Nick Stone (author)
| Nick Stone | |
|---|---|
| Born |
31 October 1966 Cambridge, England |
| Occupation | Writer |
| Nationality | British |
| Ethnicity | Scottish–Haitian |
| Alma mater | University of Cambridge |
| Genre | Thriller |
| Notable works | The Max Mingus Trilogy: Mr Clarinet, King of Swords, Voodoo Eyes |
Nick Stone (born 31 October 1966) is a British thriller writer.
Stone was born in Cambridge, England, on 31 October 1966. He is of half-Scottish and half-Haitian descent. His father, Norman Stone, is a well-known historian and his mother, Nicole, was a niece of the finance minister in the Haitian government of François Duvalier ("Papa Doc").
When he was six months old, Stone was sent to Haiti to live with his grandparents, where he stayed until returning to England in 1970. He returned to Haiti during 1973-1974, in 1982 and in 1995. His grandparents owned an estate in Haiti and some of his relatives worked for the country's dictator, Duvalier. During his visit in 1982 he met Jean Bertrand Aristide, the priest who would become Haiti's first democratically elected President; he has said that he had high hopes for Aristide's term as president but that "he turned out to be Papa Doc without the jokes". He has cited his Haitian experience as being an influence on his writings and has said that until his visit in the 1990s he thought it to be an "idyllic" place. From that visit he has said:
It was an utter shock. I was expecting the place to be a shambles, but I was totally unprepared for what I found. The place looked like it had been turned upside down, kicked around and trampled into the dirt. It was barely working. 90% unemployment, rabid crime rates, packs of feral kids wherever you turned, mountains of rubbish in the roads, some of it smouldering. Everyone who could afford to lived behind high, barbed-wire topped walls. Everyone had guns, attack dogs and a drinking problem. Heavyweight paranoia trampled lightweight common sense.
He was bullied as a child due to his skin colour. This caused him to take up amateur boxing, at which he fought at welterweight and light-middleweight. His maternal grandfather had been a bareknuckle boxer based in France before World War II. He read history at the University of Cambridge.
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