Jill Dawson is a celebrated British novelist. Her fourth novel Wild Boy deals with the true case of the discovery of a feral child in 19th century France, a boy whom the 20th century neurologist Uta Frith claimed was the first recorded case of autism. For this book Dawson was nominated for a British Academy Book Award, (given for a book that makes scholarly ideas accessible). Her fifth and most recent novel Watch Me Disappear (long-listed for the Orange Prize) deals with a young woman who is ‘seeing’ things, terrible dream-like visions involving the death of a child, and is unsure whether it is her epileptic condition which is producing the visions, or whether she should trust them. Dawson is interested in neurology, notions of disability, psycho-analysis, hypnosis and the supernatural and where these areas might collide.
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