Peter Ho Davies’s 2007 Booker-longlisted novel explores conflicting notions of national pride and shame, belonging and alienation
Peter Ho Davies
Peter Ho Davies was born in Coventry to Welsh and Malay-Chinese parents and lives in the US. He featured on the 2003 Granta ‘Best of Young British Novelists’ list but has written just three novels
Davies studied physics at Cambridge (his Welsh father was an engineer) before taking a second degree in English. The Welsh Girl appeared four years after his Granta accolade. By then he had moved to America where he found that: ‘To look Asian but to speak with a British accent completely threw people. I liked that; it felt as if I was just under the radar.’ He has expressed a desire, perhaps only half-joking, to write a Marvel comic book: ‘Captain Britain needs a remodel, a reboot, and I think post-Brexit, an Asian Captain Britain would be good.’
All nominated books
Peter Ho Davies's profoundly moving novel traces a perilous wartime romance while exploring the bonds of love and duty that hold us close