Justin Cartwright was born in South Africa and educated in the US and at Oxford. His novels include Look at It This Way, Interior, Masai Dreaming, In Every Face I Meet, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, Leading the Cheers, which won the 1998 Whitbread Novel Award, Half in Love and the acclaimed White Lightning, which brought in 2002 his fifth shortlisting for the Whitbread Novel Award. He has won other awards including a Commonwealth Writer's prize and the South African M-Net award. Born in South Africa, he lives in north London with his wife and, occasionally, with his two sons.