T.C. Boyle is an American novelist and short story writer. Since the late-1970s, he has published sixteen novels and more than one hundred short stories. He won the PEN/Faulkner Award in 1988 for this third novel, World's End, and the Prix Médicis étranger for The Tortilla Curtain in 1995. His honors include the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in Short Fiction, the Henry David Thoreau Prize, the Rea Award for the Short Story, and the Robert Kirsch Award for Lifetime Achievement from the Los Angeles Times. He is a Distinguished Professor of English Emeritus at the University of Southern California and lives in Santa Barbara.