Description

By Kevin Rice

ISBN: 9781847478559
Published: 2009
Pages: 219
Key Themes: fiction, religion, politics, relationships

Description

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About the Author

Kevin Rice, author of Innocents Abroad, was born in Birmingham in 1947. He was educated at a school in Birmingham, and on leaving school got a job as a computer operator. In this job he learned how to write programmes for a mainframe, such as you had in the 1960s. He left that job after a year, and had a series of jobs.

In his 20s he became involved with the psychiatric system. He could not get a job, because there was no work, and nobody wanted to employ anybody with a past mental illness. This led to him going into hospital long term.

Whilst in hospital, he attended education classes, mostly in science and IT, since his knowledge of computers was now a bit out of date. He also read, and watched TV documentaries, which enabled him to acquire the knowledge necessary to write Innocents abroad. He was in a number of hospitals until 2007, and was then discharged to a half way house, since by now he had almost recovered.

He still lives in the half way house today, and wrote Innocents Abroad in a narrative context, hoping to help put mental illness in a more favourable light, so that in the future, nobody will be refused a job because of a past mental illness like he was in his 20s.