John Berkeley was born in Dublin at a time when suits had no collars and there were no bootprints on the moon. He was educated by stern men with elbow patches, in a school where you were only allowed go to the bathroom if you asked in Irish.
He attended the National College of Art and Design, where he learned to make a coffee break last the entire morning, and to do a lot of work very quickly at the last possible minute, a skill which he uses to this day.
John has worked as a freelance illustrator for over twenty years, and has turned more recently to writing. He is the author and illustrator of Chopsticks (2004), a story about the friendship between a mouse and a dragon, and has illustrated several books by other authors. THE PALACE OF LAUGHTER is his first novel.
John has lived and worked in Sydney, Hong Kong, London and Dublin, and now lives in a small town in Catalunya with his wife, Orna, and their five children, along with five cats, one dog and a small colony of stick insects.
