Desmond Astley-Cooper

Desmond began his career as a journalist but has spent most of it working in banking & finance, including a long period living in Bahrain during the 1980’s and 1990’s. He studied Arabic and Persian Literature at St Peter’s College, Oxford. His vivid accounts of the landscape of Mount Lebanon in his debut novel "In the Time of the Mulberry" were inspired by the various hiking expeditions he has made across the country over the years and a fascination with discovering its remote corners first-hand. To research his second novel "In the Time of Confusion," he travelled to New Orleans and Lake Charles where he came across a series of taped interviews with first and second generation Syrian migrants who had settled in the area at the beginning of the 20th Century.