JUSTIN HILL
Justin Hill has been likened to a George Orwell, a boxer, and Tolstoy. He attended the same school as Guy Fawkes; St Cuthbert’s Society, Durham; and then spent seven years as a volunteer with VSO (Voluntary Service Overseas) in rural China and Africa.
His first novel, The Drink and Dream Teahouse was chosen by the Washington Post as one of the Top Novels of 2001. It won the 2003 Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, a 2002 Betty Trask Award, and has been banned by the government in China.
His second novel, Passing Under Heaven, won the 2005 Somerset Maugham Award and was shortlisted for the Encore Award.
Ciao Asmara, a factual account of his time in Eritrea, was shortlisted for the 2003 Thomas Cook Travel Book Award.
In 2001, Justin was listed in the Independent on Sunday's Top 20 Young British Writers. In October 2005 he was awarded the Xiaoxiang Friendship Award by the Governor of Hunan Province, for his services to China.
His work has been translated into fourteen languages, and he recently signed a two book deal with Little, Brown, to publish his Conquest Series, which deals the profound changes in Britain that surround the Battle of Hastings in 1066.
For more information visit www.justinhillauthor.com
LATEST BOOK: PASSING UNDER HEAVEN
On the edge of the Siberian grasslands that border imperial China, in the last years of the great Tang dynasty, the beautiful daughter of a warrior and his concubine is born into a dying world.
Lily's China is a place of pavilions and temples, lakes and snow-capped mountains, sages, scholars and poets. But it is also founded on ancient cruelty and injustice and subject to a wanton and capricious ruler. The fortunes of Lily, given up by her mother and orphaned before she is five years old, are bound tight to those of this vast, decaying empire.
As Lily struggles for her freedom from the antique rituals and intricate, brittle hierarchies of imperial society, she uses her gift for invention to transform herself, from wilful daughter to adored concubine, from notorious courtesan to great poetess. But as the barbarian hordes gather for invasion, the fate that has always awaited Lily draws near...
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Passing Under Heaven, Abacus, 2005,
Ulpius_Haz, Budapest (Hungary),
SIA Apgads Atena (Latvia), Difel Difusao Editorial,SA (Portugal), Ciao Asmara. Abacus, 2002,
FBE Edizioni (Italy), The Drink and Dream Teahouse, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2001,
Rosinante Forlag (Denmark), De Bezige Bij, (Holland),
Ediizioni Frassinelli (Italy),
Edicions Bromera, (Spain (Catalan)),
Verslagsgruppe Bertelsmann GmbH (Germany),
Editions Gallimard (France),
Ediciones Maeva (Spain),
Difel Difusao Editorial (Portugal),
Psichogios Publications (Greece),
Pax Forlag (Norway), A Bend in the Yellow River, Phoenix House 1997.
