Philip Chatting

When asked why he's waited the better part of a lifetime to begin writing fiction Philip Chatting, the author of the award-winning short story collection "The Snow Bridge & Other Stories" and novels "Harbour Views", "As Leaves Blow", and a new release "Dewfall" usually answers that he has been completing the world's longest apprenticeship qualifying him for the task, not to mention the necessity of having to pay bills and put groceries on his family's table.

The apprenticeship in question, a semi-nomadic career that's taken him across Africa, the Middle East and America, has contributed to a Dickensian list of fictional characters and communities, that act out their imperfect lives on every page.

No stranger himself to the evolution and psychology of human relations, he explores in earlier work the human condition, the rise and fall of friendships, families and marriage and the dilemmas and ambivalence of lives lived for many years in countries not one's own.

His latest book is set in a world unlike the one we know where the characters are without history, education, or cultural conditioning and are in essence intellectually naked evolving according to genetic heritage and environmental circumstances. What, in other words, is human nature? Do we have free will, are we good or bad, sociable or unsociable, commanding or directed, moral or immoral?

Philip is presently based in Hong Kong in the delightful company of his wife and young son, while two older sons continue the family tradition of global citizenry by pursuing occupations in Washington DC and rural England.