Benjamin Markovits grew up mostly in Texas. He left an unpromising career as a professional basketball player to study the Romantics – an experience he wrote about in Playing Days, a novel.

Since then he has taught high school English, worked at a left-wing cultural magazine, and written essays, stories and reviews for, among other publications, The New York Times, Granta, The Guardian, The London Review of Books and The Paris Review.

He has published seven novels, including Either Side of Winter, about a New York private school, and a trilogy on the life of Lord Byron: Imposture, A Quiet Adjustment and Childish Loves.

In 2009 he won a Pushcart Prize for his short story Another Sad, Bizarre Chapter in Human History. Granta selected him as one of the Best of Young British Novelists in 2013.

Markovits lives in London and is married, with a daughter and a son. He teaches Creative Writing at Royal Holloway, University of London.

His latest novel, The Rest of Our Lives, has been praised by Sarah Hall, Clare Chambers, Lucy Caldwell, The Guardian, the Observer, TLS and many more.

Get the book here or at your local bookshop.

What’s left when your kids grow up and leave home? 

When Tom Layward’s wife had an affair he resolved to leave her as soon as his youngest daughter turned eighteen. Twelve years later, while driving her to Pittsburgh to start university, he remembers his pact.

He is also on the run from his own health issues, and the fact that he’s been put on leave at work after students complained about the politics of his law class – something he hasn’t yet told his wife.

So, after dropping Miriam off, he keeps driving, with the vague plan of visiting various people from his past – an old college friend, his ex-girlfriend, his brother, his son – on route, maybe, to his father’s grave in California.