Maurice Leitch was born in Co Antrim, educated in Belfast and now lives in London with his family. He won the Guardian Fiction Award for Poor Lazarus in 1969, and the 1981 Whitbread Prize for fiction for Silver's City.
Apart from novels, including most recently Burning Bridges, Gilchrist and The Smoke King, he has written radio plays, short stories, television screenplays and documentaries. This extract is taken from his novel, The Eggman's Apprentice, published last month by Secker and Warburg at £10 in the UK.
