Paula Hawkins is a British author, born in 1972 in Harare, in what was then Rhodesia and is now Zimbabwe. She moved to London at the age of seventeen and studied politics, philosophy, and economics at Oxford. She began her career as a journalist, writing about business and personal finance, and published several romantic comedies under a pen name before finding international success.
Hawkins became a global phenomenon with her psychological thriller The Girl on the Train, published in 2015. Narrated in part by an unreliable, alcoholic protagonist who becomes entangled in a missing-person case she observes from a commuter train, the novel topped bestseller lists around the world, sold millions of copies, and was adapted into a major film.
Her subsequent thrillers, including Into the Water and A Slow Fire Burning, continued to explore themes of memory, trauma, and the unreliability of perception, featuring complex and often damaged characters. Her work helped define the wave of domestic and psychological suspense that dominated popular fiction in the 2010s.
Hawkins lives in London and has become one of the most commercially successful thriller writers of her generation. Her novels are noted for their twisting plots, atmospheric tension, and morally ambiguous narrators who keep readers guessing until the end.
