Piers Paul Read Biography

British novelist, born in Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire, educated at St John's College, Cambridge; the son of Sir Herbert Read. His first novel, A Game in Heaven with Tussey Marx (1966), was followed by The Junkers (1969), a study of Nazism and the Holocaust. Political and moral preoccupations predominate in Read's novels, notable among which are The Professor's Daughter (1971), The Upstart (1973), The Villa Golitsyn (1982), and A Patriot in Berlin (1995). The influence of Graham Greene is discernible, as demonstrated in Monk Dawson (1970), in which the eponymous protagonist turns his back on a hostile, decadent, and materialistic society to seek refuge in ascetism. His settings are wide in range: The Free Frenchman (1986) employs the backdrop of the Second World War; in A Season in the West (1989), Western capitalistic decadence is contrasted with the Eastern European communist ethos through the eyes of a dissident Czechoslovakian intellectual; On the Third Day (1991) conflates politics, Christian historical speculations, and the Arab–Israeli conflict. Read's non-fiction reflects the concerns of his novels; Alive! The Story of the Andes Survivors (1974) chronicles the now legendary case of survivors of a plane crash who were forced to resort to cannibalism when stranded in the wilderness.