Client details

Beatrice Colin was born in London and raised in Scotland. Her debut novel, THE LUMINOUS LIFE OF LILLY APHRODITE was chosen for the Richard and Judy Book Club 2009.

She has worked as a freelance journalist for The Guardian and other publications, and has written radio plays for the BBC. She lives in Glasgow.

You can find out more about Beatrice on her website www.beatricecolin.co.uk.

Latest Publication:

THE SONGWRITER, John Murray, (04 Mar 2010)

A novel set in 1917-18 in New York's Tin Pan Alley during the final years of the First World War. Hedda is a young woman of German extraction who works in her father's music publishing business demonstrating popular songs on a piano. Frank is a young musician from New Orleans who has been enlisted into an all African-American regiment and is waiting to sail from Hoboken to the France. When they meet when Frank tries to sell her one of his songs, they strike up a relationship and the old and new worlds collide. Focusing on the birth of Jazz, the American role in the Great War and its aftermath, this tightly focused novel aims to be a moving and illuminating account of a significant moment in world history.

Praise for Beatrice Colin's The Luminous Life of Lilly Aphrodite:

"The storytelling is masterful and the language magical. The Luminous Life of Lilly Aphrodite is a rich book, in both its prose and in the strength of its characters." The Times

“Colin often writes with a supple, whimsical charm”  New York Times Sunday Book Review

"Written with intelligence and shimmer, The Glimmer Palace transports the reader to Berlin in the first part of the twentieth century. Colin’s heroine, Lilly Aphrodite, is as rich, alive, and dangerous as the city she inhabits; and as the novel progresses, Berlin’s history becomes her own.” David Ebershoff, author of The Danish Girl and The 19th Wife

“There are few characters as beguiling as the incomparable Tiny Lil. And Colin tells her riveting story—and the enthralling story of pre-war Berlin—breathlessly and triumphantly.” Jennifer Gilmore, author of Golden Country

“[A] haunting debut [which] offers an intriguing look at the early 20th-century German film industry… [this] novel will captivate readers as it recreates Germany’s cinematic revolution and the country’s subsequent tragic course through history.” Publishers Weekly (USA)