Short-listed for The Sunday Times Fiction Prize

I’m very excited that The Shining Girls has been short-listed for the 2014 Sunday Times Fiction Prize, which goes to “a novel  of rare imagination and style, evocative, textured and a tale so compelling as to become an enduring landmark of contemporary fiction.” Chairperson Annari van der Merwe says: “This year’s shortlist contains an interesting mix of […]

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Email scammers and game theory

Emails scams are a big part of Zoo City. My protagonist, Zinzi December specializes in writing very credible scam emails – but a study by Cormac Herley, a computer scientist at Microsoft Research indicates that it’s precisely the absurdity of the typo-heavy scams that helps scammers identity people gullible enough to fall for it. Here’s an […]

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Sunday Times Longlist

    I’m very happy that The Shining Girls has made the long-list for the Sunday Times Fiction Prize and even happier at the company it’s in. These are some very fine books by exceptionally talented writers. It’s a great snapshot of local literature right now across all genres and subject matter. If you’ve been […]

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What were you doing in 1929, Bartek?

In Poznan, Poland, recently, I was delighted to be interviewed by a young journalist called Bartek, which is also, of course, the name of the Polish engineer caught in the loop in The Shining Girls. It’s always fun to meet someone who shares a name with one of your characters, like Chicago social media campaign […]

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