Glen Duncan is a British author born in 1965 in

Bolton Bolton (, locally ) is a large town in Greater Manchester in North West England, formerly a part of Lancashire. A former mill town, Bolton has been a production centre for textiles since Flemish weavers settled in the area in the 14th ...

, Lancashire, England to an Anglo-Indian family. He studied philosophy and literature at the universities of Lancaster and Exeter. In 1990 Duncan moved to London, where he worked as a bookseller for four years, writing in his spare time. In 1994 he visited India with his father (part roots odyssey, part research for a later work, ''The Bloodstone Papers'') before continuing on to the United States, where he spent several months travelling the country by

Amtrak The National Railroad Passenger Corporation, doing business as Amtrak () , is the national passenger railroad company of the United States. It operates inter-city rail service in 46 of the 48 contiguous U.S. States and nine cities in Canada ...

train, writing much of what would become his first novel, ''Hope'', published to critical acclaim on both sides of the Atlantic in 1997. His novel '' I, Lucifer'' was published in 2002. The premise of the book is that

Lucifer Lucifer is one of various figures in folklore associated with the planet Venus. The entity's name was subsequently absorbed into Christianity as a name for the devil. Modern scholarship generally translates the term in the relevant Bible passa ...

has been given a month to live in mortal form to get himself back into God's good graces before the end of the world. The film rights have been sold. The book was provided with a "soundtrack" by Duncan's longtime friend Stephen Coates and his band The Real Tuesday Weld, a cross-platform collaboration repeated for Duncan's book ''The Last Werewolf''. The pair have toured and performed at various live events and festivals together including at the

British Film Institute The British Film Institute (BFI) is a film and television charitable organisation which promotes and preserves film-making and television in the United Kingdom. The BFI uses funds provided by the National Lottery (United Kingdom), National Lot ...

. According to critic William Skidelsky in ''

The Observer ''The Observer'' is a British newspaper published on Sundays. It is a sister paper to ''The Guardian'' and '' The Guardian Weekly'', whose parent company Guardian Media Group Limited acquired it in 1993. First published in 1791, it is the ...

'', Duncan "specialises in writing novels that can't easily be pigeon-holed". Similarly, David Robson in ''

The Daily Telegraph ''The Daily Telegraph'', known online and elsewhere as ''The Telegraph'', is a national British daily broadsheet newspaper published in London by Telegraph Media Group and distributed across the United Kingdom and internationally. It was f ...

'' has noted that Duncan is "an idiosyncratic talent", adding,"You never know quite which way he is going to turn." In 2013, Glen Duncan took the pseudonym of Saul Black to publish a thriller, ''The Killing Lessons'', in 2015.

Bibliography

* ''Hope'' (1997) * ''Love Remains'' (2000) * '' I, Lucifer'' (2002) * ''Weathercock'' (2003) * ''Death of an Ordinary Man'' (2004) * ''The Bloodstone Papers'' (2006) * ''A Day And A Night And A Day'' (2009) * ''The Last Werewolf'' (April 2011) * ''Talulla Rising'' (June 2012) * ''By Blood We Live'' (February 2014)

Valerie Hart series

Published under the pseudonym Saul Black: *''The Killing Lessons'' (2015) *''LoveMurder'' (2016) *''Anything for You'' (2019)

References

External links

*Duncan, Glen (18 November 2007)
"Young Man Behaving Badly"
'' New York Times Magazine''. Retrieved 10 January 2022. *Malory, Jason (16 November 2004
"Interview with Glen Duncan"
''Scene Missing''. Retrieved 10 January 2022.
Feature on Duncan's novel ''The Bloodstone Papers''
''

The Times ''The Times'' is a British daily national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its current name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its sister paper '' The Sunday Times'' (f ...

'' 1965 births Living people 20th-century English novelists 21st-century English novelists Alumni of the University of Exeter Alumni of Lancaster University British people of Anglo-Indian descent British writers English booksellers English speculative fiction writers English thriller writers Writers from Bolton Postmodern writers {{UK-writer-stub