The Suede bassist and author on writing without a safety net, terrifying himself for his next novel and which of the Thursday Murder Club books – by his brother Richard – he likes best
Mat Osman is, along with Brett Anderson, a founding and current member of the band Suede, and the author of two novels. The Ruins, published in 2020, is a modern murder mystery about estranged brothers. His latest, The Ghost Theatre, is set in Elizabethan London and tells the tale of the Blackfriars Boys, a real life Elizabethan theatre troupe made up of children who were often snatched from the streets to act in popular plays of the day. They are joined by Shay, a young female “Aviscultan”; a worshipper of the birds that she communes with as she scales the city’s rooftops on the run from her enemies. The book has been widely praised and the Guardian picked it as one of its novels of 2023. Osman is the older brother of TV presenter and fellow novelist Richard Osman and lives in north-west London..
It isn’t the kind of book you imagine a musician would write…
I really hope that’s true. My first novel was about a musician, about brothers and stuff and it drew from [my] experience. [With The Ghost Theatre] I was really aware that I wanted to write something without a safety net, where I had to make it all up. Because I want to be a writer, not a musician who has written a book.
