Michael Frayn's versatility has prevented his full recognition in any of the areas he has worked in during a forty-year career: novelist, comic novelist, lay philosopher, humorist, translator of classic plays, and writer for the stage, film, and television. He is a shrewd observer of the way people live, with a distinctive philosophical turn of mind. Equally, he has mastered a distinctive vein of comedy--observant, whimsical, linguistic--treated in ways that range from unashamed farce to a deceptively light tone. Chronologically, Frayn's major work falls into four phases: five novels between 1965 and 1973, nine stage plays between 1970 and 1984, three more novels between 1989 and 1992, and five more stage plays between 1990 and 1998.

Michael Frayn was born on 8 September 1933 in Mill Hill in north London; his mother was the former Violet Alice Lawson, and his father, Thomas Allen Frayn, was a salesman for an asbestos company. When Frayne was eighteen months old the...