KING, Roger (Frank Graham) 1947-

PERSONAL: Born March 14, 1947, in Enfield, Middlesex, England; immigrated to the United States; son of Frank Leonard (a factory floor supervisor) and Minnie Eileen (a social services administrator; maiden name, Salter) King. Education: University of Nottingham, B.Sc. (with honors), 1969; University of Massachusetts, M.S., 1972; University of Reading, Ph. D., 1977. Politics: "Ex-British Labour Party. No present affiliation." Hobbies and other interests: Film, twentieth-century painting, sailing.

ADDRESSES: Offıce—154 Shutesbury Rd., Leverett, MA 01054-9703. Agent—Marian Young, The Young Agency, 29 Grace Ct., Brooklyn Heights, NY 11201. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER: Writer. Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, Nigeria, lecturer and research fellow in agricultural economics and rural development, 1972-74; University of Reading, Reading, England, research officer in rural development, 1975-79; consultant in twenty countries for international development agencies, including United Nations International Fund for Agricultural Development, Rome, Italy, and Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Rome, 1978-90; Eastern Washington University, Spokane, WA, visiting professor of English, 1990-91; San Francisco State University, associate professor of creative writing, 1994-97. Former adviser to OXFAM (Oxford Committee for Famine Relief) and United Nations Research Institute for Social Development; Ph.D. thesis supervisor for Open University.

MEMBER: PEN.

AWARDS, HONORS: Booker Prize nominations, 1983, for Horizontal Hotel, and 1987, for Written on a Stranger's Map; British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC)/Writers' Guild Award for first screenplay by a novelist, 1988, for The Price of Rice; Yaddo writing fellow, 1988, 1990, and 1992; MacDowell writing fellow, 1989 and 1990; Bread Loaf fellow in fiction, 1990.

WRITINGS:

NOVELS

Horizontal Hotel, Deutsch (London, England), 1983.

Written on a Stranger's Map, Grafton-Collins (London, England), 1987.

Sea Level, Poseidon (New York, NY), 1992.

Zanzibar Weather, Ecco Press (Hopewell, NJ), 1999.

A Girl from Zanzibar, Books & Co./Helen Marx Books (New York, NY), 2002.

OTHER

Farmers Cooperatives in Northern Nigeria: A Case Study Used to Illustrate the Relationship between Economic Development and Institutional Change, Department of Agricultural Economics, Ahmadu Bello University (Zaria, Nigeria), 1976.

Jacques Cousteau and the Undersea World (part of the "Explorers of New Worlds" series), Chelsea House Publishers (Philadelphia, PA), 2001.

Also author of screenplay, The Price of Rice, and, under pseudonym Leonard Frank, of "The Developmental Game" which appeared in Granta. Has also contributed short stories to Parnassus. Founding editor of Rural Developmental Bulletin, 1977-79.

SIDELIGHTS: Roger King's first novel, Horizontal Hotel, "explores the subtleties of the neo-colonial relationship of white men working within a black government," according to Betsy Hartmann of New Internationalist. The novel is set in Africa, which is both a "physical location and 'an area of our minds,'" wrote Hartmann. Horizontal Hotel focuses on John Meddows, a rural planner, who learns about Africa through African women. When Meddows becomes sick with a fever that sends him to the hospital in a hallucinatory state, his senses are heightened and he realizes that much of what he believes is an illusion. As Hartmann explained, "he is forced to face himself. . . . The book leaves you thinking: the writing is inspired."

King followed Horizontal Hotel with Written on a Stranger's Map, before publishing Sea Level in the United States. Termed "a strong American debut" by a Publishers Weekly reviewer, the novel focuses on William Bender, a consultant for global banking organizations who reevaluates his life after his father's death. He reassesses his relationships with his parents, his estranged wife, and the various people with whom he has had affairs. After traveling to a small island in the Pacific, Bender concocts an imaginary past for his father, which provides him with some relief for the grief that he feels about his life. Although some reviewers felt that the story would have benefited from a faster pace, several critics praised King for his skillful portrayal of the main character. Commenting on the author's craft, Alexandra Enders of the New York Times Book Review called Sea Level "a beautifully worked novel" and a "poignant story of Bender's internal journey homeward."

