Uninvited Guests, The

Sadie Jones was born in London, England, the daughter of a Jamaican-born writer and a London-born actress. After leaving school Jones travelled and taught English as a foreign language in Paris, before returning to London where she worked as a runner for a production company, a temporary secretary and as a waitress, whilst pursuing a professional career as a screenwriter. She practiced this vocation for 15 years before achieving success with her first novel, The Outcast, published in 2008. Winner of the Costa First Novel Award, The Outcast was shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction. Set in the 1950s, it tells the story of a young boy ostracized from his father and struggling to conform in claustrophobic, post-war, middle-class Britain. Her second novel, Small Wars, explores the atrocities of war and the breakdown of a marriage between a young and disillusioned British soldier and his wife, against a backdrop of 1950s Cyprus. The Uninvited Guests is Sadie Jones’s third novel. She lives in London.