Sophie Radice

I used to be a journalist but I now work for the United Nations Association. I'm a mother to two grown up children. My second novel ‘ The Year of Bad Maps’ (my first was 'The Henry Experiment') draws on my time in 2016 when I travelled solo to 10 countries. I've written it not from my point of view but from inside the heads of the people I met who guided me. Woven through the book is the Calais Refugee camps and a Crown Court case for people smuggling, which is a fictionalised account of my own experience. At its core, the novel asks why wandering is romantic when it’s done by tourists, but criminal when movement is driven by necessity. It explores this tension through humour and intimacy rather than polemic (I hope), moving between tuk-tuk drivers, guesthouse owners, and asylum seekers, and exposing how kindness itself can become suspect in a hostile political climate.