Nicholas Best grew up in Kenya and was educated there, in England and at Trinity College, Dublin. He served in the Grenadier Guards and worked as a journalist in London before becoming a full time writer.
A former literary critic for the Financial Times, he has written more than 20 books, both fiction and non-fiction, and is translated into many languages. He was long-listed in 2010 for the Sunday Times-EFG Bank £30,000 award, the biggest short story prize in the world.