Lewis Crofts at Alchemy Prague

December 3rd, 2007, 8pm, Globe Café

Lewis Crofts -

Lewis Crofts will be reading from his recently published novel The Pornographer of Vienna. The Pornographer of Vienna tells the life story of Egon Schiele, the infamous Austrian painter famed for his sexually explicit portraits of the underbelly of Viennese life in the dying years of the Habsburg empire.

"A bold reimagining of the short, frenetic life of Egon Schiele, Crofts's debut doesn't shrink from depicting the squalor of his existence and powerfully evokes his uncompromising talent." -- The Guardian

Lewis Crofts was born in 1977 in Blackburn, UK. After growing up in Somerset, he moved to Oxford to study Modern and Medieval Languages at St Catherine's College. In 2000, he went to live in Hanover, Germany, where he worked as a translator and teacher and tried to grow a handlebar moustache. A year later and still smooth-faced, he moved to Prague to take up a lecturing post at the British and American Studies Faculty of the Charles University.

While in Prague, he also worked at the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe. It was during a weekend trip to Cesky Krumov that Lewis had his first real exposure to Egon Schiele, which subsequently gave birth to the novel The Pornographer of Vienna published in June 2007.

In 2003, he left Prague for Brussels where he now lives and works as a journalist. He has failed to grow a handlebar moustache but he is currently working on a second novel which might feature beards.