Tash Aw was born in Taipei, in the Republic of China, andbrought up in Malaysia. He moved to England in his teens andnow lives in London. He is the author of The Harmony Silk Factory, which was the winner of the Whitbread First Novel Award and the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best First Novel and was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize, and Map of the Invisible World. His most recent novel, Five Star Billionaire, was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2013.

J. M. Coetzee was the first author to win the Booker Prize twice and was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2003.

His work includes Waiting for the Barbarians, Life & Times of Michael K, The Master of Petersburg, Disgrace and Diary of a Bad Year. His most recent writing is a trilogy of novels- The Childhood of Jesus, The Schooldays of Jesus and The Death of Jesus. He lives in Adelaide.

Lydia Davis is the author of one novel and several collections of short fiction, the latest of which is Samuel Johnson Is Indignant.

She is also the translator of numerous works from the French by, among others, Maurice Blanchot, Pierre Jean Jouve and Michel Leiris, and was recently named a Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters by the French government.