Jasper Fforde is a British novelist well-known for his alternate history and comic fantasy novels. He was born in London, England, and attended the Dartington Hall School. Before becoming an author, Fforde worked in the film industry for nineteen years, holding various posts on films such as GoldenEye, The Mask of Zorro, and Entrapment. He had a desire to tell his own stories, which led him to start writing in 1988. Fforde spent eleven years developing his unique writing style, which combines wordplay, metafiction, and parody, and is known for its tight scripting.
Fforde's writing career took off in 2001 when his first novel, The Eyre Affair, was published by Hodder & Stoughton. The novel, set in 1985, introduces the literary detective Thursday Next and takes place in a world that is similar to ours but with peculiar differences. Fforde's writing quickly gained popularity in the UK and the US, where The Eyre Affair became an instant hit and entered the New York Times Bestseller List in its first week of publication. Since then, Fforde has added six more books to the Thursday Next series, as well as a second series called Nursery Crime, which features Jack Spratt of The Nursery Crime Division. He has also written a standalone novel, Shades of Grey, and a series for young adults called The Last Dragonslayer.
Fforde's writing is known for its imaginative perspective on fantasy fiction and its unique brand of idiosyncratic humor. He has received both commercial and critical success in his career, and his books have been praised for their originality and creativity. Fforde continues to write and live in Wales, where he has a passion for movies, photography, and aviation. His latest book, Early Riser, is a thriller set in a world where humans hibernate, and is due out in the UK in August 2018 and in the US in 2019.