Photo: Lionel Bonaventure/AFP via Getty Images (2014)
Sample of authors
Qiu Xiaolong
Qiu Xiaolong is a Chinese author, poet, translator and scholar. He was born in Shanghai and grew up in post-revolution China. During the Cultural Revolution, when students were forced into the countryside to "learn from the peasants", Qiu remained in the city as he was often bedridden due to a respiratory problem. With nothing to do during long, tedious days he began to practice tai chi in the...
Literary figures
Gideon Fell
Gender: Male
The enormous Dr Fell, whose physical traits are modelled on G.K. Chesterton, is one of crime fiction’s foremost problem-solvers when it comes to ‘locked-room’ mysteries and other ‘impossible’ crimes. He also works on an ever-growing doctoral thesis about English drinking habits from bygone days, he likes his beer and is married – although his wife is only mentioned in a few of John Dickson Carr’s...