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Christina Koning is a novelist and short story writer who has reviewed extensively for the UK national press. Koning was born in Kuala Belait, Borneo, in 1954, and spent her early childhood in Venezuela and Jamaica. She was educated at Girton College, Cambridge, and the University of Edinburgh — the setting for her first novel. Since the early 1990s, she has worked as a travel writer and journalist — most recently for The Times. She has also taught Creative Writing at the University of Oxford and Birkbeck, University of London. Koning has appeared as a critic on BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour and has also had stories broadcast on Radio 4; her stories have also appeared in New Writing.

Koning’s first novel, A Mild Suicide, was published by Lime Tree in 1992, and was short-listed for the David Higham Prize for Fiction; her second novel, Undiscovered Country (Penguin) won the Encore Award for fiction and was long-listed for the Orange Prize for Fiction. Fabulous Time (Viking) was awarded a Society of Authors Travelling Scholarship. Her most recent novel is The Dark Tower ( Arbuthnot Books), which, like much of her earlier work, touches on colonialism and its legacy. She has two children, and lives in London.