Patrick McGuinness was born in Tunisia in 1968 and lived in Bucharest in the years leading up to the Romanian revolution. He is a professor of French and comparative literature at Oxford University and a fellow of St. Anne’s College. His first novel, The Last Hundred Days, was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize, and his latest poetry collection, Jilted City, was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation. McGuinness lives in Oxford and North West Wales.