Pauline Melville

Pauline Melville (born 1948) is a Guyanese-born writer and actress of mixed European and Amerindian ancestry, who is currently based in London, England. Among awards she has received for her writing are the Commonwealth Writers' Prize, the Guardian Fiction Prize, the Whitbread First Novel Award, and the Guyana Prize for Literature. Salman Rushdie has said: "I believe her to be one of the few genuinely original writers to emerge in recent years."

Melville was born in Guyana; her mother was English, and her father Guyanese of mixed race, "part South American Indian, African and Scottish".

A professional actor before she became a writer, Melville has appeared in films that include Mona Lisa (as Bob Hoskins' estranged wife), as Dora in The Long Good Friday. She also appeared in television programmes: as Vyvyan's mother in the BBC Television comedy series The Young Ones; as Yvonne in Girls on Top, among other roles.

Melville's first book, Shape-Shifter (1990), a collection of short stories, won the 1991 Commonwealth Writers' Prize (Overall Winner, Best First Book), the Guardian Fiction Prize, and the PEN/Macmillan Silver Pen Award. A number of the stories deal with post-colonial life in the Caribbean, particularly in her native Guyana, as well as of some stories being set in London. Many of her characters, most of them displaced people from former colonies struggling to come to terms with a new life in Britain, attempt to find an identity, to reconcile their past and to escape from the restlessness hinted at in the title. Salman Rushdie described the collection as "notably sharp, funny, original...part Caribbean magic, part London grime, written in a slippery, chameleon language that is a frequent delight".

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