A major contributor to this article appears to have a close connection with its subject.(June 2024) |
Sean Thomas | |
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Born | 1963 (age 60–61) [1] |
Alma mater | University College London |
Occupation(s) | Journalist, author |
Sean Thomas is a British journalist and author. Born in Devon, England, and educated at University College London, he has written for publications such as The Times , the Daily Mail , The Spectator and The Guardian , mainly on travel, politics and art. [2] [3] He has written about his troubled early life and multiple stepmothers. [4] His father was the writer and translator D. M. Thomas, who died in 2023. [5]
As a novelist, Sean Thomas uses multiple pseudonyms. As Tom Knox, he specialises in archaeological and religious thrillers. He has also published erotic fiction under the pseudonym A. J. Molloy. More recently, he has written novels under the pen name S. K. Tremayne.
Thomas's first Tom Knox thriller, The Genesis Secret, focuses on the Neolithic archaeological site known as Göbekli Tepe in Turkey, which Thomas visited as a journalist in 2006. [6] The book speculates on the genetic and sociological origins of Christianity, Judaism and Islam, with particular attention to the trait of sacrifice. Noteworthy for several exceptionally gruesome episodes, it was an international bestseller, [7] [8] [9] and has so far been translated into 21 languages. [10] The novel provoked controversy when the German Archaeology Institute complained that both a newspaper article and the book were based on "a falsified version of an interview with [chief archaeologist] Klaus Schmidt", which they argued constituted "a distortion of the scientific work of the German Archaeological Institute". [11] Thomas has since returned to the Göbekli Tepe site, and its new associated sites, the Taş Tepeler. [12]
His second Tom Knox thriller, The Marks of Cain was published in 2010. Centring on the Cagot community who lived in the Basque Country, and the troubled history of the German empire in Namibia, it too was an international bestseller. In Germany, the ebook version, published under the title Cagot, was notable for its experimental use of interactivity and alternate reality games. [13]
A third book, titled Bible of the Dead (or The Lost Goddess outside the United Kingdom) was published in March 2011 in the UK, and in the US in February 2012, [14] and focuses on the Khmer Rouge, while taking in the cave paintings of France, and modern Chinese Communism. More recently, Thomas has returned to Cambodia and written on the inspiration for this novel, when he attended the 2009 UN trial of Khmer Rouge apparatchik, Comrade Duch. [15]
In 2015, under the pseudonym S. K. Tremayne, Thomas published a novel called The Ice Twins , about a London couple who lose a child, one of identical twins, and thereafter move to a remote island in Scotland. The Ice Twins became a Sunday Times Top Ten Bestseller in February 2015. [16]
The same novel, translated as IJstweeling, went into the Dutch top ten bestseller list, following its publication in the Netherlands in March 2015. [17] In May 2015, under the title Eisige Schwestern, the same book entered the Spiegel bestseller list, in Germany; the book went on to spend fifteen weeks in the German top ten. [18] In September 2015, The Ice Twins, in paperback form, became a number one Sunday Times bestseller in the UK. [19]
His second novel as S. K. Tremayne, The Fire Child, became a top ten bestseller in Germany in January 2017, under the title Stiefkind. [20]
In January 2019 The Ice Twins became a Nielsen Silver Award winner, for selling 250,000 copies in the UK. [21]
His novel Kissing England won the Literary Review's "Bad Sex" award in 2000, which is awarded for “the year's most outstandingly awful scene of sexual description in an otherwise good novel." [22] [23]
Thomas's fourth book, Millions Of Women Are Waiting To Meet You, [24] was a memoir of his love life, it was a Guardian “book of the week” in 2007. [25]
Thomas has two children and lives in Camden Town, North London. [26]
In 1987 Thomas was acquitted at a trial at the Old Bailey of a rape charge brought by his then-girlfriend. [27] [28] Thomas has written about his alcohol and drug addiction, especially heroin. [29] [30] In 2003 he wrote an article in The Spectator about his problems with internet porn, and how it caused him to “wank myself into hospital”. The article is cited by psychiatrist Norman Doidge in his book The Brain That Changes Itself as a “remarkable account of a man’s descent into porn addiction” [31]
The 9th millennium BC spanned the years 9000 BC to 8001 BC. In chronological terms, it is the first full millennium of the current Holocene epoch that is generally reckoned to have begun by 9700 BC. It is impossible to precisely date events that happened around the time of this millennium and all dates mentioned here are estimates mostly based on geological and anthropological analysis, or by radiometric dating.
The Israelites were a Hebrew-speaking ethnoreligious group consisting of tribes that inhabited much of Canaan during the Iron Age.
The 10th millennium BC spanned the years 10,000 BC to 9001 BC. It marks the beginning of the transition from the Palaeolithic to the Neolithic via the interim Mesolithic and Epipaleolithic periods, which together form the first part of the Holocene epoch that is generally believed to have begun c. 9700 BC and is the current geological epoch. It is impossible to precisely date events that happened around the time of this millennium, and all dates mentioned here are estimates mostly based on geological analysis, anthropological analysis, and radiometric dating.
A megalith is a large stone that has been used to construct a prehistoric structure or monument, either alone or together with other stones. There are over 35,000 structures or arrangements in Europe alone, located widely from Sweden to the Mediterranean sea.
Göbekli Tepe is a Neolithic archaeological site in the Southeastern Anatolia Region of Turkey. The settlement was inhabited from around 9500 BCE to at least 8000 BCE, during the Pre-Pottery Neolithic. It is famous for its large circular structures that contain massive stone pillars – among the world's oldest known megaliths. Many of these pillars are decorated with anthropomorphic details, clothing, and sculptural reliefs of wild animals, providing archaeologists rare insights into prehistoric religion and the particular iconography of the period. The 15 m (50 ft) high, 8 ha (20-acre) tell is densely covered with ancient domestic structures and other small buildings, quarries, and stone-cut cisterns from the Neolithic, as well as some traces of activity from later periods.
Pre-Pottery Neolithic A (PPNA) denotes the first stage of the Pre-Pottery Neolithic, in early Levantine and Anatolian Neolithic culture, dating to c. 12,000 – c. 10,800 years ago, that is, 10,000–8800 BCE. Archaeological remains are located in the Levantine and Upper Mesopotamian region of the Fertile Crescent.
A cilice, also known as a sackcloth, was originally a garment or undergarment made of coarse cloth or animal hair worn close to the skin. It is used by members of various Christian traditions as a self-imposed means of repentance and mortification of the flesh; as an instrument of penance, it is often worn during the Christian penitential season of Lent, especially on Ash Wednesday, Good Friday, and other Fridays of the Lenten season.
In archaeology, an enclosure is one of the most common types of archaeological site – It is any area of land separated from surrounding land by earthworks, walls or fencing. Such a simple feature is found all over the world and during almost all archaeological periods. They may be few metres across or be large enough to encompass whole cities.
Douglas Jerome Preston is an American journalist and author. Although he is best known for his thrillers in collaboration with Lincoln Child, he has also written six solo novels, including the Wyman Ford series and a novel entitled Jennie, which was made into a movie by Disney. He has authored a half-dozen nonfiction books on science and exploration and writes occasionally for The New Yorker, Smithsonian, and other magazines.
Agatha Christie (1890–1976) was an English crime novelist, short-story writer and playwright. Her reputation rests on 66 detective novels and 15 short-story collections that have sold over two billion copies, an amount surpassed only by the Bible and the works of William Shakespeare. She is also the most translated individual author in the world with her books having been translated into more than 100 languages. Her works contain several regular characters with whom the public became familiar, including Hercule Poirot, Miss Marple, Tommy and Tuppence Beresford, Parker Pyne and Harley Quin. Christie wrote more Poirot stories than any of the others, even though she thought the character to be "rather insufferable". Following the publication of the 1975 novel Curtain, Poirot's obituary appeared on the front page of The New York Times.
Elif Batuman is an American author, academic, and journalist. She is the author of three books: a memoir, The Possessed, and the novels The Idiot, which was a finalist for the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and Either/Or. Batuman is a staff writer for The New Yorker.
Gürcütepe is a Neolithic site on the southeastern outskirts of Şanlıurfa in Turkey, consisting of four very shallow tells along Sirrin Stream that flows from Şanlıurfa. All four hills are now covered by modern buildings, so they are no longer recognizable. In the late 1990s a German archaeological team under the direction of Klaus Schmidt carried out soundings on all four hills and made extensive excavations on the second hill seen from the east.
The Ice Twins is a 2015 psychological thriller, written by S. K. Tremayne. Screenwriter Isaac Adamson has adapted the novel for a film.
Magicians of the Gods: The Forgotten Wisdom of Earth's Lost Civilisation is a 2015 book by British pseudoarchaeology writer Graham Hancock, published by Thomas Dunne Books in the United States and by Coronet in the United Kingdom. Macmillan Publishers released an "updated and expanded" paperback edition in 2017.
Blanvalet is a German publishing house, based in Munich, which was founded in 1935 in Berlin and is now part of the Bertelsmann's Random House publishing group. Blanvalet publishes entertainment literature and non-fiction, first in hardcover, and as paperbacks since 1998. The publisher became well known with the novel series "Angélique". More recent authors include Charlotte Link, Marc Elsberg, Karin Slaughter, Diana Gabaldon and George R. R. Martin.
Şanlıurfa Archaeology and Mosaic Museums or Şanlıurfa Museum are located in the south-eastern city of Şanlıurfa, Turkey. The museums contain remains of Şanlıurfa, Göbekli Tepe, Karahan Tepe, Harran, findings from the Southeastern Anatolia Project and ruins found in the hydroelectric dam reservoirs of Atatürk Dam, Birecik Dam and Karkamış Dam. Both museums are located at Haleplibahçe Mahallesi 2372, Sok Eyyübiye/Şanlıurfa.
The Urfa man, also known as the Balıklıgöl statue, is an ancient human shaped statue found during excavations in Balıklıgöl near Urfa, in the geographical area of Upper Mesopotamia, in the southeast of modern Turkey. It is dated c. 9000 BC to the period of the Pre-Pottery Neolithic, and was considered as "the oldest naturalistic life-sized sculpture of a human". It is considered as contemporaneous with the sites of Göbekli Tepe and Nevalı Çori.
Karahan Tepe is an archaeological site in Şanlıurfa Province in Turkey. The site is close to Göbekli Tepe and archaeologists have also uncovered T-shaped stelae there and believe that the sites are related. According to Daily Sabah, "The excavations have uncovered 250 obelisks featuring animal figures" as of 2020. Additionally, the site may be the earliest known human village, predating the construction of Göbekli Tepe, dating to between 9,000-11,000 BC.
Marc Elsberg is an Austrian author. His works have been published by Blanvalet Verlag of the Penguin Random House publishing group since 2012. They have been translated into numerous languages and made into a series and a film.