He grew up in Omaha, Nebraska. He studied film at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts and earned a doctorate in 20th century English Literature from Oxford University. His articles have appeared in various scholarly publications and he has written for Granta, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, Newsweek, The Guardian, The Spectator, and the Times Literary Supplement. He has published three novels with magnificent critical reception: Absolution (Gutenberg Galaxy, 2012), Sunken Earth (Gutenberg Galaxy, 2016) and I am nobody (Gutenberg Galaxy, 2018). He lives in London, where he teaches Creative Literature at Queen Mary University.