Tobias Hill
Tobias Hill (born London, England, 30 March 1970) was an award-winning British poet, essayist, writer of short stories and novelist.
Tobias Hill was born in Kentish Town, north London, to parents of German Jewish and English extraction: his maternal grandfather was the brother of Gottfried Bermann, confidant of Thomas Mann and, as owner of S. Fischer Verlag, German literature's leading publisher-in-exile during the Second World War. Hill was educated at Hampstead School, a comprehensive institution, and Sussex University.
Hill first came to attention in the 1990s as a poet and author of short stories, with early work appearing in magazines such as The Frogmore Papers: he later became established as a novelist. As a poet Hill published four collections, Year of the Dog (1995), Midnight in the City of Clocks (1996), influenced by his experience of life in Japan, Zoo (1998) and Nocturne in Chrome & Sunset Yellow (2006): the last of these was described by The Guardian as "A vital, luminous collection...it is rare to come across a collection of poetry that you know with certainty you will still be reading years from now, but for me, this is such a book."
Hill's only collection of short stories, Skin (1997), was serialized on BBC Radio 4, was shortlisted for the 1998 John Llewellyn Rhys/Mail on Sunday Prize, and won the International PEN/Macmillan Silver Pen Award.
From Wikipedia
“In the way such things happen in real life, I suspect I'll never see him again. We talked about that once. There was a term in Japanese, he said. Eng. It was both a concept and a word of advice. It meant that anyone you meet may be the most important person in your life. Therefore, that every stranger should be treated as a friend. Loved before it is too late. You never know (he said) in which night your ship is passing.”