Film adaptation of novel and new spy drama for St John’s graduate
A film adaptation of a best-selling novel by St John’s alumnus Tom Rob Smith will be released next month, and his new BBC spy drama will be on our screens later this year.
Child 44, the award-winning novel by Tom Rob Smith, St John’s graduate and former Harper-Wood student, has been made into a film directed by Daniel Espinosa and produced by Ridley Scott.
This international bestseller, the first in a trilogy, has sold over two million copies worldwide and has won seven awards including the British Book Awards New Writer of the Year, the International Thriller Writers Award for Best First Novel, and the CWA Steel Dagger Award, as well as being longlisted for the Man Booker Prize and shortlisted for the Costa First Novel Award. It was named one of the top 100 thrillers of all time by National Public Radio in the US, and the novel was described by the Times as “the most stylish, intelligent and gripping Cold War thriller since Martin Cruz Smith’s Gorky Park” and by the Observer as “a thrilling, intense piece of fiction”.
Child 44 is set in Stalinist Russia in the 1950s – an official ‘paradise’ - and follows an exiled security officer and war hero, Leo Demidov, who is investigating a series of child murders in an all-powerful state where, supposedly, crime does not exist.
The film, starring Gary Oldman, Tom Hardy, and Noomi Rapace, will be released in cinemas on 17 April.
The author's most recent novel, The Farm, was also recently a number 1 bestseller.
Tom Rob Smith has also created and produced his first TV spy drama, which will be on our screens later this year. London Spy, a five-part BBC Two drama series directed by Jakob Verbruggen and starring Ben Whishaw, Edward Holcroft, Charlotte Rampling and Jim Broadbent, is a thriller about a man’s search for the truth in the world of espionage. It is set in central London where on one side of the street is the Secret Intelligence Service and on the other is the gay clubbing headquarters. The story focuses on the chance romance from two people from opposite sides of the street, Alex and Danny. When Alex is found dead, naïve Danny is thrown into the dangerous world of British espionage, which he is completely ill-equipped to deal with.
“London Spy has gathered an exceptional cast and a visionary director,” Smith said. “I couldn't be more excited, or proud.”
Tom Rob Smith graduated from St John’s in 2001 with a BA in English, and held the Harper-Wood Studentship for English Poetry and Literature at the College following his graduation. This one-year Studentship encourages creative writers in the early stages of their careers, providing them with the opportunity to pursue their own creative writing project in a country outside the UK.
Two former holders of the Harper-Wood Studentship are also releasing new work this year. Dr Sarah Howe, Research Fellow at Gonville and Caius, was a Harper-Wood Student in 2012, and her first poetry collection, Loop of Jade will be released in May from Chatto and Windus. Dr Christopher Simons, Senior Associate Professor of British Literature at International Christian University (ICU), Tokyo, held the Studentship in 2003, and his first poetry collection entitled One More Civil Gesture will be coming out in June from Isobar Press; many of the poems in the collection were originally written and published in journals during his time as a Harper-Wood Student.
Visit Tom Rob Smith’s website to find out more about Child 44.