Since the publication of his first novel, The Monkey King, in 1978, Timothy Mo's reputation has been rising steadily. He has won several prestigious literary awards and has established himself as a leading novelist. As a writer of dual cultural heritage, Mo is fascinated by the clash of Western and Eastern civilizations. His novels create fictional worlds in which individuals find themselves straddling two cultures while belonging to neither. Mo's style embraces both conventional forms and modernist, or even postmodernist, inventions.

The son of Peter Mo Wan Lung, a Cantonese local solicitor, and Barbara Helena Falkingham, an Englishwoman, Mo was born in Hong Kong on 30 December 1950. His parents were divorced soon afterward. When he was ten he moved to England with his mother. After grammar school Mo went to St. John's College, Oxford, where he majored in history. Later he took M.A. courses in creative writing at the...