Rachel Seiffert

She was born in 1971 in Oxford^[1] to German and Australian parents, and was brought up bilingually. She lives in London.^[2]

Seiffert has published six works of fiction to date:

The Dark Room (2001) is a novel, shortlisted for the Booker Prize^[3] and the Guardian First Book Award in 2001, winner of the LA Times Prize for First Fiction and a Betty Trask Award in 2002.^[4] The 2012 movie Lore by writer-director Cate Shortland is based on The Dark Room.^[5]

Field Study (2004) is a collection of short stories, one of which received an award from International PEN.

Afterwards (2007) is a novel, long-listed for the Orange Prize for Fiction the same year.

The Walk Home (2014) is a novel set in Glasgow about a family torn apart.

A Boy in Winter (2017) is a novel set during the 1941 German invasion of the Ukraine during Operation Barbarossa.

Once the Deed Is Done (2025) is a novel about the aftermath of WWII. It was shortlisted for the Walter Scott Prize in 2026.^[6]

Seiffert was named as one of Granta magazine's 20 Best of Young British Novelists in 2003, and her short story "Field Study" was included in the subsequent collection.^[7]

In 2011, she received the E. M. Forster Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Her books have been translated into ten languages.