Tom Quinn was born in Glasgow in 1948. Leaving school at 15, he worked in a Shipping Line office for some years, becoming involved in the North Sea Oil industry, at one stage, captaining a barge on the River Clyde. He moved to Rotterdam, the world’s largest port, in 1975 where he continued his career in shipping, making regular trips to other European cities. He returned to Scotland and became a founding partner in a small shipping and forwarding company before emigrating to Australia in 1988. In his time in Australia, as part of his work for the oil industry he has spent time living and working in Melbourne, Darwin, and visiting Singapore, Indonesia and Papua New Guinea. In 2000, he won the HarperCollins Fiction Prize for his first novel, Striking It Poor. Tom Quinn is married and now lives in Melbourne with his wife, three children and nine grandchildren. He plays the guitar, reads literature, listens to classical music, and occasionally works as a logistics consultant for a major multinational.
After dropping out of university, getting a job as a storeman, doing drugs and then splitting up with his wife, Jack, in a fit of depression, joins the Australian Army and is sent to East Timor at the height of the troubles. He “volunteers” for a mission in Indonesia, where the United Nations, w...
