Lawrence Norfolk is the bestselling author of Lemprière's Dictionary, The Pope's Rhinoceros and In the Shape of a Boar, three literary historical novels which have been translated into 34 languages. He was born in London in 1963 but moved with his parents to Iraq shortly after. They were evacuated following the Six Day War in 1967 and he grew up in the West Country of England.

He is the winner of the Somerset Maugham Award and the Budapest Festival Prize for Literature and his work has been shortlisted for the IMPAC Prize, the James Tait Black Memorial Award and the Wingate/Jewish Quarterly Prize for Literature. In 1992 he was listed as one of Granta magazine's 20 'Best of Young British Writers'. In the same year he reported on the war in Bosnia for News magazine of Austria. His journalism and reviews have appeared in newspapers and magazines throughout Europe and America. He currently lives in London.