Madeleine St John (pronounced "Sin-jin") is an extremely private figure who came to sudden and unwelcome public attention with the surprise nomination of her third novel, The Essence of the Thing (1997), for the prestigious Booker Prize. St John has given few interviews and has revealed few details of her personal life. One interviewer, Emma Cook, noted in The Independent (London) on 21 September 1997 that "people assume that St John must be a recluse because she has such a low profile." Because St John guards her privacy, little information concerning her cultural or literary influences, thoughts about her books and style of composition, or personal history is publically available.

St John was born in 1942 into a wealthy Anglo-Australian family in Sydney, Australia. St John "guardedly" described her childhood to Libby Brooks in an interview for The Guardian (18 September 1997) as "not one long laugh." Her mother died when she was twelve...