BIOGRAPHY
Sharon Maas was born into a prominent political family in Georgetown, Guyana.
After leaving school, she worked as a trainee reporter with the Guyana Graphic in Georgetown. She later wrote feature articles for the Sunday Chronicle as a staff journalist.
Sharon has always had a great sense of adventure and curiosity about the world we live in. She spent years as a backpack traveller in South America and in Asia, and later lived in an ashram in India.
The wild years were followed by a more sedate trajectory: she moved to Germany in 1975. She studied social work there and practiced for several years as a probation consultant. She later married and raised two children as a at stay-at-home mother; she lived and worked in Germany for forty years.
She settled in Ireland on retirement in 2018; then moved to India again and will live there for the foreseeable future.
Her first novel, Of Marriageable Age, is set in Guyana and India and was published by HarperCollins in 1999. Several more novels followed, two published by HarperCollins. She moved to the digital publisher Bookouture in 2013 and has published at least one novel a year since then. She writes historical fiction, and the settings of her novels are a reflection of the places she knows best: Guyana, Germany/France, South India.
She has also self-published The Mahabharata: Sons of Gods, a retelling of the great Indian epic which has always fascinated her. In 2020 she has used the lockdown to revise it yet again and republish it with a professional cover. She believes it is a classical work that deserves more exposure in the West, and this new version is an invitation especially to Western readers who balk at the sheer scope of the original.
Praise for Sharon Maas
REVIEWS
“A page-turning story, full of humanity, crossing cultures and continents, reminiscent of Andrea Levy.”
“Beautifully and cleverly written. A wondrous, spellbinding story which grips you from the first to the last page… I can’t recall when I last enjoyed a book so much.”
“Sharon Maas is one of my favourite authors… evocative and vivid… Highly recommended.”
“It’s a wonderful panoramic story and conveys such vivid pictures of the countries it portrays I was immediately transported and completely captivated. A terrific writer.”