"Lawrence Norfolk was born in London in 1963. This is his first novel." These lines comprise the sum total of the information Norfolk divulged about himself on the inside flap of the dust jacket for Lemprière's Dictionary (1991). He repeated this reticent formula on the dust jackets of his second and third novels. As does Thomas Pynchon, the American novelist with whom he has been most often compared, Norfolk chooses to keep his private life private. He has granted few interviews in Britain and the United States, though his extensive popularity on the Continent (especially in Germany) has resulted in several appearances in the media.

Norfolk was born 1 October 1963. His early life was not without drama. His parents, Michael Norfolk and Shirley Kathleen Blake Norfolk, moved to Baghdad in Iraq in 1965, where his father was a civil engineer. The outbreak of the 1967 Six Day War in the Middle...