© jason wallace 2013. All rights reserved.
"If I stood you in front of a man, pressed the cold metal of a gun into your palm and told you to squeeze the trigger, would you do it?"
"No, Sir."
"Are you sure?"
"Of course, Sir. No ways!"
"What if I then told you we'd gone back in time and his name was Adolf Hitler? Would you do it then? Would you? Would you?"
- Out of Shadows
meet the author
Born in Cheltenham, UK, in 1969, I spent my earlier years growing up in south-west London until my family upped and packed for a new life in southern Africa.
Specifically, in Zimbabwe, where I encountered a tough, but excellent boarding school and a world of fantastic experience.
Contact me for talks, book clubs, workshops, creative writing tutoring and school visits
Descendent of an International cricketer and sea-sickness sufferer - in the days when the only means of reaching the tour of Australia required many weeks at sea – I realised ambition was similarly never going to be easy when I decided, at the age of seventeen, that I wanted to be an author.
I'd always had a fertile imagination, but as far as I'm concerned it's the school I need to thank for inadvertently nurturing my will to write through strong discipline (there was no such thing as an excuse) and a sound education, both inside and outside of the classroom.
I returned to England with my life-plan in my pocket, and set about a university degree and then jobs. Needless to say, getting published didn't happen overnight, and writing had to become "the other job" for which I didn't get paid while life continued.
But the main thing is, I wrote – late at night, on the train to work, in my lunch hours... There was never a good enough excuse to let me stop.
And besides, it's all I've ever really wanted to do.
Jason Wallace on his 'dark' book
As part of his series of meeting the short listed authors for the Costa Book of the Year award, the BBC's Nick Higham has spoken to me when I won the Costa prize for the best children's book of 2010.
View video on BBC site
out of shadows
"A unanimous winner... A stunning debut novel without a false note. Accomplished and powerful, it changes the way you think." - Costa winner, 2010
Zimbabwe, 1980s... The war is over, independence has been won and Robert Mugabe has come to power offering hope, land and freedom to black Africans. It is the end of the Old Way and the start of a promising new era.
For Robert Jacklin, it's all new: new continent, new country, new school. And very quickly he is forced to understand a new way of thinking, because for some of his classmates the sound of guns is still loud, and their battles rage on… white boys who want their old country back, not this new black African government.
Boys like Ivan. Clever, cunning, wicked Ivan. For him, there is still one last battle to fight, and he's taking it right to the very top…
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Some Link Herea children's classic - Daily Express gripping - The Times a powerful, devastating read - Patrick Ness impossible to look away - Markus Zusak excellent - Independent on Sunday provocative - Keith Gray mastery - Kirkus Magazine, starred review original...thought-provoking and ultimately shocking - Good Book Guide one of those rare, outstanding books - Browns Books for Students extraordinary... startlingly original - The Bookseller expert and disturbing - Book Trust memorable, moving and disturbing - Lovereading4kids gripping - Write Away
encounters
After the publication of Out of Shadows, I rather naively and foolishly believed that all I had to do was mark a page with a blot ink and I'd get published again, but this couldn’t have been further from the truth. Ideas came, but the two novels I spent my time writing were – to put it bluntly – rubbish.
Cue sound of frustrated author going back to the drawing board, wondering: What is it people want to read?
That’s when I remembered this story about something that actually happened just an hour’s drive from where I used to live in Zimbabwe. The result? A book called Encounters. And for me – despite having once thought that I’d never do better than Out of Shadows – it is the best thing I’ve ever written.
You can find out more about Encounters here, or watch the trailer below.
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