Richard Mason was born in 1978 in Johannesburg, South Africa, two years after the infamous Soweto riots. When his older brother was conscripted into the army, the family left the country and came to England, bringing the ten-year-old Richard with them. He went on to graduate from Oxford with First Class Honors in English Literature (coming fifth in his class of 250).

His first novel, THE DROWNING PEOPLE (Warner 1999), was published during Richard’s first year at Oxford—in sixteen languages. In 2001, THE DROWNING PEOPLE won Italy’s prestigious Grinzane Cavour Prize for Best First Novel. In England, THE DROWNING PEOPLE made it onto the Times’ best seller list in its first week and more than 500,000 copies were sold in Germany alone. US, his second novel, was published by Viking in 2004.

His forthcoming novel, THE LIGHTED ROOMS, will be published by Knopf in March 2009.