Michel Faber (born 13 April 1960) is a Dutch-born writer of English-language fiction, including his 2002 novel The Crimson Petal and the White, and Under the Skin (2000) which was adapted for film by Jonathan Glazer, starring Scarlett Johansson.

Like much of Faber's work, it defies easy categorisation, combining elements of the science fiction, horror and thriller genres, handled with sufficient depth and nuance to win almost unanimous praise from literary critics.

Set in 1870s London and principally concerning a 19-year-old prostitute called Sugar, it was described by some critics as postmodern while others echoed the assertion (made in an early review) that it was "the novel that Dickens might have written had he been allowed to speak freely".

[3] Twenty years in the writing, the book showed Faber's admiration for Dickens' prose and George Eliot's narrative architecture, but its themes were informed by feminism, post-Freudian awareness of sexual pathology, and post-Marxian class analysis, as well as by unrestricted access to Victorian pornographic texts that had been suppressed until the late 20th century.

The Crimson Petal and the White is by far his most popular work, but Faber chose never to write a sequel to his bestselling Victorian novel.

However, he did write a number of short stories featuring characters from The Crimson Petal and the White, in scenarios that pre-dated or post-dated the events of the novel.

While not a sequel (the novel's controversial ending was allowed to remain definitive and the fates of the heroines Sugar and Agnes were left undisclosed), the stories offered additional perspectives on some of the characters' past and future lives.

Inspired by the myth of Prometheus, it tells the story of a scholar of Aramaic called Theo, who steals an ancient 'gospel' describing the death of Jesus, from a bombed museum in Iraq.

Throughout 2004, he wrote a regular feature for The Sunday Herald called "Image Conscious", analysing the layers of meaning, intent and association in various photographs.

Since 2003, he has reviewed for The Guardian, mainly choosing foreign fiction in translation, short story collections, graphic novels and books about music.

In 2004, as part of the Authors on the Frontline project, Faber travelled to Ukraine with Médecins Sans Frontières, to witness MSF's intervention in the HIV/AIDS epidemic there.

A four-part television adaptation of The Crimson Petal and the White, produced by the BBC in 2011, starred Romola Garai, Chris O'Dowd, Richard E. Grant and Gillian Anderson.

[9][10] The Book of Strange New Things was adapted as ten 15-minute episodes for BBC Radio 4 in 2014,[11] and as a pilot for an Amazon Prime TV Series called Oasis.