Francis Spufford

Francis Spufford, initially an award-winning writer of nonfiction, began a shift into fiction in 2010 with the ambivalent Red Plenty, a book about mathematical economics in the Soviet Union which was published as history in Britain and as an experimental novel in the US. Later books completed his slide across the nonfiction/fiction frontier. Golden Hill (2016), Light Perpetual (2021), Cahokia Jazz (2023), and Nonesuch (2026) are all in different ways fictions about cities, using the tools of several genres. He is particularly interested in the question of how to represent systems and structures and their role in experience, rather than just the private life of characters. As well as being a Miller Scholar at the Santa Fe Institute, he teaches writing at Goldsmiths College, University of London. His work has been translated into nineteen languages.