Magnus Mills, a bus driver by trade, is the author of seven novels and three collections of stories, which he types on a typewriter. He doesn't have an email account, and corresponds by postcard. His first novel, The Restraint of Beasts, won the McKitterick Prize and was shortlisted for both the Whitbread (now the Costa) First Novel Award and the Man Booker Prize. It was praised by Thomas Pynchon as "A demented, deadpan comic wonder." Mills' books have been translated into twenty languages. He lives in London.