Changes

Damian O'Brien was born in Cheshire and grew up in Buckinghamshire. After leaving school he raced cars and taught performance driving at racetracks including Silverstone and Le Mans. Inspired by a biography of Rasputin, he went to Siberia to spend a year in a remote city on the River Ob. On returning to England he went to Oxford University and read Sanskrit and Ancient Iranian at Oxford UniversityHarris Manchester College. He then went began writing If Houses Why Not Mouses? to Libyawhile away hot evenings in the Libyan city of Sirte, where he was one of the few Europeans living worked prior to its destruction in the Bedouin town of Sirte before the 2011 revolution. From Libya he He then moved to Saudi Arabia, and he now divides his time between Basra in southern Iraq and Veliko Tarnovo in the mountains of central Bulgaria. He has a Siamese cat called Stanley, acquired now works in Somalia for the pet souk in Tripolihumanitarian demining charity The HALO Trust.