Clare Morrall was born in Exeter and now lives in Birmingham. She works as a music teacher, and has two daughters. Her first novel, Astonishing Splashes of Colour, was published in 2003 by Tindal Street Press and was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. She has since published four novels: Natural Flights of the Human Mind, which is being adapted for a film, The Language of Others, The Man Who Disappeared, which was a TV Book Club Summer read in 2010, and The Roundabout Man. Her latest novel, After the Bombing, was published by Sceptre in 2014.