British · b. 1933
Michael Frayn has succeeded in fiction, drama, and philosophy. "Spies" (2002) won the Whitbread Novel Award for its story of two boys in wartime England who decide a neighbor is a German spy. "Headlong" (1999) was shortlisted for the Booker Prize—a comedy about a man convinced he's found a lost Bruegel. Frayn's play "Noises Off" is a masterpiece of farce; "Copenhagen" dramatized Heisenberg and Bohr's wartime meeting. He translates Chekhov. His range is unusual.