Tariq Goddard was born in London and read philosophy at King's College, London, and Continental Philosophy at the University of Warwick. In 2002 his first novel,Homage to a Firing Squad, was shortlisted for the Whitbread (Costa) Book Award for First Novel and the Wodehouse-Bollinger Writing Award. He was included as one of Waterstones' 'Faces of the Future' and the novel, whose film rights were sold, was listed as one ofThe ObserverFour Debuts of the Year. In 2003, his second novel,Dynamo, was cited as one of the ten best sports novels of all time byThe Observer Sports Magazine.The Morning Rides Behind Us, his third novel, was released in 2005, and short-listed for the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Fiction. In 2010,The Picture of Contented New Wealth, his fourth novel, won The Independent Publishers Award for Horror Writing, and he was awarded a development grant by The Royal Literary Fund.The Message, published in 2011 and set in a fictional African state, received Silver at the 2012 Independent Publishers Award for Literary Fiction. In 2007, Goddard began the imprint Zero Books. In 2014, he and his co-founders left Zero Books and started Repeater Books. He lives on a farm in Wiltshire with his wife and children where he is writing his seventh novel,High John The Conqueror.