Reading lists and articles featuring James Scudamore

Biography

James Scudamore (born 1976) is a British novelist known for exploring themes of memory, class, and societal divides. Raised in Japan, Brazil, and the UK, he studied at Christ Church, Oxford, before earning a degree from the University of East Anglia.

His debut novel, The Amnesia Clinic (2006), won the Somerset Maugham Award and was shortlisted for multiple prizes, including the Costa First Novel Award. Hilary Mantel described it as “witty, polished, fluent and effortlessly entertaining.” His second novel, Heliopolis (2009), set in São Paulo, was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize. Wreaking (2013) explored decay and memory through the setting of an abandoned psychiatric hospital, while English Monsters (2020) examined the lasting impact of abuse in an English boarding school.

Scudamore has contributed to 1843 Magazine, Prospect, The Sunday Times Magazine, Time Out, and Tin House. He has taught creative writing at the University of East Anglia, City University of Hong Kong, and Vermont College of Fine Arts, where he is on the faculty of the International MFA in Creative Writing and Literary Translation.

He is married to Rose Grimond, granddaughter of Liberal politician Jo Grimond.

• Author website

Books by James Scudamore

• Heliopolis
• The Amnesia Clinic
• Wreaking
• English Monsters
• Homer a la Mode a Mock Poem Upon the First and Second Books of Homer’s Iliads. (1664)
• Sea Stories
• The Literary Review: Refrigerator Mothers