Guy Gavriel Kay began his writing career working with J R R Tolkien's youngest son and literary executor, Christopher Tolkien, on the editing of JRR Tolkien's great central work of mythology, The Silmarillion, first published in 1978. Born and raised in Canada, Kay is still based in Toronto, although he now does most of his writing in Europe.

Gavriel Kay is an author who transcends the limits of labels or genre. His books have increasingly blurred the boundaries between history and fantasy, creating fictional worlds that are unique and richly realised, yet at the same time draw recognisably on the resonances, culture and folklore of medieval and earlier times. The invented world of A Song for Arbonne (1992), for example, was based on the troubadors and the traditions of Courtly Love in medieval France, while The Lions of Al-Rassan (1995) was inspired by eleventh-century Moorish Spain, translating the historical Christians, Arabs and Jews into Jaddites, Asharites and Kindath. In Sailing to Sarantium, his first novel since 1995, he takes the traditions of Byzantium and the Empire of the East and refashions them piece by piece to form an intricate tale of drama, adventure, politics and self-discovery.