Christopher Hope Biography

Writing has always seemed to me to be a rather mischievous occupation. I write not to change the world but to undermine it, since the models on offer seem pretty dull most of the time. Much of life is odd and disorganized. Many people who pretend to be sure about things are either ingenuous or wicked. They are also often charlatans. One wants to record their utterances as a warning to others.

I was lucky enough to grow up in South Africa, a place where the lethal folly of what everyone assured me was "normal" life outstripped even the most audacious imaginations. For a writer, this was wonderful training. It taught me about the sheer inventiveness of life. And it gave me a subject—the triumph of power and the terminal comedy provided by those who wield it.

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