King once told CA: "British born, I became a United States permanent resident in 1992. Because of my earlier career with international organizations concerned with Third World poverty, my fiction writing is often concerned with the interconnectedness of cultures and politics and how this global diffusion affects the tiny daily details of people's lives. The content seeks its own light-footed style which reflects the compression, connectedness, and shifting ground of a world with vanishing boundaries."

This "world with vanishing boundaries" King refers to is demonstrated quite well in A Girl from Zanzibar, in which King's main character, Marcella D'Souza, is described as "a Goan Indian Portuguese Arab African of Catholic Moslem parentage," who moves from Zanzibar, to London, to the United States. The book moves back and forth in time as Marcella recalls the turbulent life that brought her to the small college in Vermont, where she now serves as a professor of multicultural studies. Marcella begins as an enterprising young woman in Zanzibar who runs several successful businesses. However, when the opportunity strikes, she is quick to abandon her endeavors and move to London, where she succeeds at selling real estate and meets Benji, the love of her life. Marcella's happiness is short-lived; when she is wrongfully convicted on a drug charge, she is sentenced to eight years in prison. Earning her degree through an Open University program while in prison, Marcella eventually ends up as a professor in Vermont.

Elaina Richardson of O, the Oprah Magazine pointed out that Marcella's search for identity is a "metaphor for the modern world of immigration and the issues of identity that have vexed our times." New York Times book reviewer Suzanne Ruta called A Girl from Zanzibar a "timely, entertaining novel" that "meanders artfully from then to now and back again" in a "vivid, precise, and fast-paced narrative." A Kirkus Reviews contributor dubbed the novel "an engaging and subtle tale that unites far-flung worlds in the person of a complex, intriguing heroine." Library Journal's Lisa Rohrbaugh noted, "King offers wonderful descriptions of distant places," and commended the author's "easy, fluid writing style." Richardson ultimately praised the novel as a "well-told, frequently surprising story."

In addition to his novels, King has also authored short stories and a screenplay titled The Price of Rice. His Jacques Cousteau and the Undersea World, written as part of Chelsea House Publishers' "Explorers of New Worlds" series for middle-grade readers, details the life of French naval officer and ocean explorer Jacques Cousteau.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Directory of American Scholars, 10th edition, Gale (Detroit, MI), 2001.

PERIODICALS

Booklist, August, 2002, Kaite Mediatore, review of A Girl from Zanzibar, p. 1921.

Book Report, May, 2001, review of Jacques Cousteau and the Undersea World, p. 70.

Kirkus Reviews, September 1, 2002, review of A Girl from Zanzibar, p. 1254.

Library Journal, September 15, 2002, Lisa Rohrbaugh, review of A Girl from Zanzibar, p. 92.

New Internationalist, October, 1983, Betsy Hartmann, "The African Experience," review of Horizontal Hotel.

New Yorker, September 7, 1992, p. 95.

New York Times, November 24, 2002, Suzanne Ruta, "Benji and Marcella Get Paid," review of A Girl from Zanzibar, p. 30.

New York Times Book Review, April 26, 1992, p. 18.

O, the Oprah Magazine, November, 2002, Elaina Richardson, "Marcella in Search of Herself: A Headstrong Heroine Zigzags from Zanzibar to America in Roger King's Daring New Novel," review of A Girl from Zanzibar, p. 180.

Publishers Weekly, February 10, 1992, p. 70; December 9, 2002, review of A Girl from Zanzibar, p. 63.

School Library Journal, April, 2001, William McLoughlin, review of Jacques Cousteau and the Undersea World, p. 158.*