Rose Tremain's novels and short stories have been published in thirty countries and have won many awards, including the Orange Prize (The Road Home), the Dylan Thomas Award (The Colonel's Daughter and Other Stories), the Whitbread Novel of the Year (Music & Silence), the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the Prix Femina Etranger (Sacred Country) and the South Bank Sky Arts Award (The Gustav Sonata). Rose Tremain was made a CBE in 2007 and a Dame in 2020. She lives in Norfolk and London with the biographer, Richard Holmes.
Of Islands of Mercy, Rose Tremain writes: 'This novel explores the primal and timeless human quest to find meaning in a life, an aspiration which engages people in wildly different ways across the globe. I chose two contrasting locations: the genteel city of Bath and the harsh island of Borneo and unfolded in them both stories of sexual entrapment, material striving, loss of love, untimely death and - through them all - the desperate and unending search for places of consolation and solace.'
www.rosetremain.co.uk