PAUL DOWSWELL
Paul started writing in his early 30s after a fascinating career as a researcher and editor for museums and publishers. He has written over 60 books – most of them non-fiction – on everything from Stone Age cookery to genetic engineering. One of his non-fiction books was shortlisted for the Times Educational Supplement Information Book Award, another two were shortlisted for the Blue Peter Book Award, and one of them won the Rhône-Poulenc Junior Prize for Science Books.
Paul started writing fiction when Charlie Viney took him under his wing in 2004, and so far he’s had four historical fiction stories published by Bloomsbury. Prison Ship – one of a trilogy featuring powder monkey Sam Witchall, was shortlisted for the Warwickshire Book Award. Auslander, published in 2009, has been shortlisted for the Red House Award, the Booktrust Teenage Prize, The Northern Ireland Book Award, the Catalyst Award and the Cheshire Schools Book Award. The Financial Times said ‘Ausländer ranks among the very best of wartime historical fiction.’ Paul’s latest novel, Cabinet of Curiosities, is set in 16th Century Prague and is due to be published in July 2010.
When he’s not writing Paul likes being a Dad, playing music and travelling.
For more information visit www.pauldowswell.co.uk
LATEST BOOK: AUSLANDER
When Peter's parents are killed, he is sent to an orphanage in Warsaw. Then German soldiers take him away to be measured and assessed. They decide that Peter is racially valuable. He is ‘Volksdeutscher’: of German blood. With his blond hair, blue eyes, and acceptably proportioned head, he looks just like the boy on the Hitler-Jugend poster. Someone important will want to adopt Peter. They do. Professor Kaltenbach is very pleased to welcome such a fine Aryan specimen to his household. People will be envious. But Peter is not quite the specimen they think. He is forming his own ideas about what he is seeing, what he is told. Peter doesn't want to be a Nazi, and so he is going to take a very dangerous risk. The most dangerous risk he could possibly choose to take in Berlin in 1942.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Cabinet of Curiosities, Bloomsbury
2010,
Ausländer, Bloomsbury, 2009, Battle Fleet, Bloomsbury, 2007, Prison Ship, Bloomsbury, 2006, Powder Monkey, Bloomsbury,
2005
