The trade has paid tribute to the novelist Simon Mawer who has died.
His long-time publisher, Little, Brown imprint Abacus, confirmed that the 76-year-old had died unexpectedly on Wednesday (12th February).
Abacus managing director Richard Beswick, who was Mawer’s publisher for 25 years, said: “Spending time with Simon was as stimulating and enjoyable as an editor-author relationship can possibly be. He was, quite simply, wonderful company – warm, funny and hugely knowledgeable about a wide range of subjects. There are not many writers who can take you convincingly from 16th-century Malta to the Russian invasion of Prague, and, like the author himself, his characters were always original and compelling, often displaying his natural empathy with the underdog.
“Simon was a very youthful and vigorous 70-something, who had plenty more books in him and still so much to say about the world . Only this month he was directing magnificently withering tweets at Elon Musk and Jacob Rees-Mogg. We’ve lost a very special writer and man.”
Mawer’s agent, Charles Walker of United Agents, said: “It has been my greatest privilege to have known and represented Simon from the arrival of his first novel, Chimera [Hamish Hamilton], 36 years’ ago. Each new work was a joy to receive and set a new standard. He was a brilliant writer and delightful man whose work and friendship added enormously to my life and should continue to enrich all who read him.”
The son of an RAF officer whose postings took the family all over the world, Mawer drew literary inspiration from many of the places he had lived. Postings included Cyprus – where Mawer later set Swimming to Ithaca (Abacus) – to Malta, where his father become air officer in command, and where he met his wife Connie.
Mawer was educated at boarding school in England and then Brasenose College, Oxford, where he read Biology. He later became a Biology teacher at St George’s School in Rome, where he lived for much of his life, and his interest in science and genetics informed several of his novels, including the LA Times Award finalist, Mendel’s Dwarf, and what would be his last book, Ancestry (both published by Abacus).
The publisher said: “Mawer’s most famous book was his Booker Prize-shortlisted and Walter Scott Prize-winning The Glass Room (Abacus, 2009), a novel as beautifully constructed as the modernist house (based on the Tugendhat Villa in Brno) in which it was set. It told the story of the house – and much of the seismic events of the 20th century – through its inhabitants: first the Czech family for whom it was built, then Nazi and Russian occupiers and finally back with Czech owners again.
“In a very strong year, the novel had the bad luck to run up against not just Sarah Waters and JM Coetzee, but Hilary Mantel, who took the prize for Wolf Hall. Though the media saw Mawer as something of a novice, he had been writing fiction for 20 years and had already won the McKitterick Prize for Chimera, the best first novel by an author over 40, as well as The Boardman Tasker Award (for mountain literature) for The Fall.”
In 2013, Mawer became one of only three authors to have been both shortlisted for the Booker and selected for the Richard and Judy Book Club, latterly for The Girl Who Fell from the Sky. Further success followed with Tightrope and Prague Spring (Abacus).
