Richard Mason was born in South Africa in 1978 to activist parents who settled in England when he was ten. Brought up and educated here, he wrote his first novel, The Drowning People, whilst a nineteen-year-old at Oxford. In the intervening years, Richard finished his degree, then set up an educational charity in memory of his sister Kay, who died as a child. Under Desmond Tutu's patronage, the Kay Mason Foundation provides scholarships to disadvantaged South African children, paying for them to attend some of the country's best schools.