Tobias Hill

the New Zealand trade unionist

British writer (1970–2023)

Tobias Fleet Hill (30 March 1970 – 26 August 2023) was a British poet, essayist, writer of short stories and novelist.

Tobias Hill was born in Kentish Town, in North London, to parents of German Jewish and English extraction; Hill identified as Jewish. His maternal grandfather was the brother of Gottfried Bermann, confidant of Thomas Mann and, as owner of S. Fischer Verlag, German literature's leading publisher in exile during the Second World War. Hill's father was a journalist and his mother was a graphic designer. Hill was educated at Hampstead School and the University of Sussex before spending two years teaching in Japan. He lived in Cricklewood, north London. Hill married Hannah Donat in 2003, and they had one child, Kit. He had a stroke in 2014, which ended his writing career. Hill died from glioblastoma on 26 August 2023, at the age of 53. Hill's collection of short stories, Skin (1997), was serialised on BBC Radio 4, was shortlisted for the 1998 John Llewellyn Rhys/Mail on Sunday Prize, and won the International PEN/Macmillan Silver Pen Award.

In 1999, Hill published his debut novel, Underground. Set on the London Underground, this dark, neo gothic work follows the story of Casimir, a Polish immigrant, as he comes to terms with his personal and national past. Underground won the Betty Trask Prize and the Arts Council Writer's Award. The Love of Stones (2001), Hill's second novel, garnered wider recognition: it charts the lives of two nineteenth century Jewish brothers and a contemporary protagonist, Katharine Sterne, whose stories are entwined with that of a jewel known as "The Three Brothers", once owned by Elizabeth I, but lost since the 17th century. Hill's third novel, The Cryptographer, was published in 2003. A sparer narrative than The Love of Stones, it tells the story of a global financial disaster, examining issues of trust and secrecy. The Cryptographer is set in the near future, but comprises a shadow portrait of the enigmatic historical figure John Law. In December 2003 the Hay Festival showcased the novel as its Book of the Year. It was described by the author A. S. Byatt as evidence of "one of the two or three most original and interesting young novelists working in Britain today". Tobias Hill's fourth novel, The Hidden, was published to acclaim in January 2009. In the Guardian, the author James Lasdun called it "an elaborate mystery along the lines of The Magus or The Secret History, and a sustained meditation on the special ethics of terrorism in ancient and modern times You don't often see writing as lively as this." The author Kamila Shamsie, in The Observer, wrote: "Apart from everything else that this novel is — a beautifully paced thriller, a meditation on loss, guilt, obsession — it is also one of the finest novels written so far about this, our age of terror."