Dinah Mary Jefferies is a British novelist, and a short-story and article writer.
Biography
Dinah Jefferies was born in Malacca, Malaya in 1948 and moved to England in 1956 at age eight after the country became independent. She studied at the Birmingham College of Art and later at the University of Ulster, where she graduated in English literature. While in college she became pregnant with her first child, her son Jamie. Jefferies did not remain with Jamie's father and later moved into a musicians' commune in Sotherton, Suffolk. where she went on to marry Jon Owen, a member of the band The Global Village Trucking Company that were based there, with whom she had one daughter. After separating with Owen some years later she began teaching at Dartington Hall School. After she left teaching at Dartington she subsequently met Richard Jefferies and the two have been married since 1998. When her son Jamie was fourteen he was killed in an accident at school and the experience went on after many years to form part of the inspiration for her 2013 work The Separation. However, an article in Best Magazine, 5 April 2016 made a number of erroneous statements: that The Tea Planter's Wife was set in Malaya when it was set in Ceylon; that her son Jamie was on the back of a motorbike driven by another older boy when he died, in fact Jamie was alone and driving it by himself when he died, he was riding in Dartington Hall School. grounds when the older boy let him have a go on it; as well as more minor errors. Her 2015 novel, The Tea Planter's Wife, was a choice for the Richard and Judy Book Club. and was in the Sunday Timesbest sellers list for 16 weeks continuously from September until Christmas 2015, topping it twice during that time.. Her next novel in 2016 novel, The Silk Merchant's Daughter, also entered the Sunday Times top 10. She has been a bestseller in Italy with both The Tea Planter's Wife and her 2017 book Before the Rains. The Sapphire Widow was published in April 2018. It too was a Richard and JudyBook Club pick for Summer 2018 and it also entered The Sunday TimesTop 10 bestsellers list within 3 days of publication, staying there for three weeks. Her next book, The Missing Sister, was published in March 2019, though the eBook and Audio books were published a few weeks earlier. The eBook reached no 1 on the Amazon Kindle charts and the paperback entered the UK top 10 best sellers at no 8 after just three days of sales. She reached 13 in the Italian charts with that book. Having mainly bsed her books in South/South-East Asia, her 2020 book, The Tuscan Contessa, is set in Tuscany, Italy, during WW2. It is published in Italy and in the UK in July 2020. Her books have been published in nearly 30 different languages.
