SF Said (original) (raw)

SF Said is an award-winning author. He was born in Lebanon in 1967, but has lived in London since he was 2 years old. He wrote his first novel, Varjak Paw (2003), while working as a speechwriter for the Crown Prince of Jordan, and then as an arts journalist and film programmer.

Varjak Paw won the Nestlé Smarties Book Prize for Children's Literature, as well as regional book of the year awards in Gateshead, Stockton and West Sussex. It has since been adapted as a stage play and an opera, and a film is in development. It has been translated into 14 languages, and worldwide sales are now over a million, with over half a million in the UK alone. In 2021, Varjak Paw was included in BookTrust's list of the 100 Best Children's Books From The Last 100 Years.

The sequel, The Outlaw Varjak Paw (2005), won the BBC's Blue Peter Book Of The Year, was nominated for the Carnegie Medal, and won the Leicester Teenage Book Of The Year. Varjak Paw is currently featured on the CLPE's recommended reading list for primary schools, and both books are being taught in classrooms around the UK.

SF's third novel, Phoenix (2013), is an epic space adventure for readers of 9 and up. It was chosen as an IBBY Honour List Book for the UK; shortlisted for the Guardian Children's Fiction Award; nominated for both the CILIP Carnegie Medal and the Kate Greenaway Medal; and won both the Warwickshire Secondary Schools Book Of The Year Award and the Haringey Children's Book Award.

He has described his new book Tyger (2022) as his "best book yet". Like his other books, it is illustrated by Dave McKean and published by David Fickling Books. It won Children's Book of the Year at the 2023 British Book Awards; Children's Book of the Year (Older Fiction) at the Week Junior Book Awards; the Foyles Children's Book Of The Year Award; and was picked as a book of the year by The Guardian, The Times and Sunday Times, and The Sun newspapers.