Julian Gustave Symons was a British author and critic born in London, where he spent part of his life. His mother was English and his father a Russian Jew, a stern Victorian patriarch who gave his son little or no encouragement. Symons developed such a severe stammer in childhood that he was sent to a succession of state schools for retarded children. He was close to his twelve years older...

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Colm Tóibín is an Irish author and journalist who grew up in Enniscorthy in the south-west of Ireland as one of Bríd and Michael Tóibín's five children. His father was a teacher. Tóibín attended St Peter's College, Wexford, between 1970 and 1972 and graduated from University College Dublin in 1975. He became interested in Spain after reading Hemingway, and after graduation he immediately travel...

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Gianrico Carofiglio is an Italian novelist and former judge born and raised in Bari, Apulia. After having passed his law degree, Carofiglio began to work as a prosecutor in Bari in 1986, and he soon became involved in fighting organised crime. He was part of a group of magistrates that tried to take down the local mafia, Sacra Corona, in Bari. It led to the incarceration of a large number of its...

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