About the Author

JOHN MARLYN was born in Nagy Becskerek, Hungary, in 1912. When he was six months old, his family moved to Winnipeg’s North End, the setting of his fiction.

Unable to find employment during the thirties, Marlyn went to England, where he worked as a script reader for a film studio. He returned to Canada just before the outbreak of the Second World War and has worked since that time as a writer for various government offices in Ottawa. From 1963 until 1967 he also taught creative writing at Carleton University.

Under the Ribs of Death, Marlyn’s first novel and a powerful portrait of immigrant life in its aspirations, its tragedies, and its search for values, won the Beta Sigma Phi First Novel Award.

John Marlyn resides in the Canary Islands.