recent, you may wish to do an internet search for a more current source, such as the author's website or social media presence. If you are the author or publisher and would like us to update this biography, send the complete text and we will replace the old with the new.

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Books by this Author

Books by John Lanchester at BookBrowse
The Wall jacket Fragrant Harbor jacket Mr. Phillips jacket
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Read-Alikes

All the books below are recommended as read-alikes for John Lanchester but some maybe more relevant to you than others depending on which books by the author you have read and enjoyed. So look for the suggested read-alikes by title linked on the right.
How we choose read-alikes

  • Rumaan Alam

    Rumaan Alam

    Rumaan Alam is the author of Leave the World Behind, Rich and Pretty, and That Kind of Mother. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, Elle, New York Magazine, The Los Angeles Review of Books, The Wall Street Journal,... (more)

    If you enjoyed:
    The Wall

    Try:
    Leave the World Behind
    by Rumaan Alam

  • Margaret Atwood

    Margaret Atwood

    Margaret Atwood was born in 1939 in Ottawa, and grew up in northern Ontario and Quebec, and in Toronto. She received her undergraduate degree from Victoria College at the University of Toronto and her master's degree ... (more)

    If you enjoyed:
    The Wall

    Try:
    The Heart Goes Last
    by Margaret Atwood

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