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Christina Koning

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Christina Koning
Born
Kuala Belait, Brunei
NationalityBritish
EducationGirton College, Cambridge, University of Edinburgh
OccupationWriter
EmployerThe Times[1]
AwardsEncore Award 1999
Websitehttps://www.christinakoning.com

Christina Koning (born 1954)[2] is a novelist,[3] journalist and academic.[1]

Life

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Koning was born in Kuala Belait, Borneo in 1954, and spent her early childhood in Venezuela and Jamaica. After coming to England, she was educated at Girton College, Cambridge and the University of Edinburgh – the setting for her first novel.[2]

She has worked extensively as a travel writer and literary critic – notably as Books Editor for The Times and Cosmopolitan,[2] and on BBC Radio 4's Woman's Hour - and was a judge for the Society of Authors' McKitterick Prize for three years.

As an academic, she has taught Creative Writing at the University of Oxford and University of London, and was the 2014-15 Royal Literary Fund Fellow at Newnham College, Cambridge. She has taught at Cambridge University's Institute of Continuing Education at Madingley Hall and was Editor of Collected, the Royal Literary Fund's magazine.[2]

Koning's first novel, A Mild Suicide (Lime Tree, 1992) is set in Edinburgh in 1977[4] and was short-listed for the David Higham Prize for Fiction.[1] Her second novel Undiscovered Country (Penguin, 1997)[5][6] won the Encore Award and contended for the Orange Prize for Fiction. That novel explores aspects of colonialism, an awareness from her early childhood in Venezuela. Fabulous Time (Viking, 2000) is another novel with colonial themes and is partly set in China during the Xinhai Revolution (1911 revolution).[7] It won the Society of Authors Travelling Scholarship. The Anglo-Zulu War in South Africa (1879) is the setting for her work The Dark Tower (Arbuthnot, 2010).

Recent novels include Variable Stars (Arbuthnot, 2011), about the 18th-century astronomer Caroline Herschel and Line of Sight (Arbuthnot, 2014), the first in a series of detective stories set during the 1920s in the aftermath of the First World War. Game of Chance (Arbuthnot, 2015), set in 1929, continues the Blind Detective series, and is followed by Time of Flight (Arbuthnot, 2016), Out of Shot (Arbuthnot, 2017), End of Term (Arbuthnot, 2018), and Murder in Berlin (Allison & Busby, 2023).[8]

Koning has two children, and lives in Cambridge.

Bibliography

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Wikiquote has quotations related to Christina Koning.

Novels

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  • A Mild Suicide (1992)
  • Undiscovered Country (1998)
  • Fabulous Time (2001)
  • The Dark Tower (2010)[1]
  • Variable Stars (2011)
  • Line of Sight (2014)
  • Game of Chance (2015)
  • Time of Flight (2016)
  • Out of Shot (2017)
  • End of Term (2018)
  • Murder in Berlin (2023)

References

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  1. ^ a b c d "Christina Koning". The Royal Literary Fund. Retrieved 31 May 2021.
  2. ^ a b c d "(Angela) Christina Koning", The Writers Directory, St. James Press, 2018; online version in Gale In Context: Biography. Accessed 14 Nov. 2024.
  3. ^ "AC Koning (1920s and 1930s Europe)" (entry), in: Barry Foreshaw, Historical Noir: The Pocket Essential Guide to Fiction, Film and TV, Pocket Essentials, 2018.
  4. ^ Gina Sykes, "A study in passion", Huddersfield Daily Examiner, 16 April 1992, p. 20.
  5. ^ Alex Clark, "Doomed enclave", The Guardian, 26 February 1998, p. 91.
  6. ^ J.M., "Hidden lives", Sunday Telegraph, 15 February 1998, p. 44.
  7. ^ Alex Clark, "Hippy shakes", The Guardian, 17 March 2001, p. 54.
  8. ^ The Blind Detective, allisonandbusby.com. Retrieved 15 November 2024.
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