She initially wrote for women's magazines after winning the 1986 Woman's Own Short Story Competition. She lived in Whitby, Yorkshire for a time, before moving to Edinburgh, where she taught at Dundee University and began writing short stories. During her final year of this course, she was married for the first time, although the marriage lasted only two years.Īfter leaving the university, she took on a variety of miscellaneous jobs from home help to legal secretary and teacher. She subsequently studied for a doctorate in American Literature which she failed at the viva stage. Kate Atkinson was born in York, and studied English Literature at the University of Dundee, gaining her Masters Degree in 1974.

Currently-lives in Edinburgh, Scotland, UK.

James Award Saltire Book of the Year Award Prix Westminster Awards-Whitbread Award Woman's Own Short Story Award Ian St.

It is a triumphant work of fiction from one of the best writers of our time. Transcription is a work of rare depth and texture, a bravura modern novel of extraordinary power, wit and empathy. A different war is being fought now, on a different battleground, but Juliet finds herself once more under threat.Ī bill of reckoning is due, and she finally begins to realize that there is no action without consequence. Ten years later, now a radio producer at the BBC, Juliet is unexpectedly confronted by figures from her past.

Sent to an obscure department of MI5 tasked with monitoring the comings and goings of British Fascist sympathizers, she discovers the work to be by turns both tedious and terrifying.īut after the war has ended, she presumes the events of those years have been relegated to the past forever. In 1940, eighteen-year old Juliet Armstrong is reluctantly recruited into the world of espionage. A thrilling new novel from the bestselling author of Life After Life

Transcription by kate atkinson summary