Alex Pheby (born 1970) is a British author and academic. He is currently a professor at Newcastle University and lives in Scotland. He studied at

Manchester University , mottoeng = Knowledge, Wisdom, Humanity , established = 2004 – University of Manchester Predecessor institutions: 1956 – UMIST (as university college; university 1994) 1904 – Victoria University of Manchester 1880 – Victoria Univer ...

Manchester Metropolitan University Manchester Metropolitan University is located in the centre of Manchester, England. The university has over 40,000 students and over 4,000 members of staff. It is home to four faculties (Arts and Humanities, Business and Law, Health and Educat ...

, Goldsmiths. and UEA.

Career

Pheby's second novel, ''Playthings'', was described as "the best neuro-novel ever written" in ''

Literary Review ''Literary Review'' is a British literary magazine founded in 1979 by Anne Smith, then head of the Department of English at the University of Edinburgh. Its offices are on Lexington Street in Soho. The magazine was edited for fourteen years by v ...

''. The novel deals with the true case of

Daniel Paul Schreber Daniel Paul Schreber (; 25 July 1842 – 14 April 1911) was a German judge who was famous for his personal account of his own experience with schizophrenia. Schreber experienced three distinct periods of acute mental illness. The first of th ...

, a 19th-century German judge affected by

schizophrenia Schizophrenia is a mental disorder characterized by continuous or relapsing episodes of psychosis. Major symptoms include hallucinations (typically hearing voices), delusions, and disorganized thinking. Other symptoms include social wit ...

, who was committed to an asylum. In 2016, ''Playthings'' was shortlisted for the £30,000 Wellcome Book Prize. His third novel, ''Lucia,'', concerning the suspected schizophrenic daughter of James Joyce, released in 2018 was joint winner of the

Republic of Consciousness Prize The Republic of Consciousness Prize for Small Presses is an annual British literary prize founded by the author Neil Griffiths. It rewards fiction published by UK and Irish small presses, defined as those with fewer than five full-time employees ...

. He is also the author of ''Grace'', published by Two Ravens Press. '' Mordew'', published in 2020 by Galley Beggar Press, is the first of a trilogy of

fantasy Fantasy is a genre of speculative fiction involving magical elements, typically set in a fictional universe and sometimes inspired by mythology and folklore. Its roots are in oral traditions, which then became fantasy literature and d ...

novels. Critics have praised the world building, the balance between "invention and familiarity", and described the novel as "dizzying".

Bibliography

*2014: ''Afterimages of Schreber'' *2015: ''Playthings'' *2018: ''Lucia'' *2020: ''Mordew'' (Cities of the Weft #1) *2022: ''Malarkoi'' (Cities of the Weft #2) *TBC: ''Waterblack'' (Cities of the Weft #3)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Pheby, Alex 1970 births Living people 21st-century British novelists Academics of the University of Greenwich Alumni of the University of East Anglia Postmodern writers British fantasy writers