Keith Lowe (author)

Keith Lowe (author)

Keith Lowe (born in London, 1970) is a British author and historian. His first novel, Tunnel Vision (2001, ISBN 0-09-941668-9), follows a man who is challenged to visit every station of the London Underground in a single day, and was shortlisted for the Author's Club First Novel Award. His second novel, New Free Chocolate Sex (2005), is about the ruthless world of chocolate marketing, and describes the hostile relationship between a chocolate company executive and a journalist who spend a weekend locked in a chocolate factory together.

Lowe has published two critically acclaimed history books about the Second World War and its aftermath. Inferno (2007) described the firebombing of Hamburg by the British and American air forces in 1943, which destroyed most of the city and resulted in approximately 40,000 civilian deaths. It was reviewed extensively in the British press. His next book, Savage Continent (2012), is a history of Europe in the aftermath of the Second World War, which covers the lawlessness, chaos and unconstrained violence that gripped the continent in the years 1944 to 1949. It suggests that the war did not end neatly at all, but in fact continued in various guises for several years after the official ceasefire in May 1945. It covers a variety of controversial issues such as postwar vengeance, ethnic cleansing, and the many civil wars which took place across Europe.

Lowe grew up in Hampstead in London, and studied English Literature at the University of Manchester. After twelve years as a history editor at Cassell he left his job in 2010 to become a full-time writer. His books have been translated into German, Swedish, Japanese, Serbian, French, Italian, Spanish, Polish, Greek and Russian.