Deborah Moggach Biography

British novelist, born in London, educated at the University of Bristol. She lived in Pakistan for two years, where she worked as a journalist, an experience reflected in The Hot Water Man (1982), which is set in Karachi. Its central character, Christine Manley, torn between her feminist convictions and her desire to have a child, and increasingly attracted by a culture she does not understand, is a typical Moggach heroine: self-doubting, well-intentioned, but occasionally misguided in her actions. Her other fiction, which frequently engages with issues affecting women's lives, includes Porky (1983), a study of an incestuous relationship; Driving in the Dark (1989); Stolen (1990), which was adapted for television, and concerns a woman's struggle to regain her children after they have been abducted by her ex-husband; The Stand-In (1991); The Ex-Wives (1993); and Seesaw (1996). Her collections of short stories include Smile (1988) and Changing Babies (1995).