About our guests
Marc Levy
After a career including working at the Red Cross, creating a computer graphics company and co-founding one of France’s leading architecture firms, Marc wrote his first novel at the age of 37. If Only it Were True was bought by Steven Spielberg before publication. The movie, Just like Heaven, starring Reese Witherspoon and Mark Ruffalo, was a number one box office hit in the USA in 2005. Marc has written 25 novels to date. His work has been translated into 50 languages and has sold over 50 million copies worldwide. When Le Figaro newspaper commissioned a nationwide poll asking the French to rank their favourite authors, Marc Levy and Victor Hugo shared first place.
Jemimah Steinfeld
Jemimah has lived and worked in both Shanghai and Beijing where she has written on a wide range of topics, with a particular focus on youth culture, gender and censorship. She is the author of the book Little Emperors and Material Girls: Sex and Youth in Modern China, which was described by the FT as “meticulously researched and highly readable”. Jemimah has freelanced for a variety of publications, including The Guardian, The Telegraph, The Independent, Vice, CNN, Time Out and the Huffington Post. She has a degree in history from Bristol University and went on to study an MA in Chinese Studies at SOAS.
