Nick Hornby Hornby, the chairman of London and Continental Railways, and Margaret Audrey, Lady Hornby ("née" Withers). He was brought up in Maidenhead, and educated at Maidenhead Grammar School and Jesus College, Cambridge, where he read English. His parents divorced when he was eleven. Hornby published his first book in 1992, a collection of essays about American Writers such as Tobias Wolff and Ann Beattie, titled "Contemporary American Fiction". Hornby's second book, "Fever Pitch", also published in 1992, is an autobiographical story detailing his fanatical support for Arsenal Football Club. As a result, Hornby received the William Hill Sports Book of the
The Beach (novel) as "Heart of Darkness" and "Lord of the Flies", and the anonymous memoirs of an escaped Australian prisoner. Although set in Thailand, Garland wrote the book while living in the Philippines and in particular was inspired by similar geography on the island of Palawan . Novelist Nick Hornby referred to "The Beach" as "a "Lord of the Flies" for Generation X", and the "Sunday Oregonian" called it "Generation X's first great novel". "The Washington Post" wrote that it is "a furiously intelligent first novel" and "a book that moves with the kind of speed and grace many older writers can