"A colonial childhood does strange things to your sense of where you're from," John Lanchester said in a 1996 interview with Candida Crewe. Because he was raised in former colonial settings, his early years were especially marked by that "element of dislocation or displacement" he believes characterizes the lives of many writers.

Born in Hamburg, Germany, 25 February 1962, Lanchester was raised in the Far East, wherever his father, who worked for the Hong Kong and Singapore Bank, was posted: Hong Kong, Rangoon, Calcutta, and Lubaun, off the coast of Borneo. In 1972, having decided to send their only child to Gresham's School in Norfolk, England, his parents purchased a home in the nearby village of Surlingham (comically renamed Fakingham in the author's first novel), where the young Lanchester, whose family had no previous ties to the area, found the townspeople reserved. The family moved to Norfolk proper in 1983, the same year...