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Richard Mason

Biography

Richard Mason

Award-winning novelist Richard Mason was born in South Africa and lives in London.

He was 21 when his first novel, THE DROWNING PEOPLE, was published. It sold more than a million copies in 28 languages and won Italy’s Cavour Prize for Best First Novel. After his second novel, US, he began a collection of interconnected works that now include THE LIGHTED ROOMS, HISTORY OF A PLEASURE SEEKER and WHO KILLED PIET BAROL?

Richard Mason

Books by Richard Mason

Who Killed Piet Barol?
by Richard Mason - Fiction, Historical Fiction

Piet Barol was a tutor before he came to South Africa, his wife, Stacey, an opera singer. In Cape Town they are living the high life, impersonating French aristocrats --- but their lies are catching up with them. The Barols’ furniture business is on the verge of collapse, and they need cheap, top-quality wood. Piet enlists two Xhosa men to lead him into a vast forest, in search of a fabled tree. He’s sure he’ll be able to buy what he needs for a few glass trinkets. But he’s underestimating the Xhosa, who believe the spirits of their ancestors live in this sacred forest. Battle lines are drawn. When Piet’s powers of persuasion fail him, he resorts to darker, more dangerous talents to get what he is determined to have.

History of a Pleasure Seeker
by Richard Mason - Fiction, Historical Fiction

Piet Barol has an instinctive appreciation for pleasure and a gift for finding it. He applies for a job as tutor to the troubled son of Europe’s leading hotelier: a child who refuses to leave his family’s mansion on Amsterdam’s grandest canal. As the young man enters this glittering world, he learns its secrets --- and soon, quietly, steadily, finds his life transformed as he in turn transforms the lives of those around him.