Christopher Whyte was born and raised in Glasgow and lived in Italy from 1973 to 1985. He has published two books of poetry in Scottish Gaelic, a language he taught himself, as well as four novels in English, the most recent of which, The Cloud Machinery, won a Scottish Arts Council Book Award and was translated into Italian and German. His poems have been translated into six European languages. A frequent visitor to Barcelona and Budapest, he is Reader in the Department of Scottish Literature of Glasgow University.