Tobias Hill – författare

From PEN/Macmillan award-winning novelist and poet Tobias Hill comes The Hidden, a gripping story of a naive newcomer whose arrival at a high-stakes archaeological dig of ancient Spartan ruins unearths long-buried secrets. Interweaving scenes of ancient Sparta with present-day events in a fascinating study of group dynamics, Hill cuts to the heart of the games people play to stay in control. Written with astonishing grace and power, The Hidden is a novel about secrets and the true cost of fulfilling one’s desires.

London in the aftermath of war: children run wild on East End bombsites, while their elders strive for better lives in a country beggared by victory. Clarence and Bernadette Malcolm have come five thousand miles in search of prosperity, but find the Mother Country not at all as has been promised them; Solly and Dora Lazarus, too, are strangers in a strange land, struggling to belong even as they try to make sense of their past; and Michael and Mary Lockhart take with both hands all that the world owes them, wherever it leads them, whatever the cost. In the street markets and tenements of Bethnal Green the three families live and work together in uneasy harmony, until Michael shatters the balance between them, his hunger for betterment changing the courses of all their lives over decades and generations. Reaching across forty years and capturing a city and a people in a time of tumultuous change, What Was Promised is a breathtaking novel by a master storyteller.

London in the aftermath of war: children run wild on East End bombsites, while their elders strive for better lives in a country beggared by victory. Clarence and Bernadette Malcolm have come five thousand miles in search of prosperity, but find the Mother Country not at all as has been promised them; Solly and Dora Lazarus, too, are strangers in a strange land, struggling to belong even as they try to make sense of their past; and Michael and Mary Lockhart take with both hands all that the world owes them, wherever it leads them, whatever the cost. In the street markets and tenements of Bethnal Green the three families live and work together in uneasy harmony, until Michael shatters the balance between them, his hunger for betterment changing the courses of all their lives over decades and generations. Reaching across forty years and capturing a city and a people in a time of tumultuous change, What Was Promised is a breathtaking novel by a master storyteller.

Among the rush-hour crowds and abandoned levels of the London Underground, someone is pushing women under trains. In his search for the killer, Casimir, a Tube worker, is led ever deeper into this city beneath the city.Below the bright crowds and tunnel musicians is a labyrinth of long-forgotten cross-passages, deep shelters and derelict Victorian stations. Hunting for clues that will lead him to the killer, Casimir is also drawn back into his own past and the terrible secrets of his Polish childhood. In subterranean London, Casimir has gone to ground. But in his desperate search he discovers a chance for forgiveness and the emergence of a new life.Underground is a compelling, intensely atmospheric first novel. It confirms Tobias Hill as an author who, in the words of the Observer, ''writes the kind of fiction that can change the way you look at the world''.

''I am following the traces of a great jewel. All its owners are dead, and the jewel is lost...''Precious stones are thousands of years old. They pass through the hands of owners and smugglers, merchants and thieves. Often the hands leave no trace, but they are there all the same: they leave impressions, invisible, like atoms of hydrogen drawn to the surface of a diamond.The Love of Stones charts three lives linked by one such jewel. Katherine Sterne searches the goldsmiths'' quarters and hidden archives of contemporary London, Tokyo and Istanbul, following the trail of a long-lost jewel: a brooch of rubies, diamonds and pearls once worn by Queen Elizabeth I. Two hundred years earlier, a pair of Iraqi Jewish brothers travel to London, their fortunes made by an unearthed jar of mysterious and priceless stones. An epic story spanning two continents and six centuries, The Love of Stones follows three very different people, each in their own way consumed by the same desire. At the heart of their lives is the Three Brethren, the legendary jewel that binds them together in a narrative as clear and irresistible as the facets of a diamond.

'People like to think that money and love are opposites. Anna Moore, tax inspector A2 Grade, has come to be less sure ...'John Law is Anna's latest client, and her most formidable challenge. The 'Cryptographer', people call him. He is mysterious and charming, the world's first quadrillionaire, the inventor of an unbreakable code, the creator of the world's first great electric currency.In the new millenium, it is no longer quite acceptable to admire the rich. But Law is both distrusted and admired more than most, more than Anna understands. That will have to change. Rule number one: information is the inspector's greatest weapon. And Anna needs to know - what is it that a man like John Law would seek to hide, and why?

''People like to think that money and love are opposites. Anna Moore, tax inspector A2 Grade, has come to be less sure ...''John Law is Anna''s latest client, and her most formidable challenge. The ''Cryptographer'', people call him. He is mysterious and charming, the world''s first quadrillionaire, the inventor of an unbreakable code, the creator of the world''s first great electric currency.In the new millenium, it is no longer quite acceptable to admire the rich. But Law is both distrusted and admired more than most, more than Anna understands. That will have to change. Rule number one: information is the inspector''s greatest weapon. And Anna needs to know - what is it that a man like John Law would seek to hide, and why?

In an isolated trailer home in the far north of Japan, an old criminal scrutinizes his tattooed skin while he waits for the past to catch up with him. A year later, the life of a young policeman breaks down as he investigates a tattooed corpse and the history of death and guilt embedded in its skin.From the Japanese underworld to midnight in the London Zoo aquarium, Skin charts the lives of people in a world made stark and fantastical. The grief of a young computer programmer who cannot erase the ghostly memories of his twins. The vicious logic of the games played by children while their parents sip drinks under parasols. And London Zoo, where the disappearance of dead animals is blamed on the ''Featherman'', an eerie bodysnatcher who passes through London''s wastelands and derelict spaces, leaving no trace for the feathers of green humming-birds.

In an isolated trailer home in the far north of Japan, an old criminal scrutinizes his tattooed skin while he waits for the past to catch up with him. A year later, the life of a young policeman breaks down as he investigates a tattooed corpse and the history of death and guilt embedded in its skin.From the Japanese underworld to midnight in the London Zoo aquarium, Skin charts the lives of people in a world made stark and fantastical. The grief of a young computer programmer who cannot erase the ghostly memories of his twins. The vicious logic of the games played by children while their parents sip drinks under parasols. And London Zoo, where the disappearance of dead animals is blamed on the 'Featherman', an eerie bodysnatcher who passes through London's wastelands and derelict spaces, leaving no trace for the feathers of green humming-birds.

You''re ours, Ben. Now you are. Now you''re one of us.In Sparta, southern Greece, a close-knit team of archaeologists dig for the buried traces of a formidable ancient power. A latecomer, Ben Mercer, finds himself drawn to the brilliance and charisma of the group. But there is more to the team than he understands, and Ben must decide where his loyalties lie before the decision is taken for him.

You're ours, Ben. Now you are. Now you're one of us.In Sparta, southern Greece, a close-knit team of archaeologists dig for the buried traces of a formidable ancient power. A latecomer, Ben Mercer, finds himself drawn to the brilliance and charisma of the group. But there is more to the team than he understands, and Ben must decide where his loyalties lie before the decision is taken for him.

For the first time, this volume gathers together all Tobias Hill’s poems from his four full-length collections in one beautiful and collectable paperback edition, introduced by Maura Dooley.The Collected Poems marks an important moment in British poetry, drawing together Hill’s work from his Eric Gregory Award-winning debut, Year of the Dog (1995), to the bestselling Nocturne in Chrome & Sunset Yellow (2006). Hill’s celebrated ‘urban pastoral’ was decadent yet austere, driven through radical visual desire. Here in one volume we can see the extent of his imaginative journey, travelling through towns and cityscapes, presenting a simmering world of captured lives, haunting, but filled with charm and wit. The early work is dominated by Japan, where Hill lived for two years, yet it is his beloved London that becomes the imaginative centre of his work, filled with the sensuous intensity of that great city.Tobias Hill was selected as one of the country’s Next Generation poets in 2004, shortlisted for the 2004 Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year and named by the TLS as one of the best young writers in the country.

This lively second collection from a young, much-travelled writer, falls into two parts. ‘Transit’ includes poems of abroad, especially Japan, where Tobias Hill lived for two years. ‘Back to the City’ is about London, from hangover to Underground; Hiroshima; and the `City of Clocks’, a fusion of cities and ages. They are poems crammed with a young man’s curiosity and eye for detail, and show his great ability for story-telling. Tobias Hill lives in London, and besides writing (his short stories and novels are published by Faber) he reviews and edits several new magazines. “Hill’s special territory, in poetry and prose, is the ‘urban-pastoral’ ... his native North London is transformed, with many deftly dark touches, into an uneasy realm of the imagination. Hill clearly appreciated Simon Armitage’s storytelling persona; he also drew upon observation of the natural world in ways associated with Ted Hughes. Much of his imagery is by turns delicately ‘Japanese’, or reminiscent of the heyday of Craig Raine’s ‘Martian’ style. Hill has a romantic dimension in his work that is all his own. As a young man with an intense curiosity about the world, his work is full of sensual images, vignettes of city life – and romance ... these are poems of flirtation and desire.”– contemporarywriters.co.uk“The closeup detail taken directly from nature, then skewed through 90° to give the reader something completely new, even unique ... with this third collection, Hill promises to be a real force in poetry, displaying an utterly contemporary understanding of how nature continues to work.”– Poetry Review“There is a fin de siècle decadence about them ... not least in their brightly coloured diction, their luxuriant descriptiveness, their louche postures.”– Poetry Wales“Superb conjurations of place.”– Adam Mars Jones“Compassionate and intelligent ... so full of action and interest and that brings alive such an array of people and places, that it is difficult to believe they sprang from the pen of one writer.”– Rachel Cusk

