Audrey Magee worked for twelve years as a journalist and has written for, among others, [i]The Times[/i], [i]The Irish Times[/i], the [i]Observer[/i] and [i]Guardian[/i]. She studied German and French at University College Dublin and journalism at Dublin City University. She lives in Wicklow with her husband and three daughters. [i]The Undertaking[/i] is her first novel. In her 20s and 30s, she travelled extensively, first as a student, living in Germany and Australia, where she taught English; later as a journalist, covering, among many other issues, the war in Bosnia, child labour in Pakistan and Bangladesh, and the impact of Perestroika on Central Asia. She was Ireland Correspondent of [i]The Times[/i] for six years, and wrote extensively about the Troubles in Northern Ireland, the subsequent peace process and the chaos caused by the Omagh bomb.