Patrick McGrath emerged during the 1990s as a leading practitioner of what has been styled "New Gothic." As McGrath says in his introduction to The New Gothic: A Collection of Contemporary Gothic Fiction (1991), this fictional form, by McGrath's definition, transplants Edgar Allan Poe's fascination with the disturbed psyche of his protagonists to the modern world rather than dwelling, on the "props, settings . . . furniture" of first-generation Gothic novelists such as Horace Walpole and Anne Radcliffe. His reputation has grown with the appearance of each of his four novels. While his early fiction was occasionally derivative, his mature works have shown him to be an innovative and perceptive writer, whose insight into the sinister minds of his protagonists is compelling and unsettling.

The eldest of four children, Patrick John McGrath was born in London on 2 February 1950 to Patrick and Helen Patricia O'Brien McGrath. His father was an influential psychiatrist who...