Sid Smith

Background

Sid Smith was born on May 22, 1949, in Preston, Lancashire, England, United Kingdom.

Education

From 1975 to 1979 Sid Smith earned a degree in English literature at the University of Wales.

Career

Sid Smith worked variously as a gardener, furniture mover, gravedigger, construction worker, and railway worker. He was a teacher of English in Athens, Greece, Italy, and London, England. Smith served as a staff writer from Time Out, a magazine.

Sid Smith retired from news writing after seventeen years to become a novelist. He published his first novel. Something like a House, in 2001, at the age of fifty-one. When Smith’s fiction debut captured that year’s prestigious Whitbread Award for the best first novel, he was surprised by the nod.

Something like a House tells the story of Jim Fraser, a British soldier who deserts the ranks of the United Nations forces during the Korean War. After Fraser abandons his post, he is captured by the Chinese Army. Brought first to a research lab, Fraser becomes the unwitting guinea pig of the sinister Madame Fei. Fraser is relocated to a small, rural Miao village, where he builds a quiet life as a farmer among the peasants. Years later he, like the rest of the country, is caught up in Mao’s Cultural Revolution. Again routed out as a foreigner by the zealous communist Red Guards, Fraser becomes a trophy of the Chinese superiority over Westerners and is forced to witness the Guards’ torture and execution of those suspected to be capitalist agents.

His other works include A House by the River (2003), China Dreams (2007). He is a sub-editor at The Times. He is a contributor of articles to periodicals, including Guardian, London Times, P.C. User, Q, Independent, and Evening Standard.

Achievements

• Sid Smith is best known as the author of Something Like a House. This book received the Whitbread First Novel Award and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. His works received high praise from critics.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Something Like A House

    (This is Jim Fraser's story: an incredible, often chilling...)

    2001
  • Nisbet and Trafalgar

    (Sid Smith, winner of the Whitbread First Novel Award and ...)

    2015
  • China Dreams

    (For weeks they went all over London on the little red Hon...)

    2007
  • A House by the River

    (At last, from the crest of a little cliff, we gazed with ...)

    2003

Interests

• paragliding

Connections

Sid Smith is married to Chieko Nomura.

Spouse:

Chieko Nomura

References

• Contemporary Authors
  2010
• The Official Website of Sid Smith