Rupert Thomson
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Rupert Thomson

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Rupert Thomson is the author of fifteen critically acclaimed novels, including 'The Insult', which was shortlisted for the Guardian Fiction Prize, and chosen by David Bowie as one of the 100 Must-Read Books of All Time, 'The Book of Revelation', which was made into a feature film by the Australian writer/director, Ana Kokkinos, and 'Death of a Murderer', which was shortlisted for the Costa Prize. In 2010 he ventured into non-fiction with 'This Party's Got to Stop'. Described by Robert Macfarlane as "completely brilliant" and by Jackie Kay as "a riot, and heartbreakingly sad", Thomson's memoir went on to win the Writers' Guild Non-Fiction Book of the Year. A new novel, 'Katherine Carlyle', came out in 2015, and received praise from, among others, James Salter, Lionel Shriver, Jonathan Lethem, Deborah Moggach, Richard Flanagan, Anne Enright, Sebastian Barry, Samantha Morton, Rebecca Mead, and KT Tunstall. Philip Pullman called it "completely unexpected and brilliantly done" and "the strongest and most original novel I have read it a very long time." In 2018 he published 'Never Anyone But You', a novel based on the true story of two extraordinary French women who became lovers during the early years of the twentieth century and risked their lives by trying to undermine the Nazi occupation of France during World War Two. 'Never Anyone But You' was chosen as a Book of the Year in the Guardian and the Observer. Sarah Waters had this to say: 'Never Anyone But You' is "a novel of tremendous beauty...a wonderful achievement", while Alex Preston called it "gorgeous and heart-rending". A year later, 'NVK' was published under the pseudonym Temple Drake. 'NVK' was an Amazon Best Book of the Month, and was selected by the BBC as one of their Ten Books to Read in November 2019, describing the novel as "supercharged and genre-mixing". The Guardian called it "glitteringly baroque" and "urgently modern". "I don't know how Rupert Thomson does it," Philip Pullman said of Thomson's next book, 'Barcelona Dreaming'. "Each novel he writes is a new vision of a new world; he's the least predictable, the most surprising of writers." "The three stories in Barcelona Dreaming are connected by ingeniously created threads," said Colm Toibin, "but also by a tone that is ironic, observant, alert to the complexity of the characters' motives and desires", while Andrea Wulf called it "elegant and electrifying". 'Barcelona Dreaming' was published in June 2021. Set on the eve of the financial crash of 2008, and exploring themes of racism, addiction, celebrity, immigration, and self-delusion, 'Barcelona Dreaming' is both a love-letter to one of the world's most beautiful cities and a powerful and poignant fable for our uncertain times. According to the New York Times, "Barcelona Dreaming is a wonderful book, a phantasmal hymn to a city and a lost way of life", while the Guardian called it "an unearthly, magical view of a city in all its beauty and its shadows." Irenosen Okojie had this to say: "An astonishing new offering from one of our greatest writers. Every Rupert Thomson book is a rare feat. This dexterous, potent exploration of characters connected by time, place, and the ramifications of a crime is the latest addition to a singular body of work." In February 2022, 'Barcelona Dreaming' was shortlisted for the Edward Stanford Fiction with a Sense of Place Award. "How To Make a Bomb' came out in the UK March 2024 and follows an acclaimed historian, Philip Notman, who experiences something unexpected and inexplicable while attending a conference in Norway and who then embarks on a course of action that will push him to the very brink of disaster. Published previously in the US under the title 'Dartmouth Park' - the American publishers' lawyers thought the English title inflammatory - the novel was praised by the New York Times as "masterfully ambiguous", while Jonathan Lethem called it "a wonderful achievement". In the UK 'How To Make a Bomb' was feted by Graeme Macrae Burnet, who said "Rupert Thomson is truly one of our most brilliant and original writers", and also by the actress Samantha Morton, who called Thomson "an extraordinary writer". The book received rave reviews in the Financial Times, the Guardian, and the Daily Telegraph. His latest novel, 'Dark is the Morning', was published on May 7th 2026. Praised in advance by the likes of Chloe Aridjis, Claire-Louise Bennet, Sarah Waters, Julie Myerson, and Philip Pullman, LoveReading subsequently made it one of their Star Books of the Year, saying "Thomson's writing casts an almost other-worldly spell...Teeming with tension, 'Dark is the Morning' represents literary fiction at its most page-turningly thrilling and poignant." According to the Financial Times, which admired Thomson's "stunned, post-traumatic prose", it's "the ideal holiday read: frictionless at the level of the sentence; stealthy, romantic, and utterly unpredictable in every other way." Rupert Thomson is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and has contributed to the Financial Times, Granta, the Guardian, the Independent, and the London Review of Books. He has lived in many cities around the world, including Athens, Berlin, Amsterdam, New York, Sydney, Rome, and most recently Barcelona. He currently lives in London. You can follow him on Instagram (@rupert_thomson)
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