Michelle Paver


Michelle Paver is a British novelist and children's writer, known for the fantasy series Chronicles of Ancient Darkness, set in pre-agricultural Stone Age Europe. For the concluding book Ghost Hunter she won the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize, a book award judged by a panel of British children's writers.

Biography

Michelle Paver was born in Nyasaland in central Africa. Her mother was Belgian and her South African father ran a newspaper, the Nyasaland Times. Her family settled in Wimbledon, England when she was three. She was educated at The Study and Wimbledon High School. After reading biochemistry at Lady Margaret Hall, University of Oxford, where she attained a first-class degree, she became a partner in a City of London law firm.
Her father's death in 1996 prompted her to take a one-year sabbatical, during which she travelled around France and America and wrote her first book, Without Charity. She resigned from legal practice soon after her return, to concentrate on writing. Her 2010 ghost novel Dark Matter was nominated for a Shirley Jackson Award for best novel.

''Chronicles of Ancient Darkness''

The Chronicles of Ancient Darkness tell the story of Torak, a twelve-year-old boy who is clanless, and his friends Renn and Wolf. The main story arc revolves around Torak and his quest to defeat the Soul Eaters, a group of evil clan mages who seek out to destroy all life in the forest in which they live. The books are set in prehistoric Europe during the New Stone Age.
The first of the series, Wolf Brother was published in 2004 and as a whole the books have sold over 1 million copies in the UK. Paver was paid a reported £2.8 million advance for the first book.

''Gods and Warriors''

Michelle Paver's second series Gods and Warriors is set during the Bronze Age. It tells the story of Hylas, a 12-year-old goatherd, whose adventures take him to Ancient Crete and Ancient Egypt, and Pirra, the daughter of a high priestess with a crescent shaped scar on her cheek. The story crucially features animals in the plot – a lion, a falcon and a dolphin; the dolphin from the first book, the lion from the second book onwards and the falcon from the 3rd book onwards.

Books

''Daughters of Eden'' trilogy