Sara Maitland was born in 1950. Her first novel Daughter of Jerusalem won the Somerset Maugham Award in 1979. Since then she has published five more novels and six collections of short stories. In March 2008 Maia press published Far North and Other Dark Tales to celebrate the launch of the film "Far North", directed by Asif Kapadia and starring Michelle Yeoh and Sean Bean, which was based on that dark tale. She also writes non-fiction, particularly theology like A Big Enough God and, Angel and Me (both from Continuum), and radio drama. Most recently A Book of Silence was published by Granta in 2008 to considerable critical acclaim.
In 2007 she moved to Galloway and has built herself a house on the moors above New Luce. A Book of Silence is partly a cultural history of silence and partly a personal memoir of her search of that elusive lifestyle.
