Louis will be reading from his latest book, The Partisan's Daughter, the tale of an unlikely affair between a young Serbian woman and a bored middle-aged man.

Part romance and part meditation on the nature of storytelling, Louis began writing the novel when he was in his 20s. A laptop belonging to the author which contained the first 50 pages of the book was famously stolen while he was at the Edinburgh Festival in 2004.

Louis remains best known for Captain Corelli's Mandolin, his fourth novel and an international bestseller. This story of an Italian soldier on the Greek island of Cephalonia during the Second World War was published in 1994 and has since been translated into more than 30 languages. It was adapted for the screen in 2001, starring Nicolas Cage and Penelope Cruz. The film met with a lukewarm reception, not least from Louis himself.

The author served briefly in the Army before going on to become a landscape gardener, mechanic and motorcycle messenger.

His experiences in South America, as a teacher in Columbia and a cowboy in Argentina, had a great influence on his early work.

A Partisan's Daughter, published by Harvill Secker, is out now.

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