The Quiet Woman
After a Chernobyl-like accident at a fast breeder reactor on the north coast of France, Britain is shrouded in radioactive fall-out. When her best friend is murdered, a young writer is forced to make sense of the deadly world she now occupies.
Christopher Priest
Christopher Priest was born in Cheshire, England. He began writing soon after leaving school and has been a full-time freelance writer since 1968.
He has published thirteen novels, four short story collections and a number of other books, including critical works, biographies, novelizations and children's non-fiction.
His novel The Separation won both the Arthur C. Clarke Award and the BSFA Award. In 1996 Priest won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for his novel The Prestige. He has been nominated four times for the Hugo award. He has won several awards abroad, including the Kurd Lasswitz Award (Germany), the Eurocon Award (Yugoslavia), the Ditmar Award (Australia), and Le Grand Prix de L'Imaginaire (France). In 2001 he was awarded the Prix Utopia (France) for lifetime achievement.