Marika Cobbold was born with newspaper ink flowing through her veins. She used to visit her father and grandfather at their offices at the Gothenburg-Post, the Swedish broadsheet her grandfather had rescued from oblivion decades earlier.

At home, when Marika wasn't reading, she listened as the grown-ups around her discussed the issues of the day, and to the stories told by her mother and great aunt, who was a writer.

She left Sweden for England when she was nineteen, with vague plans of studying law, but eventually what her grandfather called "the family curse" caught up with her, and some years later she wrote her first novel, Guppies For Tea. She has been writing ever since.