Tade Thompson

Tade Thompson FRSL is a British-born Nigerian psychiatrist and writer of Yoruba descent. He is best known for his 2016 science fiction novel Rosewater, which won a Nommo Award and an Arthur C. Clarke Award.

Life and career
Thompson was born in London, England, to Yoruba parents. His family left the United Kingdom for Nigeria in 1976, when Thompson was seven. He grew up in Nigeria, where he studied medicine and social anthropology. He went on to specialise in psychiatry. He returned to the UK in 1998, where he has remained, except for a year spent working in Samoa. He now lives on the south coast of England.

As well as being an author, Thompson also works full-time at St James' Hospital, Portsmouth, where he specializes in mental illnesses in people with physical problems. In July 2020, he told The Guardian that he could not imagine leaving medicine, saying: “The hospital work is a calling. I help people.”

His novels and short stories have been critically well received, with critics commenting on their originality and breadth of vision. Thompson is a Nommo Award and a Kitschies Golden Tentacle Award winner. He was a John W. Campbell Award finalist and has been shortlisted for the Shirley Jackson Award, the BSFA Award, and the Nommo Award. His novel Rosewater, the first book in the Wormwood trilogy set in Nigeria, won the Arthur C. Clarke Award in 2019. And his 2022 novella, Jackdaw, was described in the Financial Times as: "a metafictional dive into the life of Francis Bacon."

in 2017, The Murders of Molly Southbourne was optioned for screen adaptation.

Thompson is also an illustrator and artist.

In 2023, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

The Molly Southbourne Trilogy

 * The Murders of Molly Southbourne (2017)
 * The Survival of Molly Southbourne (2019)
 * The Legacy of Molly Southbourne (2022)

Stand-alone

 * "The McMahon Institute for Unquiet Minds" (2005)
 * "Slip Road" (2009)
 * "Shadow" (2010)
 * "Notes from Gethsemane" (2012)
 * "Bicycle Girl" (2013)
 * "One Hundred and Twenty Days of Sunlight" (2013)
 * "Slip Road" (revised) (2014)
 * "Budo or, The Flying Orchid" (2014)
 * "The Monkey House" (2015)
 * "Child, Funeral, Thief, Death" (2015)
 * "The Last Pantheon" (2015) (with Nick Wood)
 * "Decommissioned" (2016)
 * "Household Gods" (2016)
 * "The Apologists" (2016)
 * "Gnaw" (2016)
 * "Bootblack" (2017)
 * "Yard Dog" (2018)
 * "Jackdaw" (2022)

Poems

 * "Komolafe" (2013)

Essays

 * The Last Word on the Last Pantheon (2016) (with Nick Wood)
 * Please Stop Talking about the 'Rise' of African Science Fiction (2018)

Other work

 * Omenana Magazine #4 (September 2015) (cover art)
 * In Morningstar's Shadow: Dominion of the Fallen Stories by Aliette de Bodard (2015) (cover art)