Julian Evans champions a little known author

OA (1965-73), Julian EVANS' most recent book Semi invisible man – the life of Norman Lewis has just been published by Jonathan Cape. It is the biography of a writer he feels has been overlooked and is published to coincide with the centenary of his birth. Norman Lewis was the son of a pharmacist from Enfield and was entirely self-taught as a writer. His account of south-east Asia before the Vietnam war, A Dragon Apparent, remains required reading. Voices of the Old Sea, a glimpse of pre-tourist Spain is a classic in the literature of the Mediterranean. His memoir of wartime Naples, Naples `44 is a masterpiece. All are good examples of his revolutionary style and penetration of the glorious and inglorious surfaces of our planet. You can read an obituary of Norman Lewis in The Guardian from 2003.

Julian's previous book Transit of Venus: Travels in the Pacific Secker and Warburg 1992 is an account of a journey to the heart of the US nuclear-missile testing programme.

Julian Evans is the translator of two French Novels and he has written for newspapers and magazines including The Independent, The Guardian, Vogue, GQ, Esquire and Harpers & Queen. He writes and broadcasts on literary subjects and lives in Bristol.