Lawrence Osborne was born in England and educated at Cambridge and Harvard, where he studied modern languages. He then lived in Paris for ten years, where he wrote his first novel "Ania Malina", published by Jonathan Cape and then Scribner's and King Penguin; and, later, the travelogue "Paris Dreambook", published by Bloomsbury and by Vintage Contemporaries in the US. Subsequently, he moved to New York and has lived there since 1992, dividing his time between the United States and the Far East
.He has written extensively for American publications since then. He was a regular feature writer for the New York Times Magazine for several years, writing about science, psychiatry and medicine but also occasionally contributing profiles, such as that of Jean-Luc Godard in 2001; he has also contributed to Salon, The New Yorker, The Financial Times, The New York Observer, New York Magazine, Forbes, The Conde Nast Traveler, Gourmet and Men's Vogue, for whom he was the monthly Cellar Critic.
He is the author of the novel "Ania Malina" ( 1986 ), "Paris Dreambook" ( 1990 ), the essay collection "The Poisoned Embrace" ( 1993 ), also published by Bloomsbury and then Pantheon, "American Normal," a study of autism ( 2002 ), "The Accidental Connoisseur" ( 2004 ), "The Naked Tourist" ( 2006 ), both published by Farrar Straus Giroux, and "Shangri-la" (2008 ), an account of a journey across Sichuan and Yunnan in China. His book about ex-pat life in Bangkok, "Bangkok Days" will be published by Farrar Strauss Giroux in 2009.
Recent major feature pieces have taken him to Nairobi in Kenya to cover the murder trial of Tom Cholmondely, to China to write a profile of the artist Zhang Huang, to Papua New Guinea to explore the Kombai people for the New Yorker, and to the Andaman Islands in India to write about the Jarawa tribe. As the wine critic for Vogue, he also travels monthly around the world visiting the world's greatest wine estates. Recent columns have included Raveneau in Chablis, Soldera in Montalcino, Lopez de Heredia in Rioja and Taillevent restaurant in Paris
