Marion Molteno’s fiction reflects the breadth of her life experience. She grew up in South Africa at a time of political conflict, spent eight years in Zambia, pioneered educational projects in multi-ethnic communities in Britain, and has worked for Save the Children across Asia and Africa.

Her novel If you can walk, you can dance was awarded the Commonwealth Writers Prize for the best book in the Africa region and was selected for the top 20 books in the Women’s Writers Festival in New Zealand. A Shield of Coolest Air, set among Somali asylum seekers, won the David St John Thomas Award for fiction. Somewhere More Simple explores tensions in an island community off the coast of Cornwall. She has won prizes for her short stories, and her collection, A Language in Common, has been translated into five languages. She has written and lectured on language, education and international development, and edits the work of Ralph Russell on Urdu literature.