David Nicholls
David Nicholls’s began his career as an actor, under the stage name David Holdaway, before becoming a novelist and television and film scriptwriter, adapting his own works and classic novels.
Nicholls stopped acting when he realised he had committed himself ‘to a profession for which I lacked not just talent and charisma, but the most basic of skills. Moving, standing still – things like that.’ However, he found considerable success with his film versions of his own novels Starter for Ten and One Day and, among many others, his adaptation of the 2006 Booker Prize-nominated Edward St Aubyn’s Melrose novels. Nevertheless, Nicholls claims that ‘The best thing about writing for a living is the distractions, and I welcome them whole-heartedly.’
I think I wanted to get away from the idea of marriage or people getting together as the end of the story. I want to kind of write love stories but not write the obvious and familiar
Watch the trailer for the BBC adaption and hear the author discuss the novel
Listen to an audio extract of Us
A literary and anthropological tour de force… astute and packed with brilliant observations, about life, art, culture and the infinite possibilities for human disappointment. I honestly can’t imagine loving a novel much more.
— Christina Patterson reviewing Us for The Sunday Times
All nominated books
David Nicholls’ comic history of a family in jeopardy, recounted over the course of what may well be their final weeks together.