Zoo is Tobias Hill’s third collection of poems. It shows the growing maturity of a voice already distinctive three years ago, when his first collection was noted for its ‘grand irony and playful humour, with episodes of tenderness and even charm’. Hill’s poems combine narrative impetus with musical lyricism. Influenced by the poetry of Japan and the paintings of Edward Hopper, they are full of intense sound, smell, and visions, Often through a nocturnal eye, Hill describes an urban-pastoral landscape, full of the greenhouse luxuriance of city flora, fauna and humanity. “Hill’s special territory, in poetry and prose, is the ‘urban-pastoral’ ... his native North London is transformed, with many deftly dark touches, into an uneasy realm of the imagination. Hill clearly appreciated Simon Armitage’s storytelling persona; he also drew upon observation of the natural world in ways associated with Ted Hughes. Much of his imagery is by turns delicately ‘Japanese’, or reminiscent of the heyday of Craig Raine’s ‘Martian’ style. Hill has a romantic dimension in his work that is all his own. As a young man with an intense curiosity about the world, his work is full of sensual images, vignettes of city life – and romance ... these are poems of flirtation and desire.”– contemporarywriters.co.uk“The closeup detail taken directly from nature, then skewed through 90° to give the reader something completely new, even unique ... with this third collection, Hill promises to be a real force in poetry, displaying an utterly contemporary understanding of how nature continues to work.”– Poetry Review“There is a fin de siècle decadence about them ... not least in their brightly coloured diction, their luxuriant descriptiveness, their louche postures.”– Poetry Wales“Superb conjurations of place.”– Adam Mars Jones“Compassionate and intelligent ... so full of action and interest and that brings alive such an array of people and places, that it is difficult to believe they sprang from the pen of one writer.”– Rachel Cusk

'I am following the traces of a great jewel. All its owners are dead, and the jewel is lost...'Precious stones are thousands of years old. They pass through the hands of owners and smugglers, merchants and thieves. Often the hands leave no trace, but they are there all the same: they leave impressions, invisible, like atoms of hydrogen drawn to the surface of a diamond.The Love of Stones charts three lives linked by one such jewel. Katherine Sterne searches the goldsmiths' quarters and hidden archives of contemporary London, Tokyo and Istanbul, following the trail of a long-lost jewel: a brooch of rubies, diamonds and pearls once worn by Queen Elizabeth I. Two hundred years earlier, a pair of Iraqi Jewish brothers travel to London, their fortunes made by an unearthed jar of mysterious and priceless stones. An epic story spanning two continents and six centuries, The Love of Stones follows three very different people, each in their own way consumed by the same desire. At the heart of their lives is the Three Brethren, the legendary jewel that binds them together in a narrative as clear and irresistible as the facets of a diamond.

Among the rush-hour crowds and abandoned levels of the London Underground, someone is pushing women under trains. In his search for the killer, Casimir, a Tube worker, is led ever deeper into this city beneath the city.Below the bright crowds and tunnel musicians is a labyrinth of long-forgotten cross-passages, deep shelters and derelict Victorian stations. Hunting for clues that will lead him to the killer, Casimir is also drawn back into his own past and the terrible secrets of his Polish childhood. In subterranean London, Casimir has gone to ground. But in his desperate search he discovers a chance for forgiveness and the emergence of a new life.Underground is a compelling, intensely atmospheric first novel. It confirms Tobias Hill as an author who, in the words of the Observer, 'writes the kind of fiction that can change the way you look at the world'.

In this latest collection of poems, Hill invokes people and place, mythologizing and demythologizing city lives as they are led. From poignant vignettes and celebrations to urban-pastoral and elegy, these poems extend Hill’s romance with London’s psychic and surreal fabric. Selected as a Next Generation poet, Hill continues to delight us with sensuous observation and imaginative embrace.“The close-up detail taken directly from nature, then skewed through 90° to give the reader something completely new, even unique … with this third collection, Hill promises to be a real force in poetry, displaying an utterly contemporary understanding of how nature continues to work.” —Poetry Review“There is a fin de siècle decadence about them … not least in their brightly coloured diction, their luxuriant descriptiveness, their louche postures.” —Poetry Wales“Superb conjurations of place.” —Adam Mars Jones“Compassionate and intelligent … so full of action and interest and that brings alive such an array of people and places, that it is difficult to believe they sprang from the pen of one writer.” —Rachel Cusk