Luke McCallin is the author of the Gregor Reinhardt novels, including The Pale House and The Man from Berlin. He was born in 1972 in Oxford, grew up around the world and has worked with the United Nations as a humanitarian relief worker and peacekeeper in the Caucasus, the Sahel, and the Balkans. His experiences have driven his writing, in which he explores what happens to normal people-those stricken by conflict, by disaster-when they are put under abnormal pressures.