I'm a non-fiction and fiction writer whose work includes guidebooks in the Lonely Planet series, covering Germany, Russia, Austria, Poland and Hungary for various editions. I've also written short stories on travel and in 2008 travelled to Siberia to research and write 'Siberia, A Cultural History'. Much of it was written on the road in cheap, crumbling Soviet-style hotels.

'Drifting on the Edge' is my novel set in and around Basel in Switzerland. See A.J. Haywood profile: https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/1...

(I write travel guides under the name Anthony Haywood. My other books, such as "Siberia, A Cultural History" and "Drifting on the Edge," are under the name A.J. Haywood.)

I was born in Fremantle, Western Australia, and grew up in the inner suburbs of Perth, one of the world's more isolated cities. I pulled anchor at 19 and spent two years divided between London, Aberystwyth in Wales, Berkeley in California, and the roads of southern Europe and North Africa, which I hitchhiked one memorable summer. I later studied literature in Perth and did a post-graduate Russian language course in Melbourne before moving to Germany in 1992, where I live today, on the border of France, Germany and Switzerland.

I still work on guidebooks. I also write and translate for various organizations and companies as a freelancer, and write fiction.