Michael G. Wood was born in Lincoln, and studied French and German at St John’s College, Cambridge, where he received his Ph.D. and continued as a fellow until 1964. His books include: Stendhal, America in the Movies, The Magician’s Doubts: Nabokov and the Risks of Fiction, Children of Silence: On Contemporary Fiction, Belle de Jour, Franz Kafka, and The Road to Delphi: The Life and Afterlife of Oracles.