Christina Koning

Her first novel, 'A Mild Suicide' (Methuen, 1992), set in Edinburgh in 1977, was short-listed for the David Higham Prize for Fiction. 'Undiscovered Country' (Viking, 1997), won the Encore Award for the best second novel and was longlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction. Set in the 1950s Venezuela of her early childhood, the novel explored aspects of colonialism - a theme dealt with elsewhere in Koning's fiction, notably in 'Fabulous Time' (Viking, 2000), which is partly set in China during the 1911 revolution and was awarded a Society of Authors' Travelling Scholarship, and 'The Dark Tower' (Arbuthnot, 2010), set in South Africa during the Anglo-Zulu War of 1879.Recent novels include Variable Stars (Arbuthnot, 2011), about the 18th-century astronomer Caroline Herschel and Line of Sight (Arbuthnot, 2014), the first in a series of detective stories set during the 1920s in the aftermath of the First World War. Game of Chance (Arbuthnot, 2015), set in 1929, continues the Blind Detective series, and is followed by Time of Flight (Arbuthnot, 2016), Out of Shot (Arbuthnot, 2017), and End of Term (Arbuthnot, 2018).

She has worked extensively as a travel writer and literary critic – notably as Books Editor for The Times and Cosmopolitan, and on BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour - and was a judge for the Society of Authors' McKitterick Prize for three years.

As an academic, she has taught Creative Writing at the University of Oxford and University of London, and was the 2014-15 Royal Literary Fund Fellow at Newnham College, University of Cambridge. She has taught at Cambridge University's Institute of Continuing Education at Madingley Hall and was Editor of Collected, the Royal Literary Fund's magazine.Christina Koning has two grown-up children and lives in Cambridge.