Anthony O'Neill was born in Melbourne and currently lives in Edinburgh, Scotland. His novels, published to acclaim in 17 languages, include Scheherazade (2001), a revisionist Arabian Nights epic; The Lamplighter (2003), a philosophical tale of the macabre set in 1880s Edinburgh; The Empire of Eternity (2006), a mystery involving Napoleon Bonaparte and the early years of Egyptology; The Unscratchables (2009), a pop-culture satire featuring anthropomorphic dog and cat detectives; The Dark Side (2016), a hardboiled crime novel set in a city on the moon; and Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Seek (2017), a sequel to Robert Louis Stevenson's classic novella.