Lee Langley was born in Calcutta, India. She is the author of several novels, including Changes of Address (1987), a largely autobiographical account of her childhood in India, the first in a loose trilogy of novels set in India which was short-listed for the Hawthornden Prize . It was followed by Persistent Rumours (1992), which won the Writers' Guild Award (Best Fiction) and the Commonwealth Writers' Prize

Commonwealth Writers' Prize

Commonwealth Writers is an initiative by the Commonwealth Foundation to unearth, develop and promote the best new fiction from across the Commonwealth. It's flagship are two literary awards and a website...

 (Eurasia Region, Best Book), and A House in Pondicherry (1995). Her novel, Distant Music (2001), spans six centuries in a narrative that begins on the Portuguese island of Madeira in the 15th century and ends in London in the year 2000. Her most recent novel, A Conversation on the Quai Voltaire (2006), was set in 18th and 19th century Paris, Italy, Russia and Egypt, and recreated the life of Dominique Vivant Denon, one of the most significant figures in French art history.

She has also written several film scripts and screenplays, including television adaptations of Graham Greene

Graham Greene

Henry Graham Greene, OM, CH was an English author, playwright and literary critic. His works explore the ambivalent moral and political issues of the modern world...

's The Tenth Man; several stories by Rumer Godden

Rumer Godden

Margaret Rumer Godden OBE was an English author of over 60 fiction and nonfiction books written under the name of Rumer Godden. A few of her works were co-written by her sister, Jon Godden, who wrote several novels on her own...

, and Barbara Taylor Bradford

Barbara Taylor Bradford

Barbara Taylor Bradford OBE is an English novelist, and one of the world's most beloved storytellers. Her debut novel, A Woman of Substance, was published in 1979 and has sold over 32 million copies worldwide. To date, she has written 27 novels -- all bestsellers on both sides of the Atlantic...

's A Woman of Substance

A Woman of Substance

A Woman of Substance is a novel by Barbara Taylor Bradford, and was published in 1979.This novel is the first of a saga about the fortunes of a retail empire and the machinations of the business elite across three generations....

. She has written on travel and the arts for leading newspapers and magazines.

Lee Langley is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. She lives in Richmond, London. Her next novel, “Butterfly’s Shadow” set in mid-twentieth century America and Japan, takes Puccini

Giacomo Puccini

Giacomo Antonio Domenico Michele Secondo Maria Puccini was an Italian composer whose operas, including La bohème, Tosca, Madama Butterfly, and Turandot, are among the most frequently performed in the standard repertoire...

’s opera Madame Butterfly as a springboard to send the characters into an imagined future.
Lee Langley lives in Richmond, London.

External links

• Lee Langley at ContemporaryWriters.com