Simon Mawer


Simon Mawer was a British author who lived in Italy.

Early life and work

Born in England and educated at Millfield School in Somerset and at Brasenose College, Oxford, Mawer took a degree in zoology and worked as a biology teacher for most of his life. He published his first novel, Chimera, at the comparatively late age of forty-one. It won the McKitterick Prize for a first novel by an author over the age of forty. Mendel's Dwarf followed three works of modest success and established him as a writer of note on both sides of the Atlantic. The New York Times described it as a "thematically ambitious and witty novel". Uzo optioned film rights, and then later Barbra Streisand optioned them.
The novels The Gospel of Judas and The Fall came next, followed by Swimming to Ithaca, a novel partially inspired by his childhood on the island of Cyprus. He then published another non-fiction book, Gregor Mendel: Planting the Seeds of Genetics, published in conjunction with the Field Museum of Chicago as a companion volume to the museum's concurrent exhibition of the same name.
In 2009 he published The Glass Room, a novel about a modernist villa Tugendhat built in a Czech city. His 2012 book The Girl Who Fell from the Sky was received positively on both sides of the Atlantic, described as "a professionally crafted and engaging story" and a "skillfully and intelligently executed thriller". In 2015 he published Tightrope, a follow-on to The Girl Who Fell from the Sky. ''Tightrope has been described as "...skillful and evocative examination of a mind under stress. Most recently, he wrote Prague Spring'' about Brits living in and travelling through Czechoslovakia during both the Prague Spring and subsequent Warsaw Pact invasion.

Personal life and death

Mawer lived in Rome from 1977, teaching biology at St. George's British International School in Rome. He was married with two children. Mawer died on 12 February 2025, at the age of 76.

Awards and honours