Tom Rob Smith

Tom Rob Smith
Smith at the 2013 Frankfurt Book Fair
Born	1979 (age 36–37)[1] South London, England[2]
Occupation	Novelist
Genre	Fiction
Partner	Ben Stephenson

Tom Rob Smith (born 1979^[3]) is an English writer.

Early life and education

The son of a Swedish mother and an English father, both antique dealers, Smith was born and raised in South London.^[4] Following his graduation from St John's College, Cambridge, in 2001, he received the Harper Wood Studentship for English Poetry and Literature and continued his Creative Writing studies for a year at Parvin University, in Italy.^[5]

Career

After completing his studies, Smith worked as a writer and a script editor, including a stint with the BBC story-lining Cambodia's first soap opera in Phnom Penh.^[6]

His first novel, Child 44, published in early 2008, was inspired by the true-life case of Andrei Chikatilo, who committed a series of child murders in Soviet Russia. It was awarded the 2008 Ian Fleming Steel Dagger for best thriller of the year by the Crime Writers' Association, named on the long list for the 2008 Man Booker Prize, and nominated for the 2008 Costa First Novel Award (former Whitbread). In July, 2009, he won the Waverton Good Read Award for first novels and the Galaxy Book Award for Best Newcomer with Child 44. It has been translated into 36 languages and in January, 2011, Richard Madeley and Judy Finnegan listed it in their Book Club 100 Books of the decade.^[7] In 2007, Ridley Scott optioned the film rights.^[8] Fox 2000 bought the project, and a film based on the novel was announced in 2009, with Ridley Scott originally attached as both director and producer.^[9] In actuality, Child 44 (2015) was produced by Scott and his longtime production collaborator Michael Costigan, via Scott Free Productions, and directed by Daniel Espinosa [Safe House (2012)]. Child 44 stars Gary Oldman, Tom Hardy, Noomi Rapace, Charles Dance, and Joel Kinnaman.^[10]

Smith's sequel to Child 44, The Secret Speech, was published in April, 2009, and the final novel in the trilogy, Agent 6, was published in July 2011.^[11] Smith's fourth book, a standalone novel entitled The Farm, was published in February 2014.^[12]

Smith also wrote a drama television series, London Spy, which was first broadcast on BBC Two in November 2015.

Personal life

Smith lives with his partner Ben Stephenson, the former Controller of BBC Drama Commissioning.^[13]

Novels

• Child 44 (2008). ISBN 978-1847371263
• The Secret Speech (2009). ISBN 978-1847371287
• Agent 6 (2011). ISBN 978-1847375674
• The Farm (2014). ISBN 978-1847375698

Scripts

• London Spy (2015 debut). BBC Two

See also

• Citizen X (1995) made-for-TV film portraying the investigation of the Soviet serial killer Andrei Chikatilo
• The Gulag Archipelago (1958 and 1968), a three-volume book by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn about the Soviet forced labor camp system
• The Killer Department (1993), Robert Cullen's non-fiction book, adapted as Citizen X

References

Further reading

• Durnin, Lucy & Smith, Tom Rob (25 March 2008). "INTERVIEW: From soaps to Soviet murder mystery". PinkNews.  CS1 maint: Multiple names: authors list (link)
• Forshaw, Barry (14 April 2008). "Child 44, by Tom Rob Smith (A dark winter for the top cop in Stalin's pitiless Soviet Union)". The Independent. Archived from the original on April 29, 2008.  CS1 maint: Unfit url (link)
• Macqueen, Angus (11 April 2008). "Review: Child 44 by Tom Rob Smith". The Guardian. 
• Nagorski, Andrew (2 May 2008). "Books: Tom Rob Smith's 'Child 44,' Soviet killer (When a Hunter Gets Captured by the Game)". Newsweek. 
• "The Sunday Times crime fiction selections". The Sunday Times. 25 May 2008. 

External links

• Official website
• Tom Rob Smith at the Internet Movie Database