Helen DeWitt

Helen DeWitt was born in 1957 in Takoma Park, Maryland. She grew up in South America, where her father worked for the State Department. She studied classical literature and philosophy at Oxford and completed her doctorate in Greek and Latin literature. In 1989, she decided to leave her academic career to become a writer and took a job as a secretary at a law firm to make a living. In 1995, she began writing the book "The Last Samurai," which she completed after two years. Her book achieved great success at the Frankfurt Book Fair, and she signed a contract worth £250,000 to sell the rights to American, British, German, Dutch, and Spanish publishers. To date, the rights have been sold in a total of 17 countries, and there has been interest from Miramax in adapting the book for the screen.