Michel Faber

Michel Faber (born 13 April 1960) is a Dutch-born writer of English-language fiction, including his 2002 novel The Crimson Petal and the White.

Faber was born in The Hague, Netherlands. He and his parents emigrated to Australia in 1967. He attended primary and secondary school in the Melbourne suburbs of Boronia and Bayswater, then attended the University of Melbourne, studying Dutch, Philosophy, Rhetoric, English Language (a course involving translation and criticism of Anglo-Saxon and Middle English texts) and English Literature. He graduated in 1980. He worked as a cleaner and at various other casual jobs, before training as a nurse at Marrickville and Western Suburbs hospitals in Sydney. He nursed until the mid-1990s. In 1993 he, his second wife and family emigrated to Scotland. Faber’s second wife Eva died of cancer in July 2014 and he published a poetry collection, Undying, about this event in 2016.

In Scotland, Faber is considered a Scottish author, or at least "Scottish by formation" (the term defining eligibility to enter the Macallan Short Story Competition, which Faber won in 1996). Most of Faber’s literary prizes, like The Neil Gunn Prize, The Macallan Prize and The Saltire First Book of the Year Award, were won in Scotland, he lives in Scotland, and his works are published by a Scottish-based publisher. In Australia, Faber is considered an Australian, because of his long residence there, because almost all of his schooling was completed there, and because some of his short stories are set in Australia. In the Netherlands, he is considered Dutch, except by those who are unaware of his origins. Faber's works are translated into Dutch by professional translators, not by Faber himself.

In 2001, when the publication of The Crimson Petal and the White was imminent, Canongate urged Faber to become a UK citizen so that the book could be submitted for the Booker Prize, which was at that time open only to authors holding Commonwealth passports. Faber declined, as he did not wish to become British at a time when the British government was preparing to follow the United States into war on Afghanistan and Iraq. Faber's citizenship remains Dutch. He identifies himself as no particular nationality, and the themes, scope and style of his literary work are not characteristically British, Australian or Dutch, but broadly European.

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