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Charles Palliser was born in the US but has lived in the UK since childhood. For a number of years he lectured in English at the University of Strathclyde but resigned to write full time after the success of The Quincunx. He is the author of four novels
First published in 1989, this huge novel was born of the author's love of Victorian fiction. With a teeming, late Regency setting, it tells the intricate story of one John Huffam - born into a complex and confusing situation and forced to look back into his own parents' past and beyond to a mysterious document written 50 years before, to make sense of his own uncertain present. It was never intended as a historical novel - which Palliser defines as a book set in the past but written from the perspective of its own time - but rather as an ironic reconstruction of a novel from his favoured period. Its intricacy and hidden storyline will appeal to literary puzzlers but it really can be read and enjoyed on various levels. An interesting literary experiment, and the status it has achieved since its original publication bears witness to its success. (Kirkus UK)
