A native of Paterson, N.J., Richard Kluger grew up in Manhattan, graduated from Princeton University, where he chaired The Daily Princetonian, and as a young journalist worked for The Wall Street Journal, the pre-Murdoch New York Post and Forbes magazine before becoming the last literary editor of the New York Herald Tribune. When the Tribune folded, Kluger entered the book industry, rising to executive editor of Simon and Schuster, editor-in-chief of Atheneum, and publisher of Charterhouse Books. Of Kluger's seven novels previous to HAMLET'S CHILDREN, the most widely read have been Members of the Tribe, about which the Chicago Tribune wrote, "This excellent novel is a sobering story . . . filled with anguish and a sense of injustice, of hopes carefully nurtured and casually betrayed," and The Sheriff of Nottingham, which Time called "richly imagined and beautifully written." He also co-authored two novels with his wife Phyllis, a fiber artist and herself the author of two books on needlework design. The Klugers live in Berkeley.
