Adam Mars-Jones

Who is Adam Mars-Jones?

Adam Mars-Jones is a British novelist and critic.

Mars-Jones was born in London, to parents William Mars-Jones, the Welsh High Court judge and President of the London Welsh Trust, and Sheila. Mars-Jones studied at Westminster School, and read Classics at Trinity Hall, Cambridge. He is a regular contributor to The Guardian, The Observer, The Times Literary Supplement, and BBC Television's Newsnight Review.

His first collection of stories, Lantern Lecture, won a Somerset Maugham Award. Other works include Monopolies of Loss and The Darker Proof: Stories from a Crisis, which was co-written with Edmund White. His first novel, The Waters of Thirst, was published in 1993. Blind Bitter Happiness, a collection of essays, includes 'Venus Envy', which was originally published in the CounterBlasts series in 1990. Pilcrow was his second novel, followed by Cedilla in 2011. These two works form the first two parts of a projected trilogy.

He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2007.

In 2011 he wrote a book called "Noriko Smiling" on the film Late Spring directed by Yasujiro Ozu.

In 2012 he was awarded the inaugural Hatchet Job of the Year Award for his review of Michael Cunningham's By Nightfall